Why descriptiveness is a fake idea

Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, p. 138:

He was pulling his cheek before the glass, looking to see if there were unshaven patches under the line of the jaw.

This is a good example of the problem I have with matters related to detail/evocativeness in literature. Like, why do we think this description is good when we read it? Because we -– well at least us boys! -– recognize it from our daily lives, and we’re impressed that Hemingway managed to describe it so accurately, to notice it with such precision and to translate so seamlessly into actual words what doing that thing feels like / how it registers in our heads when we’re doing it. The resonance is what makes it so satisfying.

This is troubling because it means we just like it when writers can articulate an experience that we've had -- or worse, when writers can believably render palpable/concrete something that we know of only in abstract or very general terms. This applies to descriptions of all kinds -- metaphors, similes, sensory details, etc.: the ones we think are good feel true either because we like the way it feels when we are reminded of something, or, worse, because it makes us feel good about ourselves to recognize something that this author we're reading evidently thought was singular/important enough to include in his/her book. When a description resonates, we feel like we're being congratulated for having noticed something really special. It proves that we are sensitive and observant.

Both of these are very tacky reasons to think a thing is good.

I want to quote from a book I have in galley but I don't want to say what it is because it might be against the rules or something. Suffice it to say this is a prominent literary critic. In his new book he writes that literature is different from life because in life no one is directing us toward detail; the details are just sort of all around us and it's up to us to notice them. In literature we have someone pointing a finger at specific things and forcing us to pay attention to the way they look/feel/taste/are. He writes that some details seem true and others don't. The ones that do achieve their success by drawing "abstraction toward itself" and killing it with "a puff of palpability." A great detail "centers our attention with its concretion."

He lists some examples. They include: "the way old leather jackets have white lines in them like the strations of fat in pieces of meat" and "the way fresh snow 'creaks' underfoot."

Am I wrong to think both of these are implicitly supposed to remind you of whatever they're describing? It seems to me that that's precisely how they function -- hence the construction "the way..." I guess that is the nature of realism? It seems so primitive a mechanism -- it kind of compromises the aura/mystery of "great writing."

I guess one thing to note is that truly great metaphors/similes are thought to be the ones that illuminate a relationship you hadn’t thought of before -- ones that not only affirm the common ground two things share, but show you common ground that you didn’t realize existed and thus enrich/alter your conception of those two things. This is how we learn about the world, maybe! As that same critic puts it, "Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature."

And yet most metaphors aren’t like that –- most of them are just counting on the same reaction most mash-ups seem to be going for: "Oh hey, I recognize that!" That idea via NBS, who wrote about it in a Stylus article:

...the thing about genuine, good-natured people is that a lot of them clearly don’t give a ratty fuck what they’re listening to, as long as they know what they’re listening to, feel it at 130bpm, and can download it off Discobelle. In 2006, did “liking music” really just mean “identifying samples”?