A Little Too Close Together

“His cold blue eyes are too close together.”
Jo Jakeman, Safe House
“Mann had blue eyes a little too close together...”
Neal Stephenson, The Confusion
“They were wonderful eyes—a little too close together,”
Lyndon Orr, Famous Affinities of History V4
“His eyes were a little too close together”
Richard Lettis, Common Wealth (the Cowards)
“his eyes a little too close together”
Nigel Featherstone, Alternative Rock
“But his eyes, too close together, were not so nobly set”
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit
“a chin too long for any practical purpose, and eyes too close together”
Bernice Rubens, I Sent a Letter to my Love
“with dark close-cropped hair, and eyes too close together”
John Harvey, A Darker Shade of Blue

It's not that it's lazy writing, it is, but it's that it is impossible for human eyes to be too close together for very long. Not that narrators are bound by science and all things correct, but Dickens got it as close to right by resolving the issue as an un-noble trait rather just a set of floating abstraction. Nonsyndromic holoprosencephaly can compress the face and bring the eyes too close together, which impairs function, causes death quickly. In the case that the author is making a joke of the appearance of the trait, the context of the texts provide a certain amount of structured support, but little in the way of range or variance, and often not within the context of a jest, joke, or meaning--it's a simple way to paint a brow with features that falls flat for the reader as a haha second of text, excepting Dickens's case, where it's given judgement as not being a noble trait, then begging the question of what eyes are too wide apart and thus not noble? Or that the noble trait in Little Dorrit would clash with his project in Little Dorrit, but that Dickens wasn't a very heavy-handed author, that he gave the trait and its context as an apology to the nobles.

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