“It’s nothing”

Passing thought on Hemingway, relativity

Hemingway wrote frequently of moments of unimportance.

The littlest things. The alcohol that helps a boxer fall asleep. The water that he adds to a drink. The conversation that drifts into nothing.

And he wouldn’t employ the symbolic details so often found in contemporary literature — say, the missing button of a military jacket, the wilting flower on the western side of the house. Hemingway wrote of inconsequential parts of the setting. Seemingly pointless dialogue. Meandering plot points.

“It’s nothing,” his characters will often intone. “It’s nothing.”

What is he saying, when a character says it’s nothing? When he writes about nothing? Is it nothing? Is it something? Are the normal generalizations of life more telling than a glorious moment of truth? Are they any more or less profound?

I think they’re equal. I think they’re the same. We’re so attuned to thinking that everything is always relative. But maybe it’s not.

Maybe it’s all the same.