Hemingway’s expression has always had broad appeal. It anticipated some aspects of the theory of complex systems, popularized as the tipping point. Remember when we once thought that MySpace, beneficiary of a network effect halfway through, seemed untouchable? It lost ground to Facebook, gradually and then suddenly. (Maybe Mark Zuckerberg should think twice before making personal connections on Facebook a priority in his pursuit of TikTok, creating an opportunity for a competitor to tackle the company’s original focus on friends and family.)
But I believe there’s a stronger reason for the term’s current ubiquity, and that’s the environmental fear associated with the sense that civilization is falling apart. Look at some recent quotes:
- Financial Overview† in an article about a possible civil war in the US: “America’s Democratic regression is like Ernest Hemingway’s famous comment about going bankrupt…”
- Bloomberg Opinion, who published the post-roe landscape: “Democracy is a lot like Ernest Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy.”
- the statesmanon the decline of global democracy: “What Ernest Hemingway said about financial bankruptcy applies equally to political bankruptcy.”
Mike Campbell’s cheerful remark also applies to the climate crisis, another arena where years of warning signs have finally seeded into real danger. It’s almost hard to find a climate report that not start with the unlucky Mike describing his fall from solvency.
Yes, Hemingway’s quote has always been available to pundits and social critics. But while our glaciers and our democracy, after years of gradual decline, suddenly seem to be crumbling, a throw-away line in a 96-year-old book has become our emblem, tattooed on the tips of our tongues. First gradually, now suddenly.
time travel
In June 1983, I wrote about some early attempts at writing fiction online in my column, Telecomputing, for which I wrote Popular computers† (Yes, I was talking about that rhythm during Reagan’s first term.) Of course, I dug up Hemingway as an example and parodied the master in my introduction to a column that now reads like archaeology.
Ernesto has logged into the service. Waiting for the prompt, he took a deep sip of the wine. The wine was from the Valdepeñas, and it was good. The prompt was now on the video screen. Ernesto started writing. He knew how men should write: you log in to the information service, you stand behind the keyboard, you have a bottle of wine by your side and you run your modem at 1200 bits per second. It went smooth for a while, then it wasn’t smooth. Ernesto knew not to let it come if it didn’t come. He decided to see what the others were up to. He had access to Scotty’s new novel. Then he got access to a rough draft of a story Dos had put online to let them know they’d written well, but not as well as Ernesto’s. Then this came up on the screen: “PAPA-540 – WANT TO CHAT?” Ernesto cursed softly to himself. And he logged out.
