Where’s Papa

Abstract

Not long before he died, Ernest Hemingway wrote to one of his literary executors, “It is my wish that none of the letters written by me during my lifetime shall be published. Accordingly, I hereby request and direct you not to publish or consent to the publication by others, of any such letters.” That should have been enough to stay the hand of those biographers and publishers avid, like fight promoters, to get one last payday out of the ex-champ, no matter what the cost. Mary Hemingway, to her credit, held out against Carlos Baker and the Scribner Hemingway industry for eighteen years after her husband’s death in 1961, only to cave in at last and authorize publication of a book that is both dishonorable and damaging. The dishonor lies in the violation of Hemingway’s wishes in the name of some higher claim, some fanciful version of the advancement of learning that Baker calls “the continuing investigation of the life and achievements of one of the giants of twentieth-century literature.” Yet to read these letters is to appreciate why Hemingway wanted them kept out of the marketplace, for they place on view in the most vivid fashion all that was most unsavory in the man’s private character.