Summary

In “Last Words,” Didion explores in depth her stance on the posthumous publication of some of Hemingway’s finished and unfinished works. She first praises Hemingway’s distinctive writing style and the deliberateness of each sentence before lamenting the way in which his third wife published many of his letters and works against this express wishes. She finds the idea of such a deliberate and careful writer as Hemingway having his intimate thoughts, notes, and writings set before the public without his knowledge or control to be contrary to everything he would have approved of or stood for. This leads Didion to reflect on the nature of writing itself, stating that “The peculiarity of being a writer is that the entire enterprise involves the mortal humiliation of seeing one’s own words in print” (122). She notes that Hemingway fought with...