SOURCE: Burgess, Anthony. “Opening Hemingway's Mail.” Saturday Review 8, no. 4 (April 1981): 64-65.

In the following positive review of Hemingway's selected letters, Burgess praises Baker's fine editing job of the volume.

As one who earns his precarious living by writing, I find the writing of letters—even necessary ones like rebuttals of accusations of libel or plagiarism—a source of chagrin and even guilt, since being a letter-writer gets in the way of being a man of letters. Some authors manage to fuse the opposed claims of letters and letters by practicing what is termed the epistolary art, anticipating the posthumous publication of their collected mail and royalties for their relicts. This entails showing a private face in a public place, which is not what letter-writing ought to be like. Auden wrote a sonnet about a literary man who answered “some of his long marvellous letters but kept none.” That...