SOURCE: Oldsey, Bernard. “Papa's Private World.” Nation 232, no. 18 (9 May 1981): 575-77.

In the following review, Oldsey contends that Hemingway's selected letters provide valuable insight into his life and work.

A dying writer in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” realizes that he “had sold vitality, in one form or another, all of his life.” The author of that story seems capable of doing the same thing even after life. Ernest Hemingway's career has been extended by a string of posthumous publications, including A Moveable Feast, By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream and The Nick Adams Stories. Now, twenty years after his suicide, his literary executors have seen fit to publish Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961.

It is extremely doubtful that Hemingway would have approved this last publication. After what he considered bad experiences with Lillian Ross (whose profile on him appeared in The New Yorker) and Malcolm Cowley (whose “Portrait...