SOURCE: Balitas, Vincent D. Review of Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961, by Carlos Baker. America 144, no. 20 (23 May 1981): 430.

In the following favorable review of Selected Letters, Balitas asserts that Baker “has provided us the opportunity to learn a bit more about the man and his art.”

His reputation is lower now than at any time in the past, but Ernest Hemingway nevertheless retains his appeal for a wide variety of readers. Perhaps that appeal has more to do with the legend he worked so hard to create than it does with the work itself, but few can doubt that his contributions to the art of fiction were once of major importance. The fact that few contemporary writers are directly influenced by Hemingway's fiction, or that not many young readers seem to care about Jake Barnes and the other characters once so familiar, does not mean that Hemingway's place in...