En 1998, Joan Didion wrote for New Yorker an article entitled “Last Words” (reprinted in the collection To be honest, Grasset, 2022), in which he spoke out against the posthumous publication of Ernest Hemingway’s unfinished texts and private letters.
Rely on will postmortem formulated by the author, it shows that his “desire to leave only those words which he deemed worthy of publication must have seemed quite clear”, a wish which was not respected by his widow and executor, Mary Welsh Hemingway.
“One of the most unique things about being a writer is that such an endeavor involves the mortal shame of seeing one’s own words printed in black and white,” Didion says before adding, succinctly…
