The Words obliquely poses the question, what would have happened if someone had found the suitcase full of Papa Hem’s manuscripts that Hadley lost at the Gare de Lyon, and published the con-tent as his own work?

Unfortunately, the answer is: not much. The problem, or one of them, is that the movie establishes too long a period of time between the loss of the manuscript — shortly after the end of WWI — and its publishing — presumably, the then-present day.

As we all know, Hemingway eventually got over the incident and went on to become arguably the greatest author of the 20th century, esse... lees de rest.