One True Podcast

The two great titans of twentieth-century American literature – Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner – never met. They corresponded only a time or two; however, they were always on each other’s minds. Their hyper-awareness of the other’s recent work led sometimes to envy, sometimes to awe, and frequently to catty comments. To help us learn more about these two men and their fraught relationship,...

This episode will focus on the Spanish Civil War and how one particular incident – the murder of accused Fascist spy José Robles – ruptured the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos. To sort out the many moving parts to this chapter of Hemingway’s life, we welcome Stephen Koch, the author of The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of José Robles . Koch takes u...

Welcome to the fourth of our eighteen shows celebrating the centenary of the Paris edition of Hemingway’s book of vignettes, in our time . At 75 words, this short scene describes the Battle of Mons. To Ezra Pound, Hemingway would refer to this conflict (from August 1914 at the very beginning of the First World War) as "clear and noble." In this episode, we discuss the historical aspects...

Welcome to the third of our eighteen shows celebrating the centenary of the Paris edition of Hemingway’s book of vignettes, in our time . In this scene, Hemingway describes the minarets rising over the landscape overlooking the harrowing evacuation at the Greco-Turkish War in 1922. Hemingway distills the vast scope of inhumanity into the expression of one scared child. We discuss how this scene in...

American modernism is a concept that is so slippery that even scholars don’t always agree on its definition. Is it a historical era, or a literary technique? Was Ernest Hemingway even a modernist? If so, which of his works are most modernistic? For this discussion, we turn to Mark Whalan, editor of the compendious new volume, Cambridge History of American Modernism , and Karen Leick, one of its co...

Mark Kurlansky, the author of dozens of books of fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature (including Cod , Salt , and The Importance of Not Being Ernest ), shares his one true sentence from Hemingway's story "In Another Country."

Welcome to the second of our eighteen shows celebrating the centenary of the Paris edition of Hemingway’s book of vignettes, in our time . In this scene, Hemingway puts us into a chaotic bullfighting scene, with gorings, hooting crowds, and a kid who tries to save the day. We discuss how this early sketch prefigures Hemingway’s career-long fascination with the bullfight and the problem of depictin...

One True Podcast reads in our time ! Welcome to the first of our eighteen shows celebrating the centenary of Hemingway’s book of vignettes. Starting with the unforgettable opening salvo -- “Everybody was drunk” -- chapter one describes a kitchen corporal in a chaotic battery on the way to the Champagne during World War I.  We explore these 112 words and what they reveal about Hemingway’s experimen...

What was Ernest Hemingway doing in 1924? Where was he? What were his important relationships? What were his challenges? What was he writing?  The excellent Verna Kale  -- Hemingway biographer and Associate Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project -- joins us to trace Hemingway’s experiences one hundred years ago, walking us through his biography, his letters, his finances, and even some of his poet...

‘Tis the season! And it wouldn’t be the holiday season without welcoming Suzanne del Gizzo to discuss a seasonally appropriate Hemingway work. In this episode, we examine “A North of Italy of Christmas,” a raucous article he wrote for the Toronto Daily Star one hundred years ago. Del Gizzo – the celebrated editor of The Hemingway Review -- discusses the absurd humor in the piece, all the mistletoe...

Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, author of the short story collection The Smallest of Entryways and Ernest's Way: An International Journey Through Hemingway's Life , shares her one true sentence from her great-grandfather's story "Big Two-Hearted River."

The longest and most mutually beneficial relationship of Ernest Hemingway’s life was with the Charles Scribner's Sons publishing house, a partnership that continues to the present day. Charles Scribner III joins the show to discuss his family’s legacy in publishing, the storied history of Scribner, and Hemingway’s history with the company. We discuss Scribner III’s new book, Scribners: Five G...

Tim O'Brien, the author of The Things They Carried , Dad's Maybe Book , and America Fantastica , shares his one true sentence from The Sun Also Rises . Toward the end of the episode, we also reflect on Tim's riveting speech at Dominican University during the 2016 Hemingway Society conference in Oak Park, Illinois.

Join us for a special episode devoted to Lieutenant Rinaldo Rinaldi from A Farewell to Arms ! On this episode, scholar Michael Kim Roos (co-author of the essential Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms) explores the many dimensions of this beloved character. We discuss Rinaldi’s role as Frederic Henry’s best friend, his development over the course of the novel, Hemingway’s historical inspiration...

Have you ever read “The Porter”? In this episode, we take you to a seldom-visited corner of Hemingway’s short story catalogue to discuss this fascinating outtake from his discarded novel about a father-son train trip across the United States into Canada. For guidance over this unfamiliar terrain, we turn to the great Ian Marshall, who explains the racial, class, and historical elements of this tal...

Hemingway coined the phrase “grace under pressure” in a 1926 letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Since then, the phrase has been repeated like a mantra to describe Hemingway’s attitude toward life and death, his definition of courage, and is regularly used as a lens through which to view his fiction. On this episode, scholar David Wyatt joins us to discuss the significance and legacy of “grace under pr...

Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River  and  Small Mercies , shares his one true sentence from  A Moveable Feast .

In this episode, One True Podcast takes on the white whale of Hemingway studies: the unpublished manuscript of The Garden of Eden . Although the published version we know may be shocking, the sprawling manuscript reveals even more dimensions of this challenging text and the many complexities of its author. For this discussion, we turn to Hemingway Society President Carl Eby, who shares what he’s l...

Oscar Hokeah, winner of the 2023 PEN/Hemingway Award for  Calling for a Blanket Dance , shares his one true sentence from  The Old Man and the Sea .

We take a look at Hemingway’s intersection with Italian Fascism by examining two of its most volatile figures, Gabriele D’Annunzio and Ezra Pound. In this episode, we talk to Lucy Hughes-Hallett, D’Annunzio’s award-winning biographer, who discusses this notorious firebrand’s military career, love affairs, and artistic legacy. Hughes-Hallett also suggests D’Annunzio’s unspoken role in Hemingway’s m...

For our 100th episode, One True Podcast investigates the legend of the lost manuscripts!  In December 1922, Hemingway’s first wife Hadley, misplaced a suitcase filled with the young Hemingway’s unpublished writing. Since then, this episode has invited intense speculation: Was this early work stolen? Did it end up in the garbage? Did Hadley subconsciously want the work to be stolen? In order to exp...

Robert Pinsky, U.S. Poet Laureate from 1997 to 2000 and author of The Figured Wheel and Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet (among other highly acclaimed works), shares his one true sentence from Hemingway's Paris Review interview.

The legendary feminist critic Judith Fetterley joins us to discuss her brilliant and incendiary work on A Farewell to Arms , a piece from 1978 that has endured as one of the definitive feminist critiques of Hemingway.  Prof. Fetterley discusses protagonist Frederic Henry’s self-pity and self-absorption, Catherine’s obsequiousness, and Hemingway’s design of the novel that leads Fetterley to conclud...

We head into the heart of the sea with award-winning historian Nathaniel Philbrick to discuss Hemingway, Melville, and where these American writers share a vision and where they part.  Philbrick discusses  The Old Man and the Sea  and  Moby-Dick  as American classics that overlap and speak to each other across the years. He also covers the short story "After the Storm" as an essential na...

Kerri Maher, author of The Paris Bookseller , shares her one true sentence from Hemingway's A Moveable Feast .