The Spanish Civil War was a brutal and maddeningly complex historical event, with enormous repercussions on Ernest Hemingway’s life and career. To guide us through the many moving parts and frayed relationships, we welcome back Amanda Vaill to One True Podcast. Vaill’s essential book, Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War, guides us through the events of the war, including the private adventures of Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, John Dos Passos, Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, ...

Julie Schumacher, author of The Dear Committee Trilogy (Dear Committee Members, The Shakespeare Requirement , and The English Experience), shares her one true sentence from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. As Schumacher explores, Hemingway's short, terse writing often leads to some "long, meandering, winding roads of sentences" like the one she's chosen for this episode. In addition, she raises intriguing questions about how Hemingway drafted the sentence, examines what makes certain character...

Welcome to the sixth of our eighteen shows celebrating the centenary of the Paris edition of Hemingway’s book of vignettes, in our time.The scene depicts the execution of six Greek officials toward the end of 1922. In this episode, we discuss the history of that trial and execution, the journalistic coverage of events, and Hemingway's fictional treatment of the execution. We also relate this vignette to other works, such as A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and even Tintorett...

Welcome to the fifth of our eighteen shows celebrating the centenary of the Paris edition of Hemingway’s book of vignettes, in our time. This scene of a barricade and a retreat continues Hemingway's brilliant depictions of Battle of Mons. In this episode, we explore some historical aspects of that retreat, compare the narrative voice and point of view to chapter four, and much more. As always, we examine how these first five vignettes are cohering into a larger project. Join us as we...

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, we invite Prof. Ahmed Honeini of Royal Holloway, University of London, to the program. Honeini...

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 us through the complicated relationship between Hemingway and Dos Passos, what ended it, and how...

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 of the battle, Hemingway's friendship with the British soldier Eric Edward “Chink” Dorman-Smith, and the...

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 intersects with his biographical experiences, his journalism, and how the first three vignettes are...

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 contributors, who places Hemingway in a conversation with other American modernists including...

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 depicting it. Just two chapters into this year-long read of in our time, patterns are beginning to...

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 experimentation, his challenging style, and his attitude about war as a young man. As Hemingway writes,...

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 poetry. According to Kale, Hemingway wasn’t quite Hemingway yet, but he was right on the cusp. We...

‘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, old favorite Chink Dorman-Smith, and Hemingway’s early writing style. She unpacks the curious...

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 Generations in Publishing, which describes the history of the publishing house, including its...

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 for this character, and the way Rinaldi, a man of science and sensualism, represents one of the...

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 tale. We discuss how Hemingway captures the American landscape, the father-son relationship, where...

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 pressure.” Over the course of the interview, we apply the model of “grace under pressure” to...

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 learned about the manuscript through more than thirty years of studying it and many, many hours in...

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 most famous passage from A Farewell to Arms. Next, Lauren Arrington, author of The Poets of...