In this episode, One True Podcast takes on the white whale of Hemingway studies: the unpublished manuscript of The Garden of Eden.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...

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  In December 1922, Hemingway’s first wife Hadley, misplaced a suitcase filled with the young Hemingway’s unpublished writing.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 explore the unknowable, we turn to four novelists who each use this mysterious episode as the...

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 conclude that Catherine “dies because she is a woman.”   We go on to discuss Hemingway’s style, the...

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 narrative of Hemingway's vision of the sea. Throughout, Philbrick examines how Hemingway and Melville have...

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

Actor Mackenzie Astin joins us to discuss the 1996 movie In Love and War, the narrative of Hemingway’s wounding in World War I and subsequent romance with nurse Agnes Von Kurowsky.  Directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Chris O’Donnell, Sandra Bullock, Emilio Bonucci, as well as Astin, this war epic depicts the upheaval that World War I created in the life of the teenaged Hemingway and others.  Astin discusses Attenborough’s benevolent presence on the set, the performance of the...

Ernest Hemingway’s Red Cross experience in Italy during World War I was short, but it changed the course of his life and his writing. From being wounding in July 1918 to the abrupt end to his relationship with nurse Agnes Von Kurowsky, Hemingway would revisit those traumas for the rest of his life and write about them for his entire career. This pair of tumultuous experiences led to a fascinating book – Hemingway in Love and War – co-written by Hemingway’s hospital roommate Henry Serrano...

One True Podcast continues our exploration of the always complicated world of Hemingway’s volatile “friendships” with an episode devoted to Gertrude Stein. We turn to scholar Barbara Will who discusses the things Miss Stein instructed Hemingway about, both personally and professionally. We cover Stein’s background and education, her depiction in A Moveable Feast, her role in Modernism, her politics during World War I and World War II, the way things ended between her and Hemingway, and some...

Jay McInerney, (bestselling author of Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, How It Ended, and most recently Bright, Precious Days) shares his one true sentence from Hemingway's story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."

John Hemingway - grandson of Ernest and son of Gregory -- shares his remarkable story with us. We explore John's important book, Strange Tribe: A Family Memoir, his revealing and unsparing account of his life as a Hemingway. We cover Ernest's volatile relationship with John's father, a history that includes affection and intimate understanding, but also correspondence filled with recriminations. Our discussion of the Ernest-Gregory relationship leads to an illuminating examination of fathers...

Is “Hills Like White Elephants” Hemingway’s greatest short story ever, or only his most famous?   Bolstering the case for “Hills Like White Elephants” as the G.O.A.T., esteemed scholar Russ Pottle joins us to explain the story’s composition, imagery, historical and biographical contexts, and unforgettable dialogue. Pottle helps us read between the lines in the ways Hemingway characterizes Jig and the American through their dialogue and their silence, and through their actions. We figure out...

Ilan Stavans, publisher of Restless Books and author of numerous works including Quixote and What is American Literature?, shares his one true sentence from Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.

For an episode devoted to Hadley Richardson, we are proud to welcome Gioia Diliberto, esteemed writer and author of many books, including Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway’s First Wife. We explore Hadley’s difficult childhood, her time in Paris with Hemingway, the dissolution of their marriage, the loss of Hemingway’s manuscripts, the famous “100-day separation” pact, and the rest of their legendary relationship. Diliberto discusses the revelations of the Sokoloff tapes,...

The great Italian scholar Martina Mastandrea discusses “In Another Country,” one of Hemingway’s finest short stories.  After Mastandrea treats us to an Italian rendition of the famous opening paragraph, we explore the many treasures of the story: Why did F. Scott Fitzgerald admire the first sentence of the story so much? Is this a Nick Adams story? What does it tell us about Hemingway's perspective on war? What's the difference between our protagonist and the hunting hawks? Why is the major...

Naomi Wood, author of Mrs. Hemingway, shares her one true sentence from a letter Hemingway wrote to friends Gerald and Sara Murphy after the death of their son, Baoth, in 1935. 

Happy New Year from One True Podcast!  We usher in 2023 with our new year's tradition of wondering what Ernest Hemingway was doing one hundred years ago. In 1923, what was Hemingway writing? Where did he live? Who were his friends and enemies? How was his marriage going?  And what was on the horizon? To answer these questions, we turn to his biographer, James M. Hutchisson, emeritus professor at The Citadel and author of Ernest Hemingway: A New Life. Hutchisson describes Hemingway’s...

We welcome back Suzanne del Gizzo to ring in the season with a discussion of “The Christmas Gift,” Hemingway’s account of his 1954 plane crashes in East Africa. Del Gizzo, editor of The Hemingway Review and widely published scholar, guides us through this extraordinary piece originally written for Look magazine, its role in Hemingway’s self-mythologizing, its examination of his near-death experience, its representation of Mary, and how the article both reveals and obscures what actually...

Michael Mewshaw, author of numerous novels and nonfiction works (including Year of the Gun, The Lost Prince, and the forthcoming My Man in Antibes: Getting to Know Graham Greene) shares his one true sentence from Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.

We are joined by legendary scholar Jackson Bryer, who explains the origins and implications of a notorious concept: the Hemingway code.   When the code was introduced in the 1950s by influential scholar Philip Young, what did he intend it to mean? What is a "code hero"? What is a "Hemingway hero"? What did Hemingway mean by “grace under pressure”? Bryer helps us explore the impact and legacy of the code, its relevance today and its limitations, ultimately suggesting how it might enrich our...

We welcome prolific scholar Don Daiker to help us celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Nick Adams Stories. We discuss the volume’s impact and legacy, Philip Young’s controversial editorial decisions, the sequencing, and the characterization of Nick himself, in all of his various phases. Which stories does Daiker consider underrated? Is Dr. Adams unjustly criticized as cold and unloving? What is the role of “The Last Good Country,” the longest story in the volume? Is...

Joshua Ferris, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for his novel Then We Came to the End, joins us to discuss his one true sentence from The Sun Also Rises. Anthony Plog on MusicConversations with performers, composers, and entrepreneurs.Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

One hundred years ago, in September 1922, Turkish forces torched the port city of Smyrna in a hellish episode towards the end of the Greco-Turkish War. The ensuing evacuation, with its chaos and grisly violence, inspired Hemingway’s journalism as well as his short fiction. Hemingway’s most enduring effort to capture this atrocity is "On the Quai at Smyrna," which would become the first story in his collection In Our Time. This masterpiece of irony with its memorable narrative voice has...