What better way to usher in the autumn than to discuss “The Three-Day Blow,” Hemingway’s curious story from In Our Time? It is a simple tale of a couple of kids getting drunk, talking baseball and literature, but there is simmering Hemingwayesque tension beneath the surface. 

Don guides us through all the elements of this story, including Bill’s function as a character, the absent presence of both Bill’s father and Marjorie, and Hemingway’s description of the Michigan setting. We also explore the story’s role as a sequel to “The End of Something.”

Enjoy this seasonally appropriate episode with a drink that keeps you warm, but remember: no opening up any new bottles.

Thanks as always for supporting One True Podcast! To help us keep the lights on and send a little something our way through the One True Podcast Fund.

Don Daiker has joined us previously to discuss The Nick Adams Stories. As well, please enjoy Lisa Tyler’s episode on the prequel to this story, “The End of Something."

The conversation spans Blume's research process, Hemingway's charisma, the role of F. Scott Fitzgerald in brokering Hemingway's career, the mythological dimensions of Lady Brett Ashley, and the iconic photo on the cover of Blume's book. Throughout this wide-ranging conversation, we also discuss A Moveable Feast, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, and Blume's forthcoming book A Devil's Bargain, which examines the Manson murders. 

As with the rest of our episodes on The Sun Also Rises, we have supplemented our conversation with an excerpt from the audio book of The Sun Also Rises, performed by William Hurt. Thanks to Simon and Schuster for their partnership.

Thank you for listening to One True Podcast! Consider donating to the Hemingway Society, including to the recently created One True Podcast Fund or the Hemingway Café Club!

Join us as we learn from Larry’s years of bullfighting fandom, his decades of living in Spain, running with the bulls, and working with Hemingway’s great masterpiece. Nobody ever lives their life all the way up, except for Larry Belcher.  

This episode is the sixth episode One True Podcast has dedicated to the centenary of The Sun  Also Rises this year. As with the rest of the episodes, we have supplemented our conversation with Larry Belcher with an excerpt from chapter 18 of the audio book of The Sun Also Rises, performed by William Hurt. Thanks to Simon and Schuster for their partnership.

So go grab your leather wine-bottles and enjoy the episode! 

In this episode, Evans reflects on learning to value the work itself before and after publication, especially following the unexpected success of her novel. She discusses writing intuitively, the challenges of shifting between multiple letter-writers’ voices, and braiding many plot strands tightly back to Sybil at the story’s center. In addition, Evans recounts winning the PEN/Hemingway Award and her plan to read all of Hemingway in her fortieth year.

Thank you for listening to One True Podcast! Consider donating to the Hemingway Society, including to the recently created One True Podcast Fund or the Hemingway Café Club!

Previous "one true sentences" are collected in: One True Sentence: Writers and Readers on Hemingway’s Art, available here.

This episode covers the final chapters of the novel. We discuss how Barbusse balances graphic, grotesque depictions of the dead with artistic restraint; we analyze anti-war themes throughout this section, including Corporal Bertrand's powerful speech; and we reflect on the "ray of light" symbolism at the end of the book.

Throughout the discussion, we connect our reading to other works by Hemingway: “Chapter X” of In Our Time [They whack-whacked the horse…], A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Men at War, “A Natural History of the Dead," and “Soldier’s Home.” We also draw connections to other non-Hemingway works, among them J’accuse (dir. Abel Gance), Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, Bob Dylan's “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Saving Private Ryan (dir. Steven Spielberg).

We are using the Penguin Classics edition with an Introduction written by Professor Jay Winter. In the second half of this episode, Winter kindly sits down with us to share his wisdom about this spectacular book!

Thank you for listening to One True Podcast! Consider donating to the Hemingway Society, including to the recently created One True Podcast Fund or the Hemingway Café Club!

In this episode, David Morrell, prolific author and creator of the iconic John Rambo character, offers his one true sentence from “In Another Country.” 

Morrell – author of First Blood, The Brotherhood of the Rose, and The Successful Novelist, among many others – joins us to discuss his life in writing and reading. We discuss the importance of first sentences, Hemingway’s grammar, Morrell’s friendship with the legendary Hemingway scholar Philip Young, good writing as hypnotic, the creation of Rambo as a character, John Barth, Carl Jung, and much more!

Thank you for listening to One True Podcast! Consider donating to the Hemingway Society, including to the recently created One True Podcast Fund or the Hemingway Café Club!

Previous "one true sentences" are collected in: One True Sentence: Writers and Readers on Hemingway’s Art, available here.

Although Hemingway may not be as celebrated as Faulkner, Joyce, Proust, and Woolf at depicting human consciousness, in this episode David Wyatt guides us through crucial moments in The Sun Also Rises to show Hemingway’s subtle power in dramatizing thought in action.

Wyatt takes us from Jake’s bedroom to his self-conscious prayer, to his drunken reading of Turgenev in bed, to the excitement of the bullring in order to reveal how the reader gains access to Jake’s interiority, making The Sun Also Rises a psychological novel in disguise. 

As with all of the The Sun Also Rises episodes this year, we enjoy the legendary actor William Hurt reading—in this episode, from Jake’s “I thought I had paid for everything” meditation in chapter 14, courtesy of our friends at Simon & Schuster Audio.

Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, read by William Hurt. Copyright © 1926 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Used with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Consider supporting One True Podcast here: https://members.hemingwaysociety.org/podcast

This episode covers chapters 10-19 of the novel. We discuss how Barbusse finds moments of unexpected humanity amidst the carnage of warfare and his subtle characterization of the platoon, including the narrator himself. We also cover his  metafictional “Swear Words” chapter, where Barbusse reflects on a Realist writer attempts to describe the indescribable.

We also connect this brutal novel to Hemingway’s writing, to other modernist works, to Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried… and even to The Shawshank Redemption. 

We are using the Penguin Classics edition with an Introduction written by future One True Podcast guest, Professor Jay Winter.

Cooke explores these writers' shared temperament and celebrates their work as a forerunner to New Journalism. Throughout our interview, we learn about Gellhorn: her life before Hemingway entered the scene (in a letter, she would describe her younger self as "starry and restless”), her short-lived relationship with Hemingway, and her later years in which she adopted a son and experienced a rather complicated motherhood. Cooke also immerses us in Gellhorn's writing, focusing on how her war journalism weaves together harrowing scenes with humanizing details and how her witnessing of Dachau toward the end of WWII was truly transformative.

This episode covers the first nine chapters of Under Fire, where we discuss why Hemingway damned this novel with such faint praise in his Men at War anthology, how the episodic structure might remind readers of a contemporary work like The Things They Carried, the absence of instantly recognizable characters, and – controversially – whether there’s more rain in this novel or in A Farewell to Arms. One True Podcast is never one to shy away from the divisive topics.

We hope you’ll join us in this summer’s long-overdue read of Under Fire. We are using the Penguin Classics edition with an Introduction written by future One True Podcast guest, Professor Jay Winter.

One True Podcast welcomes Alex Vernon for an interview recorded live in front of a captive audience of students, faculty, and community members in Evansville, Indiana, as he discusses his magnificent new biography of Tim O’Brien, Peace Is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O’Brien.

Vernon explains his process of how to write a true biography, O’Brien’s life and relationship to the Vietnam War, what distinguishes O’Brien’s style as a writer, the enduring power of some of his greatest work, and much more. It is a generous, penetrating Q&A session with the world’s preeminent O’Brien scholar.

Vernon – who has previously joined One True Podcast for a discussion of Hemingway and War, as well as an episode devoted to “Soldier’s Home” – lends his essential perspective to this essential contemporary writer.

** Special thanks to the UE students for their insightful questions at the end, and to the wizardry of sound designer Jon Robertson for his assistance. **

Episode Bibliography

Tim O’Brien works mentioned:

• Going After Cacciato
• If I Die in a Combat Zone
• In the Lake of the Woods
• The Things They Carried

Other works mentioned:

• Five-volume biography of Hemingway by Michael Reynolds (The Young Hemingway, Hemingway: The Paris Years, Hemingway: The Homecoming, Hemingway: The 1930s, Hemingway: The Final Years)

From the title, the epigraphs, the pilgrims on the train, Jake’s self-conscious prayer, the festival of San Fermín, and the idea of fishing as a religious experience, Larry Grimes guides us through this vast topic and shows Hemingway’s religious design in The Sun Also Rises. Grimes also discusses the minor roles of Harris and Montoya and explains why Jake is such a rotten Catholic.

Listening to Larry Grimes talk about such a crucial topic in this great novel is our idea of a divine pleasure. We hope you’ll enjoy it, too!

Also, in these Sun Also Rises episodes, we enjoy the legendary actor William Hurt reading from Jake’s fascinating prayer in chapter 10, courtesy of our friends at Simon & Schuster Audio.

Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, read by William Hurt. Copyright © 1926 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Used with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Thank you for supporting One True Podcast, from Mark and Michael (each with a hell of a Biblical name!)

We discuss the publication history of this graceless insult, what it says about Hemingway and what it says about Fitzgerald. We go on to discuss “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” as a story and the ways that wealth emerges as one of Fitzgerald’s central themes. We explore the nature of the Hemingway-Fitzgerald relationship in the 1930s, Fitzgerald’s “The Rich Boy,” and other works where the very rich emerge as important characters.

Join us in our romantic awe of Jackson Bryer as he guides us through this notorious moment in Hemingway’s career! 

Elena Zolotariov, author of "'Black and Red Laughter': Subverting Whiteness in Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring" (from the Fall 2023 issue of the Hemingway Review), joins us to offer an exploration and even defense of Hemingway's neglected satire. In this episode, we talk about how and why Hemingway satirizes Sherwood Anderson's Dark Laughter, examine the plot of Hemingway's novella and the characters we meet along the way, and finally discuss its legacy.

At the end of the episode, enjoy Garnet Ungar's rendition of Chopin's Étude Op. 10, No. 4 (Torrent). For even more on The Torrents of Spring and its publication history, also check out our episode with Ross K. Tangedal on Hemingway in 1926.

We welcome the scholar Jeremy Kaye of Moorpark College for a discussion about this incendiary theme, the difference between Hemingway’s anti-Semitism and his characters, Cohn’s Jewish masculinity, his function as a scapegoat, the historical inspiration for Cohn, and much more. Even those who count The Sun Also Rises as their favorite novel admit to cringing at the hateful anti-Semitic slurs uttered by the characters. Enjoy Jeremy Kaye’s spirited defense of Robert Cohn and his "main-character energy"! 

As always in these Sun Also Rises episodes, we enjoy the legendary actor William Hurt reading a memorable scene featuring Cohn, courtesy of our friends at Simon & Schuster Audio.

Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, read by William Hurt. Copyright © 1926 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Used with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Wade describes her access to new Stein archives that afforded her a fresh look on the enigmatic writer, the difference between Stein's legend and her life, the particular value of her various publications, and what she was ultimately trying to capture with her singular writing style. Wade also explores Stein’s “afterlife,” the controversial legacy that her writings and persona have left us.

We also discuss the fraught Hemingway-Stein relationship, that cryptic passage in A Moveable Feast, and what each might have meant to the other.

Join us for a new consideration of one of Hemingway’s oldest friendships and rivalries! 

He’s an epicurean and an entrepreneur; he’s battle-tested, arrow-wounded, champagne-enjoying, no-dancing, business-tripping, generous-tipping... and he’s always in love. We discuss his role in the novel, his relationship with Brett and Jake, Hemingway’s original plan for him in the manuscript, and how he emerges as such a resonant figure.

Make sure to listen for a snippet of Leonard Nimoy as the Count in the polarizing 1984 mini-series, where he says things that he doesn’t say in the novel. As always, we enjoy the legendary actor William Hurt reading a pivotal scene involving the Count, courtesy of our friends at Simon & Schuster Audio.

If you’re quite one of us, you will love this exploration of Hemingway’s great novel and this indelible, magnificently alive secondary character.

Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, read by William Hurt. Copyright © 1926 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Used with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 

Although Hemingway and Steinbeck are not discussed comparatively as frequently as some of his other fellow literary titans, Prof. Shillinglaw talks about Steinbeck’s life, career, and temperament in ways that will inspire us to remap the overlaps between these two men. We explore Steinbeck’s fondness for “The Butterfly and the Tank,” Hemingway and Steinbeck’s different paths during the 1930s, the way The Red Pony’s Jody Tiflin functions as a Nick Adams-like character, and much more. 

Make sure to tune in to the very end of the episode! In honor of Steinbeck, our friend Michael Kim Roos treats us to a version of Woody Guthrie’s “Tom Joad.” For more information about Mike’s music, see: https://mikeroos.com. 

In this episode, we explore how the book was actually written—from a sloppy first draft to a modernist masterpiece. What will tracing this composition history tells us about the evolution of The Sun Also Rises and Hemingway’s own development as a writer?

To help us explore this topic, Carl Eby joins us once again! Eby is the former President of the Hemingway Society and has focused much of his research on Hemingway's posthumous work. He has joined us previously for episodes on Islands in the Stream and The Garden of Eden, and he also inaugurated our One True Sentence series with One True Sentence #1, a discussion of Hemingway's "Paris 1922" sketches.

Thanks to the support of Simon & Schuster, this episode also includes an audio portion from William Hurt's narration of The Sun Also Rises. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, read by William Hurt. Copyright © 1926 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Used with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

To walk us through this bizarre tale, we call on excellent Hemingway scholar and actual citizen of Switzerland, Boris Vejdovksy, professor at the University of Lausanne. Vejdovksy explains the story’s structure, its setting, its Modernist qualities, the way the iceberg principle functions in the story, and even its “Swiss-ness.”

Join us as we explore this fascinating triptych!

In our first show of the year, we ask an esteemed guest to take us back exactly one hundred years to see what was happening in Hemingway’s life, work, and world. So, to guide us through Hemingway’s 1926 -- his travels, his relationships, his publishing, and his writing – we welcome the great Hemingway scholar Ross K. Tangedal. 

For Hemingway, 1926 was a colossally important year that saw his transition from Hadley to his second wife, Pauline; the transition from Boni & Liveright to Scribner’s; and the publication of The Torrents of Spring and The Sun Also Rises, both crucially important for different reasons. Tangedal guides us through this remarkable year in Hemingway’s life and his writing. 

We have previously begun calendar years with flashback episodes featuring: Mary Dearborn on 1922; James M. Hutchisson on 1923; Verna Kale on 1924; and J. Gerald Kennedy on 1925. We encourage you to check out those past shows to get up to date!

As our gift back to you, we close 2025 in our favorite of ways: we welcome Suzanne del Gizzo onto the show to discuss a season-appropriate piece of Hemingway’s work. This year, we discuss “Christmas in Paris,” Hemingway’s poignant, melancholy sketch describing a young couple away from home for the holidays.

Before we welcome in Suzanne, old friend Mackenzie Astin narrates Hemingway’s “Christmas in Paris” to put us in the spirit. Make sure you keep listening after the episode to be treated to a rendition of “Noël à Paris,” performed by Bill Hemminger (piano) and Melody Winfrey (vocals).

Wishing you all happiness over the holidays, and we’ll see you on the other side.

Scholar (and podcaster) Scott Yarbrough visits us from Charleston to lead us through the many elements of this great story: Dr. Adams’s quarrel with Dick Boulton, the doctor’s icy relationship with his wife, and finally his moment of connection with his son. Along the way, we touch on the ethics of log stealing, the implications of Christian Scientism, Hemingway’s captivating early prose style, Nick’s role in the narrative, and whether or not this story qualifies as one of Hemingway’s “greatest hits.”

Join us for a trip into the Michigan woods and a guided tour through “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife.” We know where there’s black squirrels!

Clearly, in a topic so vast, devoted to the two leading titans of 20th-century American literature, one puny, inexhaustible episode was not enough. So, Ahmed Honeini agreed to come back onto One True Podcast to continue our pursuit of Hemingway and his contemporaries. We discuss Faulkner’s great works, how his concept of mortality compares with Hemingway’s, the inadequacy of language, Hemingway’s iceberg theory, and Ahmed’s favorite moment in all of Faulkner.

Join us for this wonderful conversation with the Founder of the Faulkner Studies in the UK Research Network! 

Fitzgerald scholar William Blazek visits us from his post at Liverpool Hope University to discuss the novel’s legacy, its glorious language, and its ambiguous themes; Gatsby as a complex and misunderstood character; how Gatsby would have struck the young Hemingway; and so many other aspects of this magnificent work.

Like Nick Carraway just remembering he is turning thirty, One True Podcast hopes it isn’t too late to join the roaring celebration of Gatsby at 100!

Thanks as always for supporting One True Podcast!

Join us for our favorite Hemingway parlor game as this excellent novelist chooses his favorite sentence from everything Hemingway ever wrote. We discuss writing about addiction and recovery, Hemingway’s use of dialogue, the way The Sun Also Rises serves as a textbook guide for writing novels, and much more.

Don’t forget to submit your nomination for One True Book Club 2026! Submit your choice for a book that is not by Hemingway but is Hemingway-relevant to 1truepod@gmail.com.

Thank you for your continued support of One True Podcast!

Although Hemingway’s correspondence from 1957-1961 won’t be officially published for another couple of decades, the co-editors of the last volume of the Hemingway letters – J. Gerald Kennedy and Michael Von Cannon – along with their advisory editor, Valerie Hemingway, share insights about their work that covers Hemingway’s final days.

We learn what was occupying Hemingway’s mind, his most frequent correspondents, the writing that consumed him, and how this last volume might reveal some of the health and psychological issues that plagued his later years. 

Join these three co-editors for an exclusive conversation on the volume we will eventually read, and their candid impressions of Hemingway’s last letters.

Greer Rising – Buck was his father’s godfather – and Eileen Martin join us to talk about Buck’s background, his military history, his literary aspirations, and of course his intimate relationship with Hemingway. They discuss the Hemingway-Lanham interactions, encounters, and correspondence to demonstrate the intensity of the relationship and just how consequential it was.

Join us as we learn more about the inspiration behind Colonel Cantwell in Across the River and into the Trees, the man whom Hemingway called “the finest and bravest and most intelligent and able regimental commander I have ever known.”

Thank you for supporting One True Podcast! 

For this discussion, we welcome Lavinia Greacen, the author of Chink: A Biography and, most recently, Military Maverick: Selected Letters and War Writing of “Chink” Dorman-Smith. We discuss Chink’s Irish background, his formidable military career, how he became Ernest and Hadley’s vacation companion, how his voice appears in Hemingway’s early war sketches, how he inspired the late novel Across the River and into the Trees, and much more. 

As a special gift to our listeners, we end the episode with some rare archival audio of Chink Dorman-Smith himself. We bet you will never read Chapter III of In Our Time the same way ever again.

We invited Sandra Spanier, General Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, to share her memories of Patrick, including his contributions to the Letters Project, her visits with him, and a poignant interview with Patrick that was conducted just a few months ago. Our episode closes with a soundbite from that June 2025 interview.

We hope you enjoy this immediate reaction to the sad news of Patrick’s passing.

We welcome Lisa Tyler to discuss the story, its setting, cast of characters, and curiously inexact title. We examine how the story serves as a prequel to "The Three-Day Blow," (while also pointing out many differences between the two texts), discuss the emotional and psychological damage suggested by Nick's line "everything was gone to hell inside of me," and figure out Bill's role in this break-up tale. 

Lisa Tyler, esteemed Hemingway scholar and editor of Wharton Hemingway, and the Advent of Modernism, makes the convincing claim that Marjorie emerges from this story as one of the most remarkable female characters in Hemingway’s entire canon.

Join us for this discussion of a Hemingway classic! 

This final episode covers chapter 21 to the end. We examine how Hudson resolves the domestic plot, the travel plot, and the confrontation with the diabolical Don Hilario. We debate whether The Purple Land’s climax is or is not even climactic.

Then, we call in scholar Ilan Stavans, former OTP guest and editor of the U of Wisconsin Press edition of The Purple Land. Stavans ties up some of our loose ends and provides a broader historical and aesthetic context for Hudson’s project.

We hope you’ll enjoy this third episode on this fascinating and problematic novel. If you have a nomination for our 2026 One True Book Club selection (it must be Hemingway-relevant, but not by Hemingway), please email us at 1truepod@gmail.com.

Thank you as always for your support of One True Podcast!

Ernest Hemingway was one of the most famous cat lovers in all of American literature, so we celebrate his passion for cats with three conversations that provide us three different perspectives.

First, we talk to Alexa Morgan, director of public relations at the Hemingway Home in Key West. She is intimately familiar with the day-to-day operations of the present-day Hemingway cats, herding all fifty-seven of them on a daily basis.

Next, evolutionary theorist Axel Lange describes the science behind polydactyly, that extra toe Hemingway cats are known for. Axel discusses how polydactyly relates to Darwin’s work, how the extra toe affects the cat’s behavior, and what it tells us about genetics.

Finally, we visit with author and illustrator Edward Hemingway, grandson of Ernest and son of Gregory and Valerie. Eddie has used cats in his work before, and is currently at work incorporating Hemingway’s first six-toed cat into a new work.

This episode is dedicated to Edie Von Cannon, Michael’s boisterous and attention-hungry cat, who has mewed her way through many of our interviews. 

Thanks for listening, and go give all your cats a belly rub in honor of this new One True Podcast episode! 

Young’s audacious theory invited a slew of biographical and psychological readings of Hemingway’s work. Scholars incorporated trauma theory, ecology, history, and gender. Young inspired generations of scholars and also generated harsh responses, including Hemingway’s own vitriolic reaction.

Debra Moddelmog, the great Hemingway scholar who studied with Young at Penn State, unpacks the wound theory for us and sheds light on the man who developed it. She describes different applications of the theory, its limitations, the texts it illuminates, and its relevance to 21st-century readings.

Join us as we discuss the single most important theoretical model in the history of Hemingway studies and its iconic creator.

In this episode, we explore Chapters 12-20. We revisit the picaresque plot structure, discuss how the narrative moves between romance and revolution, explore how Hudson takes up the question of cultural relativism, and draw connections to The Sun Also Rises.

We hope you’ll join us in this close read of The Purple Land. We are using the handsome University of Wisconsin Press edition with an Introduction written by former One True Podcast guest, our friend Ilan Stavans.

Thank you as always for your support of One True Podcast!

We discuss Catherine’s behavior, the narrative’s disproportionate focus on Frederic as a witness, his eating and drinking, the medical staff, a couple of one true sentences, the ethics of reading someone else’s newspaper, and the notion that the ending of this novel may or may not represent Hemingway’s worldview.

After the unearthed Patreon episode, we continue the discussion, exploring Hemingway’s alternate endings and what that tells us about Hemingway’s artistic process.

We hope you’ll enjoy this wide-ranging discussion, ideally in the rain.

This episode covers the first 11 chapters, where we discuss the Hemingway-Hudson connection, this novel’s picaresque structure, the dramatic situation, the setting, and the various adventures that our hero experiences, including the problematic nature of his “intensely amorous” inclinations.

We hope you’ll join us in this slow read of The Purple Land. We are using the handsome University of Wisconsin Press edition with an Introduction written by former One True Podcast guest, our friend Ilan Stavans.

Thank you as always for your support of One True Podcast!

We welcome John Beall to discuss the story’s setting, its composition, the dynamic of the marriage, its autobiographical inspiration, and how this story fits in to Hemingway’s other “frosty” marriages. We explore the symbolism of the cat, the omnipresence of the rain, repetition in the story… and we even wonder: what the heck is that guy reading that’s so interesting?

John Beall – author of the new book Hemingway’s Art of Revision: The Making of the Short Fiction – expertly guides us through the ambiguities of this tense, elliptical story. Thanks for listening! 

Hemingway wrote what he called his “2800 words of dynamite” in a frothing rage, furious at the irresponsibility of the government, shocked at what he had witnessed firsthand, and grieving for the veterans who survived the Great War, only to lose their lives at home. 

To discuss this explosive article and its crucial context, we welcome James H. Meredith, the former President of the Hemingway Society. Jim’s perspective walks us through Hemingway’s approach to this tragedy and how he composed such a vivid, emotional polemic. 

In this episode, we explore how they met, why they clicked so powerfully, why they remained platonic, how she felt about his writing, and how he felt about her film performances. Peter Riva is a candid, generous guest who provides a unique perspective to Dietrich as a grandma and Hemingway as a memorable houseguest.

Join us for this discussion about the Hemingway-Dietrich relationship… and stay tuned for some surprise outro music! 

To explore this bizarre episode in Hemingway’s life, we welcome Gioia Diliberto, biographer of Hadley Richardson, and Adam Long, director of the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum, the family home of Pauline Pfeiffer. Diliberto and Long each share details about all the members of this messy love triangle and how it forms the legacy of the phase of Hemingway’s life that would inspire A Moveable Feast.

We discuss who these people were in 1926 and what they wanted, what motivated this 100-Day Challenge, all of its implications, and its outcome.

This celebrated story is always in-season, so please join us as Martina Mastandrea guides us through it!

So, to help us understand how Bach influenced Hemingway's writing – in particular the first page of A Farewell to Arms – we welcome organist and Bach scholar, David Yearsley.

With an expert to guide us, we explore Bach's biography and connections between these two artistic titans, discussing which of Bach's works Hemingway responded to most powerfully and how the music of “Mr. Johann” finds its way into Hemingway’s WWI novel as well as other writings, such as To Have and Have Not. 

We are also privileged that David Yearsley agreed to play some Bach for us to illustrate counterpoint and other related ideas, so we hope you enjoy this special show!

We explore where the discarded material in the JFK Library fits into Islands in the Stream, who cut it and why, and how Hemingway studies would have been different if the novel had included this charged material. We also closely examine certain words from these files, such as "perversions" and "surprize" and “devil.” 

Eby is President of the Hemingway Society and has focused much of his research on Hemingway's posthumous work. Recently, he published Reading Hemingway's The Garden of Eden for Kent State University Press’s Reading Hemingway series. Eby has joined us previously for an episode on The Garden of Eden manuscripts, and he also inaugurated our One True Sentence series with One True Sentence #1, a discussion of Hemingway's "Paris 1922" sketches. 

Thanks for your continued support of One True Podcast!

We discuss Harold Krebs and his war experience on the Western Front of World War I, his painful reentry into his former life, and his strained relationship with his mother. We also examine the extraordinary language Hemingway uses to capture Krebs's tortured consciousness and explore this story’s placement among Hemingway’s career of chronicling men at war. As the author of the first literary biography of Tim O’Brien, Alex describes Krebs’s frustration at the difficulty of telling his own true war stories and compares it with the same idea in O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.

On this, our 150th episode of One True Podcast, join us for a conversation about an essential Hemingway short story. Thank you for listening, rating the program, and spreading the word! 

Join us as we explore in our time before it became In Our Time!

We discuss Scribner III’s new book, Scribners: Five Generations in Publishing, which describes the history of the publishing house, including its relationship with legendary authors and its iconic editor, Maxwell Perkins.

Join us for this fascinating look at Scribner from the inside! 

We learn about the composition of the novel, the African strain to the narrative, the legendary discarded subplot, the many artistic and literary allusions, Hemingway’s vision for ending the novel, and much more.

This interview was conducted as Eby’s new study Reading Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden is being published, an essential guide to the novel that explores the published edition and its manuscript in meticulous detail.

If you're interested in listening to our other episodes on The Garden of Eden, check out our interview with Tom Jenks on his trade edition of the book.

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 inspiration for a novel. Join us as Sherry Harris (The Gun Also Rises, 2019), David Berens (The Hemingway Code, 2022), Diane Gilbert Madsen (Hunting for Hemingway, 2010), and Dennis McDougal (Hemingway’s Suitcase, 2017) talk about how the manuscripts inspired their own fiction, what they think happened to the suitcase, how Hadley might have felt, and the challenge of writing about Hemingway. 

We also discuss one of our “one true sentences” that describes how Hemingway felt “in the night” after confirming that all of his work was gone. 

Enjoy this episode and all of its speculation! And thank you for supporting One True Podcast over the first one hundred episodes! 

Our wide-ranging interview covers Mary's life before, during, and after Hemingway. We explore Mary's family, her early life and education, including her impressive career as a journalist. We cover her first encounter with Hemingway in London during World War II, the development of their sometimes-volatile relationship, and her crucial role in shaping Hemingway's legacy and her own. Christian expertly guides us through the true history behind the story of Hemingway's widow.

This episode is a simple exchange of values: give it a listen and be treated to a lively discussion of a hilarious character in Hemingway's early masterpiece.

Hendrickson explores Pilar as a significant constant in Hemingway's life and as an illuminating metaphor for Hemingway's work.  During the interview, he also talks about the fascinating process of writing this searching book, one that includes a twenty-year gestation period, a meeting with Hemingway’s brother, and a pep talk from a former One True Podcast guest.

This episode was recorded on March 26, 2021.

Along the way, Salter talks about the art of speechwriting, Senator McCain as a potential literature scholar, and the way For Whom the Bell Tolls’s Robert Jordan emerged as a fictional character that was completely alive for the senator. Join us for this fascinating conversation!

This episode was recorded on November 23, 2020.

We are joined by the prominent Hemingway scholar Laura Godfrey to consider these questions and so much more. During our conversation, she discusses how issues of gender, race, class, and morality contribute to this story’s timelessness as well as how 21st-century tools in the digital humanities can help us analyze and teach it.

This episode was recorded on February 24, 2021.

Sparks describes the magical experience of using Hemingway’s actual typewriter as they filmed on location inside the Finca Vigía, the challenges of portraying such a complex man in the final years of his life, and the special relationship between Hemingway and the Cuban people, which he encountered first-hand while starring as Papa.

Opening clip: Papa: Hemingway in Cuba trailer (Magenta Light Productions, Studio 2050, Sunstone Film Productions).

This episode was recorded on March 27, 2020.

This episode was recorded on November 2, 2020. 

Seán Hemingway also reflects on his grandfather’s life and career, providing a special perspective on Hemingway and his greatness. Make sure you listen to the entire show, for a rare (but necessary) appearance by the producer, Michael Von Cannon.

This episode was recorded on September 28, 2020.

Who was Karsh? What was the meeting like between him and Hemingway? Why does this photo, among all those taken of Hemingway (including the others Karsh took), hold such an important place?  Our two guests are especially suited to respond to these and other questions. 

Fielder joins us as the Director of the Estate of Yousuf Karsh, and Havinga holds the Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Chair of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts.  In fact, over the course of the interview we also get the opportunity to hear Estrellita's reflections on her husband's session with Hemingway.

This episode was recorded on April 24, 2020.

Beegel tells Michael about her article "Fish Tale: A History of the L.C. Bates Museum Marlin, Taxidermist Fred C.N. Parke, and Ernest Hemingway," which appeared in the Fall 2018 issue of the Hemingway Review. Listen in as she unlocks the mysteries surrounding a taxidermied Hemingway marlin that she came across in a museum in Hinckley, Maine.
 
As Beegel explores the intertwined story of Hemingway and Parke, she dives into the culture of deep-sea fishing along the Florida Keys, the importance of Henry Flagler's Overseas Railroad, and the conflicted relationship Hemingway had with the upper crust. In doing so, she follows the trail of Hemingway's artistic growth and literary celebrity. The marlin becomes a symbol of what the writer lost, what he never possessed, and what he finally determined to hook and land.
 
This episode was recorded on February 22, 2019.

Vernon also tracks Hemingway’s development from the young eyewitness of World War I to the keen partisan of the Spanish Civil War, and finally to the solemn commentator of WWII journalism. In pursuit of Hemingway’s place in the canon of war literature, this episode incorporates a lively discussion of Crane, O’Brien, Stendhal, and even the Kardashians.

This episode was recorded on June 27, 2019.

Dr. Sweig discusses US-Cuba relations, their tumultuous history, her meetings with Fidel Castro, and her sense of what we might expect--and hope for--in the coming years. The interview touches on issues of immigration, terrorism, and contemporary politics as we explore the past, present, and future of our Cuban neighbors.

This episode was recorded on May 23, 2019.