One True Podcast takes a deep dive into Joan Miró’s masterpiece and Hemingway’s beloved possession, The Farm . We welcome art historian Alex Fernandez de Castro and journalist Hugh Eakin to discuss the meaning, history, and legacy of this powerful and infinitely mysterious painting. In our two-part interview, we cover Miró’s evolution as an artist, his similarities and differences with Hemingway, and the crucial importance of this painting in his storied career. We also learn the mythology of ho...
Jun 28, 2021•1 hr 20 min
Amanda Vaill takes us to the French Riviera of the 1920s, drawing from her definitive book, Everybody Was So Young , to describe who Gerald and Sara Murphy were and what they meant to the artists they knew. Vaill discusses Fitzgerald’s poor behavior, Hemingway’s ambivalence to the rich, and Gerald’s own artistic efforts. Along the way, she suggests what gave the Murphys the enchanting quality that drew so many important figures into their circle. This episode was recorded on May 17, 2021....
Jun 07, 2021•58 min
Hideo Yanagisawa shares his choice for Hemingway's one true sentence, which comes from a letter to Charles Scribner about The Old Man and the Sea .
May 27, 2021•20 min
We welcome aboard Paul Hendrickson for a discussion about his poignant book on Hemingway’s beloved Pilar , the best-selling Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Los t. 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 p...
May 17, 2021•49 min
We welcome Mark Salter, who served as Senator John McCain's advisor and speechwriter, to discuss the senator's lifelong passion for the works of Ernest Hemingway. From his first encounter with For Whom the Bell Tolls to his final consideration of the elegiac “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” Salter speaks movingly about Senator McCain's engagement with Hemingway’s writing and how it informed his ethics. Along the way, Salter talks about the art of speechwriting, Senator McCain as a potential literatur...
Apr 26, 2021•41 min
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout shares her one true sentence from Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."
Apr 15, 2021•23 min
We celebrate the new PBS documentary Hemingway by discussing this historic three-part series with its directors, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Our conversation covers Hemingway’s singular gifts as an artist, his burden of celebrity, his many complicated relationships, and the tragedy that coursed through his life. Burns and Novick describe the challenges of bringing such an outsized life to screen, from the gathering of rare footage to assembling the distinct voices that illuminate his life and wor...
Apr 05, 2021•51 min
“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” is one of Hemingway’s greatest stories and one of his most controversial. Is the shocking death at the end of the story accidental manslaughter or cold-blooded murder? How should we read the ambiguous title? And what does Hemingway’s investigation into the psyches of the various characters – including the lion’s – reveal about this narrative and Hemingway’s craft? We are joined by the prominent Hemingway scholar Laura Godfrey to consider these questions...
Mar 15, 2021•50 min
In this episode, Boris Vejdovsky's true sentence from Hemingway's "Cat in the Rain" leads to an illuminating and wide-ranging conversation on narrative voice, American identity, and the bravery of simple language.
Mar 04, 2021•23 min
Ernest Hemingway never acknowledged the influence of any artist in any medium more generously than that of the French painter Paul Cézanne. From the 1920s, Hemingway’s character Nick Adams “wanted to write like Cézanne painted.” As an older writer, Hemingway visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art to gush about the painter's influence on his approach to writing. One True Podcast turns to Carol Armstrong, professor of Art History at Yale and a leading Cézanne scholar, to help us understand how app...
Feb 22, 2021•43 min
One True Podcast welcomes scholar Ross Tangedal for a spirited discussion about Hemingway’s 1923 publication, Three Stories & Ten Poems , including the incendiary early effort, “Up in Michigan.” Tangedal guides us through this slim volume as an underrated portrait of the artist as a young man. What does this early fiction tell us about the young Hemingway? Are there signs of his later mastery? How should we value Hemingway as a poet? Join us for a discussion about this seldom-addressed book ...
Feb 01, 2021•40 min
Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and Love and Ruin , talks about her one true Hemingway sentence.
Jan 21, 2021•22 min
One True Podcast continues its exploration of Hemingway on film by welcoming the legendary actor Adrian Sparks to discuss his iconic portrayal of Hemingway in Papa: Hemingway in Cuba. This film, released in 2015, made history as the first Hollywood production on the island since the trade embargo. 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 h...
Jan 11, 2021•41 min
Happy Holidays from One True Podcast! Enjoy our first Holiday Spectacular as we ring in the season with Suzanne del Gizzo, scholar and editor of The Hemingway Review , to talk about Hemingway's decidedly un-festive short story, "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen." What was Hemingway getting at with that title? Why would he write such a macabre story? How can that story speak to us at the holidays? We find out in this interview as del Gizzo explains the story, the classic carol, and Hemingway’s grand...
Dec 21, 2020•47 min
Mark P. Ott discusses his choice for Hemingway’s “one true sentence.”
Dec 11, 2020•23 min
Join us for an all-new One True Podcast as we welcome Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel to discuss the fifth volume of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway . The newest installment covers 1932 to 1934, where Hemingway is finishing his bullfighting manifesto, Death in the Afternoon , preparing his idiosyncratic book of short stories, Winner Take Nothing, and readying his chronicle of the hunt, Green Hills of Africa . Spanier and Mandel discuss Hemingway’s complicated personal life, his literary ambi...
Nov 30, 2020•57 min
One True Podcast welcomes Robert K. Elder, author of the entertaining and fascinating Hemingway in Comics . In this episode, we talk about how popular artists have depicted Hemingway across various cultures and the similarities that exist between the style of comics and the iceberg principle. Elder examines how international artists have depicted, Disney-fied, satirized, and mythologized Hemingway in their representations of him as teenage soldier, Paris boozehound, and aging Cuban fisher. And, ...
Nov 07, 2020•48 min
One True Podcast asks Verna Kale her choice for Hemingway’s “one true sentence.” Kale's sentence comes from the short story "Soldier's Home." Listen in!
Oct 29, 2020•23 min
One True Podcast was privileged to welcome Seán Hemingway – editor of the Hemingway Library Editions and the grandson of the writer – to discuss the new edition of The Old Man and the Sea . Hemingway discusses the legacy of the novella, its composition, and the new material published in the book, including “Pursuit as Happiness,” a previously unpublished short story. Seán Hemingway also reflects on his grandfather’s life and career, providing a special perspective on Hemingway and his greatness....
Oct 19, 2020•44 min
One True Podcast welcomes award-winning director John Irvin to talk about his 2008 film adaptation of Hemingway's posthumous novel The Garden of Eden . Irvin discusses the role Hemingway played in his own artistic development, the challenges of adapting Hemingway, and The Garden of Eden’s controversial subject matter. He recalls experiences directing Jack Huston, Mena Suvari, Richard E. Grant, and Matthew Modine as well as the importance of filming on location at the Tanzania-Kenya border. Irvin...
Sep 28, 2020•52 min
One True Podcast asks Gail Sinclair her choice for Hemingway’s “one true sentence.”
Sep 17, 2020•24 min
One True Podcast welcomes Robert W. Trogdon to discuss his beautiful new publication, the Library of America edition of Hemingway’s early writing, from 1918-1926. Trogdon discusses his role as a textual editor. He explains how he assembled Hemingway’s journalism and letters, and how his decision about punctuation in The Sun Also Rises will forever change how we read one of Hemingway’s most iconic sentences. The episode was recorded on August 26, 2020.
Sep 07, 2020•51 min
One True Podcast understands that we all can’t get together at El Floridita and while away the afternoon telling stories and talking about Hemingway. However, we can serve up our first batch of Papa Dobles for our listeners, a doubleheader of episodes dealing with Hemingway, Cuba, and the valuable work of the Finca Vigía Foundation. Earlier we met up with Bob Vila to talk about his preservation work (see that show in our line-up), whereas today we are joined by Massachusetts Representative Jim M...
Aug 17, 2020•36 min
One True Podcast understands that we all can’t get together at El Floridita and while away the afternoon telling stories and talking about Hemingway. However, we can serve up our first batch of Papa Dobles for our listeners, a doubleheader of episodes dealing with Hemingway, Cuba, and the valuable work of the Finca Vigía Foundation. In this first episode, we welcome Bob Vila, the legendary home repair TV personality to discuss his role in restoring and preserving the Hemingway house and its cont...
Aug 17, 2020•46 min
One True Podcast asks Craig McDonald his choice for Hemingway’s “one true sentence.”
Aug 06, 2020•20 min
Join us as we talk with esteemed scholar Joe Flora about "The Battler," Hemingway's classic Nick Adams story from In Our Time . Flora, who is the author of the canonical Hemingway's Nick Adams and Ernest Hemingway: A Study of the Short Fiction and Past-President of the Hemingway Society, takes us into the Michigan woods to explore this compelling story about young Nick's encounter with a former prizefighter and his companion. Along the way, we discuss Hemingway's craft, his treatment of race, bo...
Jul 27, 2020•44 min
One True Podcast asks Carl P. Eby his choice for Hemingway’s “one true sentence.”
Jul 21, 2020•20 min
In Green Hills of Africa , the 1935 account of his safari, Hemingway made his most enduring statement of literary criticism. He wrote that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn . [. . .] There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." What does that mean? Is he right? Was there a strategy behind what seems to be a high compliment? One True Podcast welcomes Susan K. Harris to tackle this iconic quote and to gain a better sense o...
Jul 07, 2020•47 min
In an episode that is unfortunately too timely, One True Podcast welcomes Elizabeth Outka to discuss the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, writers' responses to it, and the way it compares to our current experience with COVID-19. Dr. Outka discusses Hemingway’s engagement with the so-called “Spanish influenza” (in works like "A Natural History of the Dead") as well as modernism’s broader depiction of the worldwide devastation that ensued. The interview touches on Katherine Anne Porter, T.S. Eliot, Willa C...
Jun 16, 2020•50 min
One True Podcast is pleased to go down to the river with James Plath, Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University, to discuss one of Hemingway’s early masterpieces. Plath discusses the many dimensions that contribute to the enduring appeal of "Big Two-Hearted River" by responding to such question as: Who is Nick Adams? What is the importance of the northern Michigan setting? How does the presence and absence of the war function in the story? And, how does the story illustrate the “Hemin...
May 26, 2020•53 min
