One True Podcast

One True Podcast explores one of the most influential friends in Hemingway’s life: Eric “Chink” Dorman-Smith. Although Chink has been mentioned several times during past episodes, we finally devote an entire episode to this fascinating figure and his profound influence on Hemingway. 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.

At One True Podcast we were sad to hear of the death of Patrick Hemingway, the middle son of Ernest, who died on September 2, 2025. Patrick Hemingway (1928-2025) lived a life that was truly Hemingwayesque: traveling like his father, living much of his life in Africa, hunting and fishing, and determined to maintain the legacy of his father’s literary work. 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.

One True Podcast continues our celebration of the centenary of Hemingway’s In Our Time by examining a classic Nick Adams story: "The End of Something."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! 

One True Podcast concludes its One True Book Club for the year with its third of three installments on W.H. Hudson’s 1885 novel, The Purple Land.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!

Join us for a wide-ranging discussion about Hemingway’s cats! 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! 

About seventy-five years ago, scholar Philip Young’s “wound theory” revolutionized Hemingway studies with a thesis that argued that Hemingway’s entire body of work was a series of responses to the injury he suffered in 1918 during World War One.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.

One True Podcast continues our summer book club on The Purple Land, the 1885 novel written by W.H. Hudson and read and re-read by Robert Cohn.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!

On the happy occasion of Mark’s new Norton Library edition of A Farewell to Arms, One True Podcast goes deep into its vault. We are at last releasing to the general public one of our seldom-heard Patreon episodes, an exploration of the final chapter of A Farewell to Arms, the epic and heart-wrenching chapter 41.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.

One True Podcast ushers in the summer by reading a book that is not by Hemingway, but is Hemingway-relevant: W.H. Hudson’s The Purple Land, the 1885 novel that Jake Barnes name-drops in The Sun Also Rises and then weaponizes to criticize Robert Cohn.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!

One True Podcast again toasts to the centenary of Hemingway’s In Our Time by examining “Cat in the Rain,” one of its so-called “marriage tales.” 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!