One True Podcast

Andrew Feldman joins us to talk about his book Ernesto: The Untold Story of Hemingway in Revolutionary Cuba. What did Cuba mean to Papa and what has Papa meant to Cuba? To explore the place where Hemingway spent much of his adult life and Ernest became Ernesto, we discuss Hemingway's relationship to the Cuban people, his engagement with Cuban politics, and some of his greatest works, including The Old Man and the Sea and A Moveable Feast.  Feldman gives One True Podcast a debrief on his extraordinary two-year research trip to Havana and its environs, where he spent the majority of his time in Hemingway's storied home, the Finca Vigía. 

Hemingway’s first book of short stories, In Our Time, is the most experimental work of his career and his most challenging. It is also an early masterpiece, with brutal, opaque stories like “Indian Camp,” “The Battler,” and "Soldier's Home." For this episode, we are joined by J. Gerald Kennedy, editor of the new Norton Critical Edition of In Our Time, to discuss the emergence of the Hemingway style, the book as a narrative sequence, its composition, its legacy, and even the discarded fragment of metafiction called “On Writing.” From classics like “Big Two-Hearted River” to less-discussed stories and vignettes, Kennedy guides us through this fascinating Hemingway work. Join us! 

Michael Katakis, photographer and author of A Thousand Shards of Glass, Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts from a Life, and Dangerous Men, joins us to talk about his one true sentence from the short story "Indian Camp."

The pride of Arkansas, Ruth A. Hawkins, joins the show for an illuminating episode on Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer.Hawkins draws from her definitive book Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow to discuss Pfeiffer’s family and upbringing, her controversial friendship with Hadley, her marriage to Ernest, her motherhood, the mysterious details of her death, and her legacy. Although the Hemingway-Pfeiffer marriage is often ignored or even maligned, new dimensions to their relationship emerge through our conversation as Hawkins traces their history together, both the happiness and sorrow. 

Michael Thurston, editor of the new Norton Critical Edition of The Sun Also Rises, guides us through Bill Gorton's friendship with Jake, explores the historical inspiration behind his character, and analyzes his role and allusions in the novel. Join the lively discussion of this hilarious character in Hemingway's early masterpiece.

Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet and My Life as a Foreign Country, joins us to talk about his one true sentence from The Old Man and the Sea.

Meet us at rue Delambre for a memorable chat with Sarah Churchwell about the way Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast has shaped the way we think about the Hemingway-Fitzgerald relationship. What are the repercussions of Hemingway getting the last word on the Fitzgerald legacy? How much of what Hemingway wrote is even true? What were Hemingway’s strategies as he described himself, Fitzgerald, Zelda, and even Bumby in the alcohol-soaked distant memories of 1920s Paris? And is the butterfly epigraph a backhanded compliment or a forehanded insult?  Sarah Churchwell -- author of the excellent Gatsby study, Careless People – takes us deep into the drafting, editing, and legacy of A Moveable Feast and its powerful role in defining the enduring popular conception of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

We are joined by Ryan Hediger to get to the bottom of Hemingway's genre-bending and gruesomely descriptive "A Natural History of the Dead."First published in Hemingway's bullfighting treatise Death in the Afternoon in 1932 and then reprinted a year later in Winner Take Nothing, this work gives us a chance to consider Hemingway's treatment of death in his work, as well as the artist's obligation to depict violence with a scientific objectivity. Hediger discusses the way "A Natural History of the Dead" simultaneously satirizes the nature writers that preceded Hemingway, while also providing a window into Hemingway's own complex engagement with the natural world.

Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness, Deep Creek, and Contents May Have Shifted, joins us to talk about her one true Hemingway sentence. 

We usher in 2022 by exploring what Hemingway was doing one hundred years ago. Mary V. Dearborn, the author of Ernest Hemingway: A Biography, joins the show to discuss Hemingway’s writing from 1922, his formative experiences as a journalist, and the notorious lost manuscripts last seen in Paris’s Gare de Lyon. For literary modernism, 1922 is an annus mirabilis, and we celebrate Hemingway’s own 1922, as he makes his first steps onto the global stage. Happy New Year, everybody, and happy listening!