One True Podcast

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.

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 Lost.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.

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 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.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout shares her one true sentence from Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."

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 work. They also explain the process of selection, as well as the things left out. As a perfect companion to your viewing of Hemingway, join us for this revealing interview with its filmmakers.This episode was recorded on February 8, 2021.

“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 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.

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.

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 appreciating the artist's work can illuminate Hemingway’s approach to writing. Armstrong discusses Cézanne’s historical context, his modernist leanings, his interest in landscape and movement, and his own relationship with the written word.  Join us to discover what Hemingway meant when he vowed to “do the country like Cézanne.”This episode was recorded on June 15, 2020.

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 in Hemingway studies. Also note the performance of selected Hemingway fiction and poetry by some of the University of Evansville’s talented Theatre students. This episode was recorded on July 9, 2020.

Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and Love and Ruin, talks about her one true Hemingway sentence.