One True Podcast

The Spanish Civil War was a brutal and maddeningly complex historical event, with enormous repercussions on Ernest Hemingway’s life and career. To guide us through the many moving parts and frayed relationships, we welcome back Amanda Vaill to One True Podcast.

Vaill’s essential book, Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War, guides us through the events of the war, including the private adventures of Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, John Dos Passos, Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and more. We discuss what the war meant to Hemingway and his writing that would follow, and how many of his relationships would never be the same. 

Julie Schumacher, author of The Dear Committee Trilogy (Dear Committee Members, The Shakespeare Requirement , and The English Experience), shares her one true sentence from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. As Schumacher explores, Hemingway's short, terse writing often leads to some "long, meandering, winding roads of sentences" like the one she's chosen for this episode. In addition, she raises intriguing questions about how Hemingway drafted the sentence, examines what makes certain characters and dialogue so compelling in The Sun Also Rises, and discusses her own creative process.

Welcome to the sixth of our eighteen shows celebrating the centenary of the Paris edition of Hemingway’s book of vignettes, in our time.

The scene depicts the execution of six Greek officials toward the end of 1922.  In this episode, we discuss the history of that trial and execution, the journalistic coverage of events, and Hemingway's fictional treatment of the execution. We also relate this vignette to other works, such as A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and even Tintoretto's Crucifixion.   We also continue examining how the first third of the book starts cohering into a larger project.

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

Welcome to the fifth of our eighteen shows celebrating the centenary of the Paris edition of Hemingway’s book of vignettes, in our time.

This scene of a barricade and a retreat continues Hemingway's brilliant depictions of Battle of Mons. In this episode, we explore some historical aspects of that retreat, compare the narrative voice and point of view to chapter four, and much more. As always, we examine how these first five vignettes are cohering into a larger project.

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

The two great titans of twentieth-century American literature – Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner – never met. They corresponded only a time or two; however, they were always on each other’s minds. Their hyper-awareness of the other’s recent work led sometimes to envy, sometimes to awe, and frequently to catty comments.

To help us learn more about these two men and their fraught relationship, we invite Prof. Ahmed Honeini of Royal Holloway, University of London, to the program. Honeini is the founder of Faulkner Studies in the UK and has written the superb book, William Faulkner and Mortality: A Fine Dead Sound. 

Honeini expertly guides us through Hemingway and Faulkner’s lives, works, and relationship as One True Podcast continues its investigation of Hemingway’s many rivalries.

This episode will focus on the Spanish Civil War and how one particular incident – the murder of accused Fascist spy José Robles – ruptured the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.

To sort out the many moving parts to this chapter of Hemingway’s life, we welcome Stephen Koch, the author of The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of José Robles. Koch takes us through the complicated relationship between Hemingway and Dos Passos, what ended it, and how it ended. Koch also explores Robles’s role in Spain, Martha Gellhorn’s presence, and the legacy of this intricate web of relationships.

Join us as we discuss Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Robles Affair!

Welcome to the fourth of our eighteen shows celebrating the centenary of the Paris edition of Hemingway’s book of vignettes, in our time.

At 75 words, this short scene describes the Battle of Mons. To Ezra Pound, Hemingway would refer to this conflict (from August 1914 at the very beginning of the First World War) as "clear and noble." In this episode, we discuss the historical aspects of the battle, Hemingway's friendship with the British soldier Eric Edward “Chink” Dorman-Smith, and the mixture of nobility, naivety, and absurdity that form the atmosphere of this vignette. We also examine how these first four vignettes are beginning to cohere into a larger project.

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

Welcome to the third of our eighteen shows celebrating the centenary of the Paris edition of Hemingway’s book of vignettes, in our time.

In this scene, Hemingway describes the minarets rising over the landscape overlooking the harrowing evacuation at the Greco-Turkish War in 1922. Hemingway distills the vast scope of inhumanity into the expression of one scared child. We discuss how this scene intersects with his biographical experiences, his journalism, and how the first three vignettes are beginning to cohere into a larger project.

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

American modernism is a concept that is so slippery that even scholars don’t always agree on its definition. Is it a historical era, or a literary technique? Was Ernest Hemingway even a modernist? If so, which of his works are most modernistic?

For this discussion, we turn to Mark Whalan, editor of the compendious new volume, Cambridge History of American Modernism, and Karen Leick, one of its contributors, who places Hemingway in a conversation with other American modernists including Stein, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald. We discuss his work, his celebrity, the difference between the myth and the man, and the modern world in which he lived and wrote.

Join us for this fascinating conversation that tackles Hemingway and his place in the tradition of American literature!

Mark Kurlansky, the author of dozens of books of fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature (including Cod, Salt, and The Importance of Not Being Ernest), shares his one true sentence from Hemingway's story "In Another Country."