One True Podcast

In this episode, we welcome Julia Cooke to discuss her new book, Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World, which profiles three pioneering women journalists: Rebecca West, Emily "Mickey" Hahn, and Martha Gellhorn. 
Cooke explores these writers' shared temperament and celebrates their work as a forerunner to New Journalism. Throughout our interview, we learn about Gellhorn: her life before Hemingway entered the scene (in a letter, she would describe her younger self as "starry and restless”), her short-lived relationship with Hemingway, and her later years in which she adopted a son and experienced a rather complicated motherhood. Cooke also immerses us in Gellhorn's writing, focusing on how her war journalism weaves together harrowing scenes with humanizing details and how her witnessing of Dachau toward the end of WWII was truly transformative.

One True Podcast does its part to help your summer reading lists by covering a book that is not by Hemingway, but is Hemingway-relevant: Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire, the 1916 World War I novel that Frederic Henry and Count Greffi name-drop so provocatively in between sips of icy cold champagne and smoothly fluent billiards shots. 
This episode covers the first nine chapters of Under Fire, where we discuss why Hemingway damned this novel with such faint praise in his Men at War anthology, how the episodic structure might remind readers of a contemporary work like The Things They Carried, the absence of instantly recognizable characters, and – controversially – whether there’s more rain in this novel or in A Farewell to Arms. One True Podcast is never one to shy away from the divisive topics.
We hope you’ll join us in this summer’s long-overdue read of Under Fire. We are using the Penguin Classics edition with an Introduction written by future One True Podcast guest, Professor Jay Winter.

Live from the University of Evansville campus and the Shanklin Theatre, where Rami Malek once trod the boards… 
One True Podcast welcomes Alex Vernon for an interview recorded live in front of a captive audience of students, faculty, and community members in Evansville, Indiana, as he discusses his magnificent new biography of Tim O’Brien, Peace Is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O’Brien.
Vernon explains his process of how to write a true biography, O’Brien’s life and relationship to the Vietnam War, what distinguishes O’Brien’s style as a writer, the enduring power of some of his greatest work, and much more. It is a generous, penetrating Q&A session with the world’s preeminent O’Brien scholar.
Vernon – who has previously joined One True Podcast for a discussion of Hemingway and War, as well as an episode devoted to “Soldier’s Home” – lends his essential perspective to this essential contemporary writer.
** Special thanks to the UE students for their insightful questions at the end, and to the wizardry of sound designer Jon Robertson for his assistance. **
 
Episode Bibliography
Tim O’Brien works mentioned:
Going After Cacciato
If I Die in a Combat Zone
In the Lake of the Woods
The Things They Carried
Other works mentioned:
Five-volume biography of Hemingway by Michael Reynolds (The Young Hemingway, Hemingway: The Paris Years, Hemingway: The Homecoming, Hemingway: The 1930s, Hemingway: The Final Years)

In our fourth episode celebrating the centenary of The Sun Also Rises, we examine the theme of religion and its role in the novel.
From the title, the epigraphs, the pilgrims on the train, Jake’s self-conscious prayer, the festival of San Fermín, and the idea of fishing as a religious experience, Larry Grimes guides us through this vast topic and shows Hemingway’s religious design in The Sun Also Rises. Grimes also discusses the minor roles of Harris and Montoya and explains why Jake is such a rotten Catholic.
Listening to Larry Grimes talk about such a crucial topic in this great novel is our idea of a divine pleasure. We hope you’ll enjoy it, too!
Also, in these Sun Also Rises episodes, we enjoy the legendary actor William Hurt reading from Jake’s fascinating prayer in chapter 10, courtesy of our friends at Simon & Schuster Audio.
Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, read by William Hurt. Copyright © 1926 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Used with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Thank you for supporting One True Podcast, from Mark and Michael (each with a hell of a Biblical name!)

Legendary scholar Jackson Bryer joins us once again, this time to discuss one controversial moment in Hemingway’s career, his vicious “poor Scott Fitzgerald” swipe in the original publication of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
We discuss the publication history of this graceless insult, what it says about Hemingway and what it says about Fitzgerald. We go on to discuss “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” as a story and the ways that wealth emerges as one of Fitzgerald’s central themes. We explore the nature of the Hemingway-Fitzgerald relationship in the 1930s, Fitzgerald’s “The Rich Boy,” and other works where the very rich emerge as important characters.
Join us in our romantic awe of Jackson Bryer as he guides us through this notorious moment in Hemingway’s career!