In this episode, One True Podcast takes on the white whale of Hemingway studies: the unpublished manuscript of The Garden of Eden. Although the published version we know may be shocking, the sprawling manuscript reveals even more dimensions of this challenging text and the many complexities of its author.For this discussion, we turn to Hemingway Society President Carl Eby, who shares what he’s learned about the manuscript through more than thirty years of studying it and many, many hours in the Kennedy Archives, poring over Ernest Hemingway’s words than never made the final edit.We learn about the composition of the novel, the African strain to the narrative, the legendary discarded subplot, the many artistic and literary allusions, Hemingway’s vision for ending the novel, and much more. This interview was conducted as Eby’s new study Reading Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden is being published, an essential guide to the novel that explores the published edition and its manuscript in meticulous detail. If you're interested in listening to our other episodes on The Garden of Eden, check out our interview with Tom Jenks on his trade edition of the book.

Oscar Hokeah, winner of the 2023 PEN/Hemingway Award for Calling for a Blanket Dance, shares his one true sentence from The Old Man and the Sea.

We take a look at Hemingway’s intersection with Italian Fascism by examining two of its most volatile figures, Gabriele D’Annunzio and Ezra Pound.In this episode, we talk to Lucy Hughes-Hallett, D’Annunzio’s award-winning biographer, who discusses this notorious firebrand’s military career, love affairs, and artistic legacy. Hughes-Hallett also suggests D’Annunzio’s unspoken role in Hemingway’s most famous passage from A Farewell to Arms.Next, Lauren Arrington, author of The Poets of Rapallo, joins us to explore Pound’s poetry, his influence on other poets, his loathsome ideology, and his relationship with Hemingway.Italian Fascism is the sad backdrop to Hemingway’s Italian experience. We hope you enjoy our conversations with these two eminent scholars!

For our 100th episode, One True Podcast investigates the legend of the lost manuscripts! In December 1922, Hemingway’s first wife Hadley, misplaced a suitcase filled with the young Hemingway’s unpublished writing. Since then, this episode has invited intense speculation: Was this early work stolen? Did it end up in the garbage? Did Hadley subconsciously want the work to be stolen? In order to explore the unknowable, we turn to four novelists who each use this mysterious episode as the inspiration for a novel. Join us as Sherry Harris (The Gun Also Rises, 2019), David Berens (The Hemingway Code, 2022), Diane Gilbert Madsen (Hunting for Hemingway, 2010), and Dennis McDougal (Hemingway’s Suitcase, 2017) talk about how the manuscripts inspired their own fiction, what they think happened to the suitcase, how Hadley might have felt, and the challenge of writing about Hemingway. We also discuss one of our “one true sentences” that describes how Hemingway felt “in the night” after confirming that all of his work was gone. Enjoy this episode and all of its speculation! And thank you for supporting One True Podcast over the first one hundred episodes! 

Robert Pinsky, U.S. Poet Laureate from 1997 to 2000 and author of The Figured Wheel and Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet (among other highly acclaimed works), shares his one true sentence from Hemingway's Paris Review interview.