One True Podcast welcomes the great Larry Grimes to discuss “Today Is Friday,” the curious playlet from Men Without Women about three Roman soldiers and a Jewish barman discussing Jesus’s crucifixion.

This interview explores the resonance of the story and what it tells us about Hemingway’s lifelong quest for the religious experience. We discuss Hemingway’s fascination with executions, masculine Christianity, and hybrid religions. We also explore how the 3rd Roman Soldier unexpectedly emerges as one of the great characters of Hemingway’s short fiction.

“Today Is Friday” continues One True Podcast’s ambitious project of tackling every Hemingway short story. Join us for this latest effort!

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

This chapter will be familiar to many readers as the bitter narrative that would later be presented as “A Very Short Story.” Here, this vignette is the longest in this volume. Is it also the most autobiographical? We discuss the ill-fated World War I love affair between our hero and Ag (later Luz), doomed due to an insurmountable age gap, our hero’s bad attitude, the presence of smooth-talking Italians, and an ocean in between them. Hemingway turned the early trauma of a Dear John letter into this raw, painful self-examination that attempted to exorcise his own experiences. In this episode we also explore how this chapter provides a fascinating precis of this relationship’s fuller articulation in A Farewell to Arms.

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

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

This chapter is the first of the vignettes set in America, a fictionalized account of a cigar store robbery that Hemingway learned about in Kansas City in 1917. We discuss this sketch’s depiction of national confusion, moral ambiguity, attitudes towards immigrants, and how Hemingway’s specific language renders a complex scene. Through our conversation, the subtle division emerges between Drevitts and Boyle and how Hemingway’s characters are able to say things without stating them.

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