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The Moth

The Moth Radio Hour: Mighty: Bull, Pen, Gun

The Moth

The Moth

Arts, Performing Arts

4.625.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

An author who treasures the art of letter-writing is spellbound by an inmate who becomes a pen pal, a man comes to terms with a personal tragedy caused by a gun, and a writer describes how Ernest Hemingway persuades him to risk his life by pretending to be a matador. Hosted by The Moth’s Artistic Director, Catherine Burns. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media.

Hosted by: Catherine Burns

Storytellers: A. E. Hotchner, Kemp Powers, Joyce Maynard

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Katherine Burns, artistic director of The Moth,

0:18.4

and I'll be your host this time. The Moth is about people telling true personal stories

0:23.7

on stage and bars and theaters around the country. We encourage people to turn off their

0:28.5

cell phones, sit back, and listen to the experiences of their friends and neighbors for a little

0:33.1

bit. We record the stories and play the best of them for you here every week. We have three

0:39.7

stories this hour. A magazine journalist goes to extraordinary lengths to impress his friend,

0:45.1

Ernest Hemingway. A teenager growing up in Brooklyn in the 1980s pays an impossibly high price

0:51.5

when a practical joke goes wrong. And a young, recently divorced lonely heart finds her soulmate

0:57.7

behind prison bars. Our first story is from A.E. Hutchner. Mr. Hutchner was born in 1920,

1:05.2

and for years people have been telling me that we just had to get him from the moth,

1:08.8

just get him on the phone and you'll see. Well, I finally did get him on the phone. I knew

1:14.6

that he was a writer who got in his start as a journalist in World War II, and that he founded

1:18.8

the charity Numen's Own with his friend Paul Newman. When we finally spoke, I asked him what he

1:24.2

might want to talk about. And he said, well, I could do a story by the time my friend Ernest Hemingway

1:29.3

taught me into dressing up like a madador and going into a bolary in Spain in the 1950s.

1:34.6

Yes, please. Here's A.E. Hutchner. Live at the moth.

1:38.4

I'm going to take you back to Spain in the summer of 1959. When the big event was a mono-o-mano

2:02.0

bullfight between the two great modesty of that epic. Shall we domingine and Antonio O'Donyes?

2:11.6

There hadn't been such a bullfight, a mono-o-mano in 30 years, and there hasn't been one since then.

2:22.8

So it was a great event. And my longtime friend Ernest Hemingway called me,

2:28.5

and he said, I'm going to go there and cover it for Life Magazine. I'm going to write about it.

2:36.4

Why don't you come on down and we'll have another adventure. I admit Ernest,

...

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