• The Apartment Ellipsis in Fiction | Episode 53
    Sep 17 2024

    Today’s podcast is part of a series to accompany my current serialized novel, An Interpreter in Vienna, as we investigate the truth in fiction. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. As always, feel free to share any of your work related to the conversation. Thank you!

    https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

    A full AI-created transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

    Keywords:

    * The Apartment Ellipsis

    * Apartments in Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock

    * Apartments in An Interpreter in Vienna

    * Chronotope, everyday life, city culture, layers of the city, identity creation…

    * Hope

    Considerations for your work:

    * How do your characters interact with their domestic spaces? Are they spaces of their creation or are they at odds with them? Are they safe or dangerous places?

    * To what extent do the interior domestic spaces in your fiction reflect culture? Consider the culture of the setting as well as other cultures the characters may bring into that space.

    * How does the apartment living space offer a way to understand at once your character(s) within it and the city in which it resides? How does the rest of the building affect the individual?

    Feel free to share your related work or recommendations in the comments.

    Texts:

    * Graham Greene - Brighton Rock

    * The rest of the references are listed in my work which I read from; free download here from HKU Scholars Hub

    * Kafka - Before the Law

    * My lecture at Pratt: From Theory to Fiction



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    35 mins
  • Vienna in Fiction | Episode 52
    Sep 3 2024
    Today’s podcast is part of a series to accompany my current serialized novel, An Interpreter in Vienna, as we investigate the truth in fiction. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. As always, feel free to share any of your work related to the conversation. Thank you!https://thematterhorn.substack.com/ A full AI-created transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.Keywords:* City as text* Layers of the city* The urban everyday* Vienna, complicated history* Vienna, iconic places* Vienna, utopia and reality* Architectural Uncanny and the Ghostly City* Cities as reflections of their literature and cultureConsiderations for your work:* Reflect on choices to include pastoral or urban settings in your fiction. What unique elements does the city environment offer?* How can you develop and play with the layers of the city in your fiction? Whether a real or imagined urban place, how do the literary, cultural, and historic layers shape the experience of your characters?* What further understanding of a city does the concept of the Architectural Uncanny and Ghostly City develop in your fiction? How might literary responses that are modern or postmodern emphasize these aspects?* Feel free to share your related work or recommendations in the comments.Texts:* The City as Text (on The Matterhorn)* The Culture of Everyday Life (on The Matterhorn)* To Walk Alone in the Crowd – Antonio Muñoz Molina* The Layers of the City – Antoni Jach* The Arcades Project — Walter Benjamin* Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino* Vienna’s Haunting Third Man Theme (NYT)* Vienna History Timeline* A View on Cities: Vienna’s Ring Road* Vienna - world’s most livable city (Euronews / Smithsonian)* Vienna’s ‘gay pedestrian lights’* Wien.info on the Ferris Wheel* Vienna and the Viennese* Vienna: How the city of ideas created the modern world, Richard Cockett* Danubia: A Personal History of Hapsburg Europe, Simon Winder* Empress Sisi* Social Justice and the City - David Harvey* The Architectural Uncanny - Anthony Vidler* Vidler, Anthony. “The Architecture of the Uncanny: The Unhomely Houses of the Romantic Sublime.” Assemblage, no. 3 (1987): 7–29. https://doi.org/10.2307/3171062.* Cheung, Esther M. K., Gina Marchetti, and Tan See-Kam, eds. Hong Kong Screenscapes: From the New Wave to the Digital Frontier. Hong Kong University Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1xwcs9.* Urban Mediations conference in Hong Kong this December (also interesting overview on the link) Get full access to The Matterhorn: truth in fiction at thematterhorn.substack.com/subscribe
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    1 hr and 36 mins
  • Fashions in Fiction | Episode 51
    Aug 20 2024

    Today’s podcast is part of a series to accompany my current serialized novel, An Interpreter in Vienna, as we investigate the truth in fiction.

    https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

    Keywords:

    * The language of clothes

    * Chronotope

    * Clothing can show:

    * Place, culture

    * Identity – i.e. subcultures, gender

    * Traditions (vs. change)

    * Politics

    * Weather

    * Time period

    * Functionality

    * Power relationships / class, societal position, work



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    31 mins
  • Doppelgängers in Fiction | Episode 50
    Aug 6 2024

    Today’s podcast is part of a series to accompany my current serialized novel, An Interpreter in Vienna, as we investigate the truth in fiction.

    https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

    Keywords:

    * Doppelgängers / Doubles

    * psychoanalysis —> literature (& psychoanalytical critical theory)

    * The Uncanny / Unheimlich

    * literary examples

    * film adaptation / “a copy of a copy of a copy…”

    * twins

    * (architectural uncanny)

    * your fiction



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    44 mins
  • Adaptation in Fiction | Episode 49
    Jul 23 2024

    Today’s podcast is part of a series to accompany my current serialized novel, An Interpreter in Vienna, as we investigate the truth in fiction. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. As always, feel free to share any of your work related to the conversation. Thank you!

    A full AI-created transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

    Keywords:

    * Adaptation discussion

    * Fidelity

    * Postmodernism

    * Visual vs non-visual texts / human vs nonhuman actors / ‘the real’

    * Adaptation scholars

    * Intertextuality

    Considerations for your work:

    * What stories does your text respond to or adapt, even implicitly? Is this something you reference in the text? Should you or would doing so enhance the intertextual reference points?

    * In what ways might creating a fiction that adapts allow you to go deeper with an idea? In what ways might it restrict you?

    * When retelling or responding to a story through a different medium, what are the effects in the change due to the medium? In what ways does your text as visual or not become a different type of cultural artifact?

    Feel free to share your related work or recommendations in the comments.

    Texts:

    * See texts in original discussion about Adaptation

    * Meikle, Kyle. “REMATERIALIZING ADAPTATION THEORY.” Literature/Film Quarterly 41, no. 3 (2013): 174–83. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43798874.

    * Jellenik, Glenn. “The Task of the Adaptation Critic.” South Atlantic Review 80, no. 3–4 (2015): 254–68. https://www.jstor.org/stable/soutatlarevi.80.3-4.254.

    * Raitt, George. “‘Lost in Austen’: Screen Adaptation in a Post-Feminist World.” Literature/Film Quarterly 40, no. 2 (2012): 127–41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43798823.

    * Elliott, Kamilla. “Rethinking Formal-Cultural and Textual-Contextual Divides in Adaptation Studies.” Literature/Film Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2014): 576–93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43798997.

    * Julia Kristeva - Nous Deux

    * John Frow - Intertextuality and Ontology

    * Despotopoulou, Anna. “Girls on Film: Postmodern Renderings of Jane Austen and Henry James.” The Yearbook of English Studies 36, no. 1 (2006): 115–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3508740.

    * Dune chat



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    44 mins
  • Sports in Fiction | Episode 48
    Jul 9 2024

    Today’s podcast is part of a series to accompany my current serialized novel, An Interpreter in Vienna, as we investigate the truth in fiction. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. As always, feel free to share any of your work related to the conversation. Thank you!

    A full AI-created transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

    Keywords:

    * Sport as part of Everyday Life

    * Both as action, something we do or your character does

    * And as culture: supporting teams, iconic athletes, Olympics & nationalism, sport subcultures, songs, designs, pastimes & social activities

    * Or the story itself may be about a professional or iconic athlete

    * Theatrics of sport / spectacle

    * America: baseball

    * Austria: skiing

    * Sports in literature



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    48 mins
  • Espionage in Fiction | Episode 47
    Jun 25 2024
    Today’s podcast is part of a series to accompany my current serialized novel, An Interpreter in Vienna, as we investigate the truth in fiction. A full AI-created transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.Keywords:* Espionage - types and the current situation* Vienna spies* Female spies* Spy stories* The nature of espionage; questions for fictionConsiderations for your work:* Do the characters in your fiction function within their own versions of realities, or do they disguise and dissemble according to context? For what purpose?* Who is spying on whom in your fiction? Even if you’re not writing a spy thriller, is somebody trying to gain information in some way? How can you amplify this concept through aspects of spy literature?* Which national or cultural identities are at play in your fiction? When do they conflict or change allegiance? What is it that brings them together or separates them? Consider the histories and power dynamics as well as personal interests that can interfere.Feel free to share your related work or recommendations in the comments on Substack. Texts:* Vienna’s spies (BBC)* Spying is “wild west” in Austria (The FT)* Swiss Hands Off Approach to Espionage* Britain spying on Israel (Le Monde)* China’s history of spying in US (CNN)* International meeting to combat Chinese spying (NYT)* On US spies (New Republic)* https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/20/us/declassified-spycraft-espionage-gear-techniques/index.html* The Americans TV show* North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, film)* Munich (Steven Spielberg, film)* The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, film)* Sneakers (Phil Alden Robinson, film)* BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, film)* History of spy fiction* How to write a thriller* Tips for writing a spy thriller* Penguin – Tom Tivnan on spy books* Spying as British obsession (The Guardian)* Andrey Kurkov – Death and the Penguin* NPR on Kurkov* Monsieur Pain, Roberto Bolano* Thrillers for lovers of literary fiction (from The Matterhorn archives)* List of spy films from Esquire* Epitaph for a spy, Eric Ambler* Language of Espionage* The International Spy Museum, Washington DC* The secret lives of M16’s top female spies (The FT) Get full access to The Matterhorn: truth in fiction at thematterhorn.substack.com/subscribe
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    41 mins
  • Paintings in Fiction | Episode 46
    Jun 11 2024

    For the full post, please join us for free on The Matterhorn -

    https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

    Keywords:

    * Iconic painters of a culture or place

    * Vienna: Gustav Klimt

    * Destruction/seizing of visual arts

    * Literature:

    * J. D. Salinger

    * Herman Melville

    * Natsume Sōseki

    * Haruki Murakami

    * Considerations for your work



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    47 mins