To what extent should letters remain private?

Why are letters often at the middle of mysteries and detective stories?

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

Over these eight weeks, I’ve brought you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays coming very soon.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

Excerpt from Atonement, by Ian McEwan (2001, UK, pp. 78-9):

‘How dare you! How dare you all!’

Leon stood too and made a calming gesture with his palms. ‘Cee…’

When she made a lunge to snatch the letter from her mother, she found not only her brother but the two policemen in her way. Marshall was standing too, but not interfering.

‘It belongs to me,’ she shouted. ‘You have absolutely no right!’

Emily did not even look up from her reading, and she gave herself time to read the letter several times over. when she was done she met her daughter’s fury with her own colder version.

‘If you had done the right thing, young lady, with all your education, and come to me with this, then something could have been done in time and your cousin would have been spared her nightmare.’

For a moment Cecilia stood alone in the centre of the room, fluttering the fingers of her right hand, staring at them each in turn, unable to believe her association with such people, unable to begin to tell them what she knew.

Intertextual reading with “The Purloined Letter” (Edgar Allan Poe) — “Purloined Letters in Ian McEwan’s Atonement”:

Critics have noticed that Atonement refers to a specific intertext, namely, E.A. Poe's "The Purloined Letter."1 They also perceive its use of motifs familiar from classical detective stories. The Tallis estate is the scene of a crime in which the detective looks for the criminal among a closed circle of suspects. In the first part of the novel there are suggestions that a crime will be committed, placing readers in the position of armchair detectives by inviting them to wonder what crime will be committed and by whom. Briony assumes the role of detective, although she concedes that she is among the transgressors (156). Readers learn early on of Briony's wrongdoing but the epilogue has a surprise in store, just as does the ending of a detective story. The thirteen-year-old Briony, who is an aspiring writer, understands the detective's role as dealing with the secrets of the human heart (40). She pictures herself as a detective of humanity. She is piqued about the problem of other minds: what can one know about another person's consciousness? How can one imagine someone else's mind given the limitations of one's own mind (36-37)? Briony's understanding of the detective's method reinforces the links Atonement shares with "The Purloined Letter," for the ability to imagine the workings of another mind is essential for Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, and this theme forms a focal point of his story.

Keywords:

* Letters and intended audience

* Typing letters

* Letters as evidence (of character)

* Mystery & deception / detective stories & letters

* Oscar Wilde - Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess

* “Purloined Letter,” Poe

* The many letters of Atonement

* Metafiction

Texts:

* Atonement

* Purloined Letter

* Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess

* The Go-Between

* “Purloined Letters in Ian McEwan’s Atonement”

What does being political have to do with emotions?

What is the power of metaphor? The danger?

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

For these eight weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays in 2025.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

The imperative of reading is metaphorically embodied and promoted by the postman himself. Mario, who, upon Neruda’s request, reads one of the letters addressed to the poet that he delivers, secured his proximity to Neruda and his mail by claiming he could read, that he was literate. However, as the narrative progresses, the postman reveals his illiteracy and the misreading of his world which leads to his untimely death. Mario’s metaphoric illiteracy is illuminated by his cinematically textualized consciousness which compels him to plagiarize Neruda’s poetry in order to seduce and procreate with Beatriz. Neruda’s advice correlates with his poem “Ode to the Sea.” Becoming a poet requires one not simply to see, but to read or interpret the “movement of the sea,” or of the seen/scene, and to read it as insisting that metaphor is all pervasive in everyday life, that it is not simply a matter of words or language, but of conceptual thinking and human action as well. In order to become a poet, a writer, one must first become a reader of the world and looking at language one must perceive, as Darwin, Neruda, Shelley, Nietzsche, and Heidegger did, that our conceptual system is full of inescapable figurality, that the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is, ineluctably, to a considerably ambiguous degree, a matter of figurality.

Biopoetics and Hermeneutics: The Postal Metaphor in Il Postino (David S. Randall)

Keywords:

* Neruda

* blending fact and fiction

* metaphor

* politics

* love

* art as life’s work

Texts:

* film - 1994

* novel - Ardiente paciencia

* film from 1983

* A Postman, a Poet, an Actor’s Farewell (NYT)

* Massimo Troisi: the postman who always delivered (Guardian)

* Randall, David S. “Biopoetics and Hermeneutics: The Postal Metaphor in Il Postino.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 19, no. 3 (2017): 345–71. https://doi.org/10.5325/intelitestud.19.3.0345.

How do you know if you can trust the receiver of a letter? Should you worry about it falling into the wrong hands?

In the art of letter writing, how should one structure one’s composition? How should one flow from topic to topic?

Happy New Year! I’ve just arrived back in London after a wonderful trip to see my family in Boston. I wish all of you the best for the new year.

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

For these eight weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays in 2025.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

Keywords:

* friendship

* McCarthyism

* publishing world: editors, collaborators, etc.

* art of cooking / language of cooking

* the form of letters

Texts:

* Mastering the Art of French Cooking

* As Always, Julia: the letters of Julia Child & Avis Devoto

* Julie and Julia

For these eight weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays in 2025.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

What can a personal letter reveal about someone’s intentions? How might it deceive us?

Can letter writing be enough human connection for an isolated person?

What are the pros and cons of the wait time in letter sending and receiving, and what might it affect?

Keywords:

* Encountering the text - French crime TV!

* Pronunciation

* Van Gogh, the letter writer

* Human connection

* “Remedy against suicide”

Texts:

* Van Gogh’s letters

* Painting at the Kröller-Müller Museum

* Pronouncing Vincent Van Gogh

* L’art du crime - Le testament de Van Gogh

* Letter to Theo about his neighbor

* Life in the Yellow House

* Dickens’ remedy against suicide

How can a personal letter also be political?

Why might a letter allow us to include more emotional knowledge and personal feelings than an essay or article?

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

For these eight weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays in 2025.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

Excerpt from Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015, USA, pp. 91-2):

One afternoon your mother and I took you to visit a preschool. Our host took us down to a large gym filled with a bubbling ethnic stew of New York children. The children were running, jumping, and tumbling. You took one look at them, tore away from us, and ran right into the scrum. You have never been afraid of people, of rejection, and I have always admired you for this and always been afraid for you because of this. I watched you leap and laugh with these children you barely knew, and the wall rose in me and I felt I should grab you by the arm, pull you back and say, "We don't know these folks! Be cool!" I did not do this. I was growing, and if I could not name my anguish precisely I still knew that there was nothing noble in it, that a four-year-old child be watchful, prudent, and shrewd, that I curtail your happiness, that you submit to a loss of time. And now when I measure this fear against the boldness that the masters of the galaxy imparted to their own children, I am ashamed.

Keywords:

* Black American literary dialogue

* Bodies

* “Race is the child of racism, not the father.” (7)

* Bildungsroman

* Freedom and shame

* Prince Jones

* Dreamers

Texts:

* Prince Jones (1975-2000)

* Book / Coates’ website

* American media and the Dream (Boston University)

To what extent can a letter capture the attention of someone more powerful than ourselves?

How can one use a letter to show one’s mastery of language (and other things)?

When and why do we appeal to people in letters whom we’ve never met? Why might we think some will listen to our stories more than others?

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

For these eight weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays in 2025.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

Excerpt from The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga (2008, India):

For the Desk of:

His Excellency Wen JiabaoThe Premier's OfficeBeijingCapital of the Freedom-loving Nation of China

From the Desk of:

"The White Tiger"A Thinking ManAnd an EntrepreneurLiving in the world's center of Technology and OutsourcingElectronics City Phase 1 (just off Hosur Main Road)Bangalore, India

Mr. Premier,

Sir.

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

My ex-employer the late Mr. Ashok's ex-wife, Pinky Madam, taught me one of these things; and at 11:32 p.m. today, which was about ten minutes ago, when the lady on All India Radio announced, "Premier Jiabao is coming to Bangalore next week," I said that thing at once.

In fact, each time when great men like you visit our country I say it. Not that I have anything against great men. In my way, sir, I consider myself one of your kind. But whenever I see our prime minister and his distinguished sidekicks drive to the airport in black cars and get out and do namastes before you in front of a TV camera and tell you about how moral and saintly India is, I have to say that thing in English.

Now, you are visiting us this week, Your Excellency, aren't you? All India Radio is usually reliable in these matters.

That was a joke, sir.

Ha!

That's why I want to ask you directly if you really are coming to Bangalore. Because if you are, I have something important to tell you. See, the lady on the radio said, "Mr. Jiabao is on a mission: he wants to know the truth about Bangalore."

My blood froze. If anyone knows the truth about Bangalore, it's me.

Next, the lady announcer said, "Mr. Jiabao wants to meet some Indian entrepreneurs and hear the story of their success from their own lips."

She explained a little. Apparently, sir, you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don't have entrepreneurs.

Keywords:

* Allusion / writing to ‘real’ people in fiction

* English(es)

* Class and power; caste system

* BRICS and post-colonialism

* Truth (and politics and media)

Texts:

* The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

* Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

* Redefinitions of Individuality and India in Adiga’s The White Tiger (my article for Purdue)

* Wen Jiabao (Chinese premier 2003-2013)

* What Indians who have known poverty think of the Netflix adaptation (NPR)

What is the effect of only reading one side to a story?

How do people change stories once they retell the narrative in their own words?

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

During these seven weeks, I bring you texts related to the topic. I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

What do we lose if we stop the ability to send letters by post?

How much of the letters you write are fictions, fact? Contain some kind of truth?

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

For the next six weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. 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

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 culture

Considerations 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)

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

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

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

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

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 fiction

Considerations 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)

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

I appreciate your support as a Matterhorn subscriber and look forward to our discussions. 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:

* Collective experience and trauma defined

* Emotions and control

* Boston Red Sox

* Vienna post-WWII

* 9/11 novelists and filmmakers

* Effect on everyday culture

* Architectural uncanny

* Considerations for your own work

Considerations for your work:

* Consider how the collective experiences affect your protagonist or different characters.

* Maybe there’s a collective experience within the fiction – how does this impact the characters?

* Also think about things like creating mood from an omniscient narrator point of view.

* What is the news/media narrative in relation to the collective experience? Is this something you want your book to question or reinforce?

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

Texts:

* Curse of the Bambino

* Collective Experience defined

* BALAEV, MICHELLE. “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 41, no. 2 (2008): 149–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44029500.

* Eyerman, Ron. “Social Theory and Trauma.” Acta Sociologica 56, no. 1 (2013): 41–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23525660.

* Carrie Louise Sheffield. “Native American Hip-Hop and Historical Trauma: Surviving and Healing Trauma on the ‘Rez.’” Studies in American Indian Literatures 23, no. 3 (2011): 94–110. https://doi.org/10.5250/studamerindilite.23.3.0094.

* Radstone, Susannah. “Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics.” Paragraph 30, no. 1 (2007): 9–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43152697.

* https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/austria-plans-tighten-law-banning-use-nazi-symbols-2022-11-14/

* https://www.dw.com/en/should-the-hitler-balcony-in-vienna-be-open-to-the-public/a-56887522

* Immigrant imaginaries in the filmic apartment ellipsis : a study of New York and Hong Kong

* Column McCann: Let the Great World Spin

* Man on Wire 2008 (film)

* The Walk 2015 (film)

* Don DeLillo: Falling Man

* Bram Stoker: Dracula

* Jacques Lacan Objet Petit a

* The Intrinsic Link Between Memory and Novels | Episode 24 on The Matterhorn

* Anthony Vidler: The Architectural Uncanny

* Vidler, Anthony. “Public Fear.” ANY: Architecture New York, no. 18 (1997): 12–13. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41852241.

* 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.

* Nosferatu 1922 (film)

Visit The Matterhorn on Substack for all the links, multimedia, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Dr. Kathleen Waller is an author and academic who loves to play with the interdisciplinary, international layers of fictions.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

Visit The Matterhorn on Substack for all the links, multimedia, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Dr. Kathleen Waller is an author and academic who loves to play with the interdisciplinary, international layers of fictions.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

Visit The Matterhorn on Substack for all the links, multimedia, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Dr. Kathleen Waller is an author and academic who loves to play with the interdisciplinary, international layers of fictions.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

Visit The Matterhorn on Substack for all the links, multimedia, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Dr. Kathleen Waller is an author and academic who loves to play with the interdisciplinary, international layers of fictions.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

Visit The Matterhorn on Substack for all the links, multimedia, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Dr. Kathleen Waller is an author and academic who loves to play with the interdisciplinary, international layers of fictions.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

Visit The Matterhorn on Substack for all the links, multimedia, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Dr. Kathleen Waller is an author and academic who loves to play with the interdisciplinary, international layers of fictions.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

 https://thematterhorn.substack.com/ 

I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

Visit The Matterhorn on Substack for all the links, multimedia, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Dr. Kathleen Waller is an author and academic who loves to play with the interdisciplinary, international layers of fictions.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

Visit The Matterhorn on Substack for all the links, multimedia, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Dr. Kathleen Waller is an author and academic who loves to play with the interdisciplinary, international layers of fictions.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

 I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

Visit The Matterhorn on Substack for all the links, multimedia, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Dr. Kathleen Waller is an author and academic who loves to play with the interdisciplinary, international layers of fictions.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

 I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

Visit The Matterhorn on Substack for all the links, multimedia, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Dr. Kathleen Waller is an author and academic who loves to play with the interdisciplinary, international layers of fictions.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

 https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

Join me on The Matterhorn for all the links and to join our conversation -

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

how to layer stories with ideas, culture, places, and texts ⬩ podcast and original fiction from author and academic Dr. Kathleen Waller

Join me on Substack for all the links and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Patrons are invited to join our private chat. Additionally, all can share ideas on Substack Notes.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/about

Join us on Substack at The Matterhorn for all the texts, extra links, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Additionally, we can share ideas on Substack Notes. This first season of the podcast was migrated from Podbean so the articles are separately in the Matterhorn archives.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

Join us on Substack at The Matterhorn for all the texts, extra links, and a transcript as well as to join the conversation. Additionally, we can share ideas on Substack Notes. This first season of the podcast was migrated from Podbean so the articles are separately in the Matterhorn archives.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

I’m an author and academic with over 20 years teaching experience. I’m interested in the nuances of truth and how culture can empower us all.

Part of the Summer Travel series

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/p/2-whales 

YOGA CULTURE

THE MATTERHORN

Today's post (live on Aug 24, 2023)

https://drkathleenwaller.substack.com/p/89884fba-5cb6-4d71-8623-8b85d37dd02d

YOGA CULTURE

THE MATTERHORN

Today's post: https://drkathleenwaller.substack.com/p/4616f909-076e-48f1-ba0c-7ab0bc88af90

The Sea on Substack: https://thematterhorn.substack.com/p/1-the-sea 

The Matterhorn (free signup): https://thematterhorn.substack.com/about 

Links:

Not That You Asked - https://tomfish.substack.com/about

Guest post - https://thematterhorn.substack.com/p/xvi-london-diaries-not-your-usual

Dolphin https://tomfish.substack.com/p/ireland-diaries-a-dolphin-dilemma

Naples https://tomfish.substack.com/p/italy-diaries-escape-to-ischia

People do live in the palace in Split! https://travelnotesandbeyond.com/inside-diocletians-palace-the-living-heart-of-split/#:~:text=A%20UNESCO%20Heritage%20Site%20since,%2C%20cafes%2C%20hotels%20and%20houses.

Culture of the Everyday https://thematterhorn.substack.com/p/xiv-the-culture-of-everyday-life

The Matterhorn https://thematterhorn.substack.com/about

The Matterhorn on Subtack

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/about 

Kate is also a mother of two and writes specifically about the narratives of 20th century women writers and the ways these intersect with current culture.  She is particularly interested in the ways in which women's narratives continue to inform conversations around gender, parenting, and feminism.'

Links for episode:

Kate Jones’ Substack publication --

https://anarrativeoftheirown.substack.com/about

& Wife.Mother.Other -- https://anarrativeoftheirown.substack.com/p/wife-mother-other

“Mothering” on The Matterhorn –

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/p/mothering 

Rebecca Mead on the Sandler article

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/writers-and-the-optimal-child-count-spectrum

NYT on Julia Briggs’ biography of Virginia Woolf https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/books/review/yes-virginia.html

Helke Sander

1978, West Germany

The Matterhorn on Substack: https://thematterhorn.substack.com/about 

https://www.umass.edu/defa/film/6511

https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC29folder/RedupersKatzman.html

https://mubi.com/films/the-all-around-reduced-personality

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1532413/

Sign up for free: https://thematterhorn.substack.com/about 

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/p/parenting 

Terry has spent his career in education, first as a teacher of Economics, then as a teacher of Computing, followed by spells in a government body, local authority and independent consultancy. He’s been a freelance writer in the field of education since 1989, and also writes about education, literature, writing and anything else that takes his fancy.

Workshop : https://www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/writing-the-oulipo-a-taster 

What is Oulipo? Via Poetry Foundation  

The Guardian on Oulipo

Origins of Experiments in Style on Terry Freedman’s newsletter: Eclectecism: Reflections on literature and life 

Examples from Terry's newsletter

Further examples 

The Matterhorn on Substack: https://thematterhorn.substack.com/about 

Currently showing at the Tate, London

The Matterhorn on Substack: https://thematterhorn.substack.com/about

Cildo Meireles: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/cildo-meireles-6633/cildo-meireles-interactive-art

Babel, 2001: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/meireles-babel-t14041/audio-description-babel

Bruegel painting: https://www.khm.at/en/objectdb/detail/323/

City of Glass: https://www.themodernnovel.org/americas/other-americas/usa/auster/city/

Germany’s potential English addition: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/10/germany-labour-shortage-english-second-official-language

Artist website: http://www.jacquelineleung.com/

Spotify page: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1kO7vpNmpKbsgBF9H3BQUb?si=ST-DOcE7Tk6nDC2l34MYdw&nd=1

The Matterhorn: https://thematterhorn.substack.com/about

Tell Me I'm an Artist, by Chelsea Martin

Written and directed by auteur Peter Strickland 

Starring Toby Jones

Subscribe for free to The Matterhorn: https://thematterhorn.substack.com/about 

Links: 

https://mubi.com/films/berberian-sound-studio

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/how-peter-strickland-discovered-peter-tscherkassky

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrcpfwIkcoM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brYfT42tDh8

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/feb/15/berberian-sound-studio-review-donmar-warehouse

http://virgil.org/dswo/courses/novel/wilde-lying.pdf

I've been dying to see these shows and finally got to this week. Here's my 10 minute take on the shows. 

The Matterhorn on Substack: https://thematterhorn.substack.com/about 

Wayne Thiebaud at Fondation Beyeler

https://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/wayne-thiebaud

Born in Ukraine: The Kyiv National Art Gallery in Basel

https://kunstmuseumbasel.ch/en/exhibitions/2022/born-in-ukraine

Major museums around the world are quietly recategorizing works from Russian to Ukrainian

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/ukrainian-art-reclassification/index.html

Links: 

Everything Everywhere All at Once

RogerEbert.com article about Michelle Yeoh

Chinese Laundry film 

Shaolin Soccer film 

Today, I’m reading The Phone Call (Everyday Performances) from November 2022. It’s one of my personal favorites, possibly because of the Keislowski film I discuss. I’m recording it today because I’m also working on something about Paul Auster that will go live next week and I talk about one of his early works here.  

The Matterhorn on Substack

Photo by Mike Meyers on Unsplash

This is a voiceover recording of an article I published in 2022, first in Better Humans and then on my Substack page. This link to the article has further references.  

I'll be recording some of the favorite posts as podcasts and there are conversations with several writers and artists coming very soon.

You can sign up here for The Matterhorn on Substack. 

Photo by Fran on Unsplash

Building a community of truth-seekers who have fun with texts & ideas. This podcast investigates the intersections of arts, culture, and writing that tell us more about ourselves and our world. 

Get in touch!

kathleenw6@gmail.com   

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_matterhorn_magazine/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tournerlesmots 

Music by MarkJuly on Pixabay