The Matterhorn with Dr. Kathleen Waller Truth in Fiction: how to layer stories with ideas, culture, places, and texts.

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




Get full access to The Matterhorn: truth in fiction at thematterhorn.substack.com/subscribe

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



Get full access to The Matterhorn: truth in fiction at thematterhorn.substack.com/subscribe

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 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)




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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



Get full access to The Matterhorn: truth in fiction at thematterhorn.substack.com/subscribe

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. Please consider adding a quick star rating on the other players to help my reach.
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)




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Let's Do This brings you bite-size ideas for your own creative work based on the theme of the show this week.
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/


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