Collective Experience in Fiction | Episode 45

The Matterhorn with Dr. Kathleen Waller

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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