We’re taking a short break from the podcast and my serialized novel these two weeks. This week, I bring you my literary exploration of SNOW, published at this time last year. Next week, I’ll be sharing my response to a great initiative from which you can read about here.

Happy solstice!

Welcome to The Matterhorn! Stay tuned for the new direction of this project over the next couple weeks.

🎙 This post is also a podcast - here’s a link to Apple if you prefer.

Thanks for joining me here! We would love to hear from you in the comments.

The fiction writer and all of us

All novels, I would argue, deal with the concept of memory. Even an author whose fiction is highly imaginative or supernatural works from memory of their own perceptions of reality. Our worldview, the way we form characters and opinions, and the way we create scenes come from experiences or responses or sensory observations.

We can consider these ideas in the scope of phenomenology, that is “the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view,” according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I once reviewed a very interesting book on the topic within the scope of modern art. Here’s a slightly lengthier description, although I recommend visiting the Stanford page if you’re encountering it for the first time:

The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from, and related to, the other main fields of philosophy: ontology (the study of being or what is), epistemology (the study of knowledge), logic (the study of valid reasoning), ethics (the study of right and wrong action), etc.

But the way we experience the real world is open not only to our initial perspectives but also to our memory’s filtering and shifting of these experiences. In that sense, our worlds are formed from the now, the interpretation of the past, and the projection of the future.

Yoga Culture

Writing and Embodying Consciousness

Welcome back to Yoga Culture’s Yoga & Writing, everyone. I’ve also recorded this week’s post on my Matterhorn podcast as a preview a couple weeks ago, which you can c…

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3 years ago · 16 likes · 25 comments · Dr. Kathleen Waller

A couple of novels I read recently made me consider especially the function of memory in writing fiction and what memory has to do more broadly with collective identity shared through writing.

Personal identity and memory are, for many thinkers, necessarily linked. In “Morals, Not Memories, Define Who We Are,” Bobby Azarian first quotes the often accepted understanding of the link between memory and identity: “According to [John] Locke’s “memory theory”, a person’s identity only reaches as far as their memory extends into the past. In other words, who one is critically depends upon what one remembers. Thus, as a person’s memory begins to disappear, so does his identity.”

However, the article goes on to explain the way research has shown a different side of identity:

Fortunately, science appears to suggest that being robbed of one’s memory does not equate with being robbed of one’s identity. A new study has found that “who one is” is largely defined by one’s moral behavior, and not by one’s memory capacity or other cognitive abilities. Thus, although Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases may powerfully impact the mental functioning of individuals, sufferers can find some solace in the fact that substantial memory deficits—when unaccompanied by changes in moral characteristics—seem to have no effect on how others perceive “who you are.”

What are the implications for writers? Well, if writing plays with memory as ideas, including morals and philosophical reflections, then the writing itself may represent an individual more than their personal memories.

Their memories also become blended with these ideas to become part of a collective identity once they are published and read. It is no longer necessary to remember; a collective memory is formed of many peoples, texts, and forms of language (including visual or architectural, for example) that represent identity in a more abstract and interconnected way.

Cultures and subcultures form over time in this way. And then there is the collective identity of humanity, also dependent on an interpretation of memory.

These four novels investigate concepts about memory and identity, helping us to paradoxically let go of the need to document and hold onto every single piece of our personal histories in order to be ourselves.

Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police and the fear of disappearance

We are fascinated, too, by disorders of the mind. But perhaps more than malfunctioning, we fear loss.

Amnesia, dementia, Alzheimer’s…these are terrible diseases that we see in literary texts. There are many texts that explore these issues, such as the films Memento, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and The Father. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a book by neurologist Oliver Sacks describing in narrative form some of his patients, often dealing with issues related to memory loss. It is a touching book, at times funny and other times sad.

In Ogawa’s novel, the entire population of a Japanese island loses memory of items that disappear. The Memory Police ensure that any trace of the items is destroyed and any people who remember are taken away, likely to be destroyed as well.

The novelist-protagonist and her editor, someone who does remember and therefore must be kept in hiding, attempt to preserve memories through her language. This doesn’t mean that she describes exactly what she sees or what is happening. Rather, fictions she creates capture identity of an island and a people that is fading away. As even bodies begin to disappear, the need to preserve this language is even stronger.

There are early discussions of the need to preserve the novels, even though people are no longer reading them. They rest with yellowing pages in bookstores and the “old man” keeps the protagonist’s books safely, “forever,” afraid that if he reads them, then they will be over.

Even as it is difficult, she perseveres: “I continued with the task of writing strings of words that made almost no sense.” At one point, novels disappear, and she must throw away and burn her books, echoing many other book burning dystopias. But she keeps writing: “‘If I go on writing stories, will those memories protect me?’ / ‘I know they will.’”

Does the loss of cultural space lead to the loss of language that once inhabited that space? Do the memories of identity formed in such spaces cease to exist?

It seems to be the question that Hong Kong poet Leung Ping-Kwan (Ye Si in the Mainland) asks in “An Old Colonial Building”: “Might all the ruins put together present / yet another architecture?…So what’s left are fragmentary, unrepresentative words, / not uttered amidst the buildings of chrome and glass, but beside / a circular pond riddled with patterns of moving signs.” He’s talking about the historic center of The University of Hong Kong, a place that continued to host learning and ideas, literary revelations through the Japanese Occupation and later the Handover1.

Antonio Muńoz Molina’s To Walk Alone in the Crowd and the experience of past and present living side by side in the layers of the city

Antonio Muńoz Molina’s novel To Walk Alone in the Crowd2 has little narrative and a lot of philosophical musings as well as mini narratives, such as running away from terrorism in Nice, reconnecting with a lover, and many walking journeys. Molina blends his own past and present and that of the city itself, also blending fiction and fact, into a reflective excursion through space and time.

The book weaves through memories and movement in places, as if a dream, but also so real in that it is the way we experience our worlds. He speaks of hauntings in the city spaces like invisible photographs being taken, discussing Baudelaire and Benjamin in Paris (for example, pp. 275-7, 326) and Poe in the Bronx (p. 382+) as well as Melville in Manhattan (p. 256+). He also speaks of “trying on a new identity” (p. 71) as if the movements in places allows such an act as one’s own experience blends with the collective memories of that place.

One section discusses a personal house move and all the items connected to memory going into boxes, including things he “did not remember keeping,” such as “drawings that my children made when they were little; telegrams from a not-so-distant time when one still sent such things;…keys to unknown doors” (p. 77). The experience bombards him with moments from the past that seem to have moved quickly and mysteriously.

Later he says: “Memory betrays us” as a box falls to the floor, emptying its contents. There, the items he collected in the wake of his father’s death reach him “as if by sheer chance from an archaeological site” (p. 78). It is as if he is aware that his own items will one day be haphazardly thrown in a box to study as specimen of time past, forgotten.

When you encounter a person from a different time in your life, you likewise recall not only your memory of them but your memory of your self at that time in the past. Or, perhaps worse, you only have a hazy memory of who you were then: “He was someone I knew, after all, someone with whom I had a relationship, even if I couldn’t remember that earlier life anymore, that pristine time, never to return, of a nascent vocation, the joy and the uncertainty of all beginnings” (p. 179).

The narrator has a hard time approaching the old friend due to a feeling that the old relationship and their former selves were “mummified.” But at the same time, those frozen selves are unattainable, as if sealed off, elusive. In this case and in many other parts of the novel, it doesn’t matter so much who he was exactly or how he’s changed; rather it’s more the fact that it happens (to all of us) and that those fragments show up also in our writing. There is an awareness that the former self is at play in the writing, and at times it is the persona that is conjured by the writer.

Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House and disassociating memory from the self

Honestly, I had a hard time connecting to the characters in this book even though I' loved Egan’s earlier work, especially A Visit from the Goon Squad. However, I was fascinated by the book and found the ideas as well as the structure compelling and clever. I guess you could say I enjoyed exploring the book more than actually reading it.

In this dystopian narrative, people download memories, as if freeing up more space in their brains. Own Your Unconscious is a business set up to allow you to access your memories and exchange them with other people. One of the issues, of course, is that the way we experience memories isn’t like a documentary. While there may be pros to remembering correctly, which we are inclined not to do, remembering in a faulty manner is part of our unique consciousness as well as our imagination and creativity.

So if we download memories to access like information on a computer database, we lose its function as a an integral part of ourselves. We begin to look at it like an outsider and feel confusion about a sense of self.

We experience the effect of the “Consciousness Cube” on those who wear its sensors, allowing access to one’s own memories as well as trades for others. Roxy revisits a trip to London with her family and is confused by the motivation she discovers from her father’s perspective: not pride but ‘education.’ However, she has a lot of “satisfaction” from these particular memory trips, but then ponders the effect on her self. Similar to Muñoz’ character above, Roxy attempts to rediscover a younger version of herself from her past:

The movie she's longed to see of her young self in London is the one she just watched in that flurry of memories dislodged by the upload. What more does she need? How could revisiting that time in its unfiltered state improve upon the story her memory has made? What if, like those vile moments inside her father’s mind, the truth disappoints?

Roxy understands now why Chris Salazar opposes even the most private, limited use of Own Your Unconscious. The logic of this process pushes out. She feels it as a natural force, a current drawing her consciousness beyond the limits of her self into a wider sphere. To converge, to be subsumed — how she longs for this! (pp. 157-8)

Roxy follows the trial by quickly allowing all her memories to move into the portal: “The whole of her past whirls through a portal and vanishes onto a separate sheet of graph paper” (p. 158).

When we write and document memories to be shared with others, we are filtering what is shared and remembering a human, faulty way. We are creating and imagining. This is why the line between memoir and novel can be easily blurred. But as we write these memories, they are not erased from inside our minds. On the contrary, they might be enhanced by considering juxtapositions or growth.

Do we already allow certain types of memory to exist in portals instead of ourselves? Take the way we learn. Schools focus more on how to learn and ways of thinking now rather than facts and details, or the system of rote learning. This allows us to access many facts and details in computers (or books or phones…) and then process and use the information, hopefully, for good. In reality, having some accessible knowledge allows one to more easily form an argument and consider what further research one will conduct to reach into new depths of understanding. While there is great benefit in learning this way, it’s about balance.

Is it not the same with our personal memories? We have long used photographs and journals or other resources to remember what happens in our lives. Then videos and digital photographs added more memories to that list. Facebook (etc.) made some of these memories into collective, accessible forms (although filtered). Some details — even objects — bring us joy and understanding as we remember, or allow us to reflect on pain we have gone through and the meaning of that pain to ourselves. But just like with learning, it is a balance. It would be overwhelming to replay one’s entire life experience; conversely it would be frightening to lose these memories as a part of ourselves that we would only occasionally access.

Annie Ernaux’s Happening and novels of the quasi-real

Let’s stick with the idea of collective memories while we consider this courageous story about an abortion from Annie Ernaux, written in 2000 under the French title L’événement3. The story is a form of autofiction, quite popular in France, where memoir and novel lines are blurred. In this tale, Ernaux discusses in flashback an abortion from just before the legalization of the practice in France4.

After already diving into a few doctor’s visits and the humiliation they made her feel while at the same time asking about her male classmates at The Sorbonne as if networking, she tells us why she writes the book:

If many novels describe an abortion, they don’t go into details in the way it happens exactly. Between the moment that the girl discovers she is pregnant and that when she is no longer, there is an ellipses (or a gap). In the library, I researched the term “abortion.” There was nothing there except for medical reviews.

One can go further in fiction because reality is too painful. Ernaux deals with a collective idea - that of what abortion is and means - alongside a moment in history (repeated) - and the way it impacts the individual. This is like the genre of quasi-real films, pseudo-documentaries that allow us to go deeper into private lives in order to understand a real-world situation, like illegal immigration or what it means to be part of a specific subculture.

Ernaux also writes books labeled as memoir in addition to autobiographical fiction. Some of the best novelists have written memoir, blurring the lines in their fiction and making us supremely aware of the role memory plays as they write. Orhan Pamuk, Paul Auster, and Joan Didion are some of these writers.

In a recent interview with Philosophie Magazine, Ernaux discusses the way she blends memoir into novel, although this is not so uncommon in French novels, and the way she uses the body as a collective. She talks about her own experience, for example with abortion and pregnancy and the way her body is also one of all, of humanity. She doesn’t mean others should control it; on the contrary, we must care for all bodies as if they are our own. She discusses also ‘saving herself’ as an individual through writing as a way to also work toward ‘saving the entire whole,’ or humanity itself.

This idea is in contrast to Egan’s dystopia; the collective is not something that is lost and swallowed up by AI. Instead, it is of the body, supremely individual, and yet a responsibility for all to protect. We share our memories through our collective physical experience in the world.

Ernaux’s experience, in the book at least, is one that leaves her in grave danger and also exposes the assumptions those she encounters has about ‘educated’ women and those who are not. The character chooses not to tell interns at the hospital mocking her that she is also a ‘student’, which surprises a nurse who later tells her she would have better treatment if she simply told the doctors so at the start. She reminds us this can happen to anyone. While there are many who judge her along the way, a woman who performs the operation is viewed as a kind of hero.

Ernaux tries to take something positive from the experience and sees it as a collective human one (p. 112):

My literature students occasionally asked why we read so many books that ended in death. Because, I said, not only can we learn from tragedy, but death is part of life. To understand life and humanity, we must read about it all in complete. Ernaux, without dying herself or killing off the fictionalized version of herself, allows us to experience a death within her own body. It’s not one she wishes on anybody else, but one that can be experienced through her writing to allow us to feel more collective responsibility, much more than empathy alone.

Other literary considerations

• Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer and the ghostly memory of collective trauma mixed with personal experience and discovery (slavery in the US)

• Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close — similar ideas with a very different context (9/11 NYC) and the personal pain of losing a parent as a child. From the start:

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad’s voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of “Yellow Submarine,” which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d’être, which is a French expression that I know.

• Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and the concept of making individuals visible through literature who have been overlooked. The novel begins:

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids--and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

• Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and cultural memories mixed with the familial that help us consider politics. Also an exploration of the way twins remember differently and therefore become different people. From page 5:

In those early amorphous years when memory had only just begun, when life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and Everything was Forever, Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as Me, and separately, individually, as We or Us. As though they were a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities.

Now, these years later, Rahel has a memory of waking up one night giggling at Estha's funny dream.

She has other memories too that she has no right to have.

She remembers, for instance (though she hadn't been there), what the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man did to Estha in Abhilash Talkies. She remembers the taste of the tomato sandwiches--Estha's sandwiches, that Estha ate--on the Madras Mail to Madras.

And these are only the small things.

• Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the memory of englightenment and time spent with a loved one, his son who would die only five years after publishing this memoir of their journey. From page 289:

Romantic reality is the cutting edge of experience. It’s the leading edge of the train of knowledge that keeps the whole train on the track. Traditional knowledge is only the collective memory of where that leading edge has been. At the leading edge, there are no subjects, no objects, only the track of Quality ahead, and if you have no formal way of evaluating, no way of knowing where to go. You don’t have pure reason—you have pure confusion. The leading edge is where absolutely all the action is. The leading edge contains all the infinite possibilities of the future. It contains all the history of the past. Where else could they be contained?

• Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “Funes, his Memory” and the voices and languages of the dead, as well as the idea that a man with many languages might contain deeper or more far-reaching memories

I sought ideas about this post in the early days of Substack Notes and was amazed at the response from other writers and readers with texts or ideas. Here it is:

Through this post, from and I connected to share complementary posts. Please check out her work on memory last month —

Leila Ange: "A landslide of memories"

So what do you think about memory and novels? Are the memories embedded in the layers of narration personal or collective? As they are written, whose memories do they become? What other literature speaks to you specifically about memory?

Leave a comment

I’ll pick up with several of the topics mentioned today in the first few podcasts of the new season on The Matterhorn, including PK Leung/Ye Si’s poetry, the quasi-real, and mapping literary dialogues. Thanks for reading today’s post.

Welcome to The Matterhorn: intersections of literature & art! I investigate ideas through the arts with a cultural studies lens.

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How do clothes tell the stories of culture and society? When is fashion a symbol of or catalyst for change?

*Apologies: most of the links today are from NYT which has a paywall after 10 articles. Most can access through their local library if so inclined.

Just in recent years, we have seen fashion symbols of ideas and protest, as well as debates of representations of cultures and bodies through clothing.

The #metoo movement brought knit pink pussyhats and actors wearing black to the Academy Awards. Rainbow-wear is synonymous with Pride and white vests “became a symbol of queer identity.” Black Lives Matter quickly made T-shirts to celebrate the cause.

Then there’s controversy over garments like the burkini, crop tops, and the changing nature of office wear since the pandemic. The founder of the mini skirt, Mary Quant, died earlier this year. Her frock evoked a freedom for women, but one that even decades later is not always acceptable. Others might not consider trends that expose bodies to be freedom at all. However, our journalist subject today said that Quant “freed the female leg. We owe you.” in her RIP tweet for the designer.

How do clothes speak about ideas, about politics? Beyond the issues on the creation of clothing itself, such as sweat shops and representation in designers, the sartorial choices we make form a discourse like that of other literature and art forms. The difference is that it’s something we can share or confront people with as we walk down the street.

Vanessa Friedman

If you want to understand fashion on a deeper political level, the one to follow is Vanessa Friedman, fashion director and chief fashion critic of The New York Times since 2014.

Friedman has a lot of hot takes. Even if you’re not into fashion, you might find her writing compelling and intersecting with some of your other interests. Sure, she also oversees reviews of the aesthetics of the fashion worlds and the direction of trends, for example. But in addition, and in particular her own writing, often moves into a zone of fashion-as-text or reading the social and cultural in the fashion world.

I had come across her work casually over the years in places like Financial Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, and Vanity Fair where she had worked previously. When Friedman was studying at Princeton, she had hoped to become a fiction writer. However, she quickly started as a freelancer in her native New York before working at The Economist and FT in London, then eventually moved back to New York for her current role.

About five years ago, I was looking for a non-traditional literary body of work to teach my high school students and discovered her work rather freshly. Oh, I realized, she’s really got something to say! As we looked at her oeuvre together, the students were able to discover ideas through her writing as well as ideas about writing itself.

Her versatility takes her fashion articles to places like the NBA draft, ChatGPT and Apple’s Vision Pro, and museum shows. She is (still) extremely prolific considering her job as director and editor.

Events

Many articles move into the symbolic, even literary, reading of fashion choices at political events. In “Kaitlan Collins, in a White Suit, Takes on Trump,” Friedman considers the way Collins “dressed for the arena” during her CNN interview with Trump. Framed within a discussion of other White House and US government female fashion choices like the bright colors of Nancy Pelosi and white suit of Melania Trump, Friedman understands her subject: “As Ms. Collins is both a former White House correspondent and the co-host of a morning show, where how you appear and what colors you wear is actually part of the job, there’s little doubt she understood the import of what she was doing. Or donning.” She goes on to explain the female power pantsuit “separated [Collins] from her subject to start” as a purposeful choice that “align[ed] with history.”

Similarly, Friedman looks at choices of royals at events in relation to traditions and modern symbolic statements. Specifically in regards to the British royalty, she has many things to say. In “Coronation Fashion: Queen Camilla, Princess Catherine and Clothes Full of Meaning,” the fashion critic considers layers of meaning across generations. The article begins: “Is there any pageant of state more chockablock with symbolism than a royal coronation? Almost every detail, from the crown itself to the ‘bracelets of sincerity and wisdom’ presented to the new monarch, is redolent of meaning.” From antique jewelry to an Alexander McQueen dress, the ubiquitous symbols of dress were both ornate and purposeful.

Everyday life

Friedman also discusses fashion of the everyday. She gives advice for travel and discusses the impracticality of white sneakers. She considers how much skin one should show in certain situations and fashion’s relationship with age.

In response to a reader’s question, Friedman also discusses her response to the all-important question: “Do Yoga Pants Qualify as Real Pants?” Ah, yoga pants. This will be a topic of discussion on the Yoga Culture podcast! There’s actually a ton to discuss here.

In a discussion of changing wardrobes in the workplace, the critic writes:

But let’s be honest: Yoga pants are not pants. Pants are there to reshape the body in some way. To tailor it into a different silhouette — straighter, longer, more flowing — in the eyes of the watching world. To provide a modicum of protection or social camouflage. Yoga pants, on the other hand, are much more about revealing the body in some of its glory. And revealing the body in the workplace or on the street is a complicated decision.

She then looks to another fashion expert to explain the way to find ‘yoga-like pants’ that can be worn in some situations and accessorized with certain types of shoes and tops for things like travel or errands. Of course, you don’t have to take her advice. But it’s interesting to examine the considerations one might take and the way your choice might be perceived.

World politics and protest

In a discussion of the head scarf, Friedman asks the philosophical question in “What Freedom Looks Like”: “Is it fashion's responsibility to ease acceptance of different identities; to foster tolerance and understanding – or to promote a specific aesthetic expression of liberty?" Rather than come down with a firm opinion, she investigates the debate with the fashion world which is closely linked to media conflict in France as well as, of course, money (what sells).

Friedman has looked at the way designers used Black Lives Matter as a springboard for their own ideas on the catwalk. She looks both at what she says and what the designers tell her they want the audience to see. This is not always the same, but it’s the case for all art. She considers the way fashion can help us celebrate movements of society rather than push for a change themselves.

Similarly with the #MeToo movement and #TimesUp era, Friedman has looked at fashion especially on the red carpet that has made a statement either in protest or celebration. Many fashion publications have discussed this topic, such as Vogue who decided they were tired of black-clothing protest and made a plea: “Why not celebrate the strength and courage of those brave women who are speaking up and speaking out by donning the signature colors of the suffrage movement?” After all, protest shouldn’t subdue the people who are looking for freedom. Additionally, Friedman published an article specifically looking at the way models are treated in the industry in relation to safeguarding.

A final political article I’ll mention here was in relation to the Hong Kong protests. In “The Color of Protest,” Friedman relatedly considers black clothing. She begins:

Imagine a world where you couldn’t wear black.

Where would that leave the beatniks and the goths? The Audrey Hepburn wannabes? Where would it leave the fashion folk, and all the social and cultural groups that have seized on the color as an identifier thanks to its long-term associations with … well, take your pick … darkness, existential angst, artistic endeavor, intimidation, obscurity, rigor, efficiency, mystery, depression and sophistication?

Where would it leave the protesters?

At one point, Hong Kong banned the import of black clothing in an attempt to thwart protesters’ uniform. She discusses the history of black as protest from Queen Victoria to the Black Panthers in addition to the #TimesUp red-carpet gowns.

But, Friedman argues, black is not necessary. Any color can unite a group in a common idea. The point is in using fashion choices to make a unified statement and an overwhelming sea of opposition that is as visible as it is audible.

Fashion is unique in its everydayness: we can wear symbolic colors, printed ideas, and aesthetic trends to say something about ourselves or the world we live in. We can also choose to blend in or pass in various situations based on our clothing choices. Even jeans at the workplace can be a form of protest. It might be useful to consider what one is protesting against or what (in policing) one is hoping to suppress.

You might also be interested in a recent post on “The Gaze” on my other publication, which investigates the direction of our regard in the arts, literature, and yoga. I think it has implications for the way Friedman writes about fashion as text.

Yoga Culture

The Gaze

Welcome to YOGA CULTURE’s Yoga & Writing! Here, we have discussions and share ideas about the crossroads of yoga and writing practices. Move Your Mind brings you some…

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3 years ago · 24 likes · 24 comments · Dr. Kathleen Waller

Welcome to The Matterhorn: intersections of literature & art! I investigate ideas through the arts with a cultural studies lens. You can check out the podcast here with links to Apple and Spotify. For more on writing, yoga, and culture, please visit my other Substack called Yoga Culture.

Thanks for joining me here! I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

What does your clothing say about you?

Fashion is just…clothing, right? I mean we go to the shops in person or online and choose something and put it on. We might consider the purpose of the clothing in terms of comfort or appropriateness. We might consider the way a color or fit flatters our bodies. We might enjoy trying new trends and keeping up a current edge on culture.

I am certainly no fashionista or fashion expert, but I am interested in the way clothes change over time, the way they make us feel, their cultural origins, and the debates about the impact of fashion world, such as the environmental impact of micro-seasons and fair wages and working conditions for workers.

I also think fashion can be fun. It’s one of the ways we can play with aesthetic or identity everyday if we choose to. I grew up in New England in the 80s and 90s, replacing my grunge-inspired daily go-tos in high school with LL Bean, Polo, The Gap, and J. Crew in college. One might call it conformity, but it was also what was available in the Freeport outlets not far from campus. Anyway, more than half my time was spent in track clothes, which I probably gave a lot more thought to at least in terms of their performance capabilities.

After many years of more professional attire, such as tailored-looking dresses, whilst teaching, I’m back to being a big fan of the band t-shirt and even the odd flannel in winter, but I also float into many categories. I like to play with the relationship between clothing and identity in this way, often moving between personas that are all real. I wrote something about this for Modern Women last year: “Trading in for a Writer’s Wardrobe: how sartorial switches help us move on.” Spoiler alert: wear what you want!

Something I mention in the article is specific items of clothing or accessory that give you writing ‘superpowers’, like my college roommate’s feather boa which she donned religiously for each paper she wrote (and aced). For , who writes about music and a lot more, it’s this fabulous jacket, which he discusses in this Note:

Relatedly, I was listening to a podcast last week that recommended to me in the comments of Writing and Embodying Consciousness on my other publication. The whole two and a half hours are worth listening to and completely mind-blowing! From approximately 13:00 - 20:00, cognitive scientist, AI researcher, and philosopher Joscha Bach discusses the concept of donning a costume to access different parts of our personalities or to play with identity as well. He speaks both figuratively and literally of the way clothes can have meaning and implications for the way we choose to live as conscious beings.

If you’re using the costume because it suits you at the time, then it’s a positive choice. Additionally, one might consider the reasons you select said costume: is it an authentic choice or one that comes from external factors? However, he argues, if those external factors are conscious elements you choose to play with and use for your benefit, then it is ok. Bach doesn’t judge the levels of consciousness he describes nor does he judge the use of costumes (or not).

I’ll add to the “Trading in…” narrative that in my purchase of multiple denim jumpsuits in celebration of jumping into my artist role, I am not alone. I’m not sure if this makes my choice more or less authentic, but I did not consider the discourse as I made my purchases. Fashion critic and lecturer Charlie Porter’s What Artists Wear1 has a chapter on denim. After discussing its “commonality,” allowing artists to “blend in” rather than stand out (p. 102), he concludes: “Even when barely there, torn, frayed and gleefully abused, denim carries its narrative power” (p. 133). I felt the power of a type of suit that was the opposite of corporate and a timeless fabric that, yes, had a narrative. I see a filmic montage in my mind as I conjure the image.

I consider sometimes the way the places I’ve lived and visited have shaped my understanding of fashion. So, I’ve lived in Milan where, at the time at least, I felt out of place if I didn’t wear high heels and lipstick to the grocery store. I’ve lived in Paris where September fashion week spills out onto the streets: magazine shoots, models walking around, visitors bringing their A-Game (or at least something expensive and noticeable). I’ve seen Lolita and Kigurumi inhabited Japanese streets and witnessed the East meets West freedom of Hong Kong street fashion2. Now in Basel, Birkenstocks, black winter parkas, and cropped fringe are king. Some of these transitions are, of course, also due to the changes in time.

I’ve considered the fashion world’s influence on the common people walking the streets, including myself. And I’ve been intrigued by the discord between fashion magazines like Vogue and real life.

Haute Couture and fashion as Art

Let’s start with a couple definitions:

Haute Couture —

French for “high dressmaking” — “Haute couture in fact means that all the pieces are constructed by hand from start to finish and they are made from high-quality fabrics and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable sewers.”

Prêt-à-Porter —

French for “ready to wear” — garments created to a standardized size that can be purchased in stores. Part of a brand’s look that is usually previewed a year before the actual sale.

Further distinction in this article from Mochni is useful.

Some fashion isn’t really meant to be worn. Ok, maybe it’s meant to be worn on the catwalk or for a singular event. Then, it often ends up in private collections to ogle at or even in museums. It is Art. Even the Met in New York has a Costume Institute, which has been renamed as the Anna Wintour Costume Center for the past decade.

Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, is synonymous with the fashion world. The September Issue is a documentary following Wintour in preparation of the 2007 September Vogue, typically a tome of fashion photography and writing.

Then there was The Devil Wears Prada, loosely based on the writer’s — Lauren Weisberger — time working as an assistant for Wintour. The intimidating British-American woman behind the sunglasses and signature bob claims: "I cannot remember who that girl is." I can’t imagine the film without Meryl Streep. Can you not see Streep uttering the same response (albeit, more in jest)?

I’ve visited a few amazing fashion shows in museums, such as the V&A and Grand Palais. What I love about seeing them in these spaces is that we can start to consider the narratives as histories continuously evolving, both personal in regards to those who wear and design the clothes and societal in the way our cultural attitudes and opinions change over time. Also, seeing the clothing in person instead of magazine means it’s 3D and the textures come alive, even though we can’t reach out and touch them.

I’ll consider a couple of fashion films soon, but today you might be intrigued to also watch the trailer for Ready to Wear from 1994, which attempted to capture the kookiness of the 90s fashion world. Even the trailer asks questions about the purpose of high fashion and if fashion is indeed art.

Fashion space

Before we actually launch our exploration into space, let’s just consider for a short moment the great Starman himself, David Bowie, and the way he used fashion to present himself to his audience. He also collaborated frequently with Kansai Yamamoto, the Japanese fashion designer who brought these ideas to life3.

NYT fashion reporter Vanessa Friedman wrote about fashion’s entry into (literal) outer space in “NASA’s New Spacesuit: It’s a Look,” where she investigates the hipness of this extremely functional clothing:

It’s not just because of its cost (the order has a “base value of $228.5 million,” according to information provided by NASA) or its technical specifications, which are extreme: Nicholas de Monchaux, the head of architecture at M.I.T. and the author of “Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo,” described it as “really less a piece of clothing than a very small building or a very small spacecraft.”

It is because, as Mr. de Monchaux said, the spacesuit is “the costume for the drama we project into space.” The way we “put ourselves into the heavens.”

I’ll come back to Friedman when we look at politics next week. She has some amazing takes. I guess some people think in this way even if it’s not truly outer space. Fashion can be loaded with symbolism or simply regal qualities. Consider the recent British King’s coronation and all the fuss that is made over any royal gathering and their fashions, both the traditions and modern choices. Or take the red carpet look at the Academy Awards and other big shows. These are statements, sometimes political, sometimes marketed, and other times purely for the joy of life that it brings to the party.

In the next few weeks, I’ll bring you articles about the iconic Yves Saint Laurent, Fashion Politics, and Fashion Fictions.

You may also want to check out a few articles from the FT Weekend’s The Art of Fashion: the literary issue: “Rare is when the worlds of fashion and fiction collide. But when they do, the results can be mesmerising.” There are articles on “the clothes Jane Austen wore” ( 👀 ), TS Eliot, James Baldwin style, and novelist-Substacker Brandon Taylor from , discussing the way his “characters often begin with an outfit.”

What’s your personal experience with fashion? Love it or hate it? Think about it at all? How does what you wear represent your identity (or not)? Have you been to a big runway or museum show? How much money do you spend on fashion (and how much space does it take in your home)?

We would love to hear from all of you! See you in the comments discussion.

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Thank you, friends!

Thanks for being here! Whether you joined us recently or you’ve been here from the start, I want to express my great appreciation for your readership. I’ve just reached 1000 subscribers this week, and I was amazed at all the kindness to mark this milestone on Notes! A great way to cap out the year.

This has become a space where I’ve been able to experiment with a lot of ideas as well as share texts and topics that have been on my mind for a while as a teacher or researcher.

As I write, I discover new things. And still further: your comments and discussion have allowed us to go even deeper. I appreciate all the personal stories, new perspectives, books suggestions, ‘likes’, feedback via email or Instagram…all of it. You have encouraged me to keep going and have the courage to try some new directions.

It’s been quite a year…

In new spaces, projects grow. I tried to go into the the year with little expectation and just see what would happen, to be ok with not knowing.

Alongside Saturday Brunch posts like this one, I changed my Tuesday Topics format from one-off conceptual posts to series, such as Jazz, Japan/Art of Zen, Paul Auster, and Parenting. And I never expected to be a podcaster, but here we go —

That’s also where my next project is taking me. Back to that in a sec.

I’ve been working on the occasionally-mentioned thriller series and other fiction in the background, but I came to enjoy the shorter writing just as much if not more in some cases. I’ve put two manuscripts aside for the moment to come back to this winter. I find that chunking projects works well for me, and I also like to let drafts sit a while to gain perspective. (I even used to do it with student writing that I would give feedback on — ‘let it rest a couple days’ I said to those seeking immediate feedback, ‘it needs space to settle.’)

Part of the reason I’m enjoying writing these essays so much is because of the community that’s built here on Substack and reaching readers directly and immediately, even if you are only reading the posts in your email. I’ve met some amazing people here and discovered fantastic writing and ideas. Some have even become collaborators through talking about our work or having them as guests on the podcast. In this solitary writing world, it’s especially good to feel that you’ve got people on your team!

I’ve had a lot of fun with this Summer Travel series as well! I’ve only hit a couple of my favorite spots so far: Istria (Croatia), Maine (USA), Rigi Mountain (Switzerland), and Transylvania (Romania) (with brief discussions of The Philippines and Hungary) as well as thinking about the sea and whales, why we travel, and borrowing from different cultures.

I like to talk about places and spaces a lot in connection to literature and the arts and will weave other places into my posts. I’ll be changing things up a little in October, including extras for my paid subscribers. Stay tuned and let me know what you’d like to read about.

What’s next?

I’ve been working on building this Yoga & Writing community here on Substack. There, we have discussions and consider the convergence of these two practices. Move Your Mind is a series of activities to start your week.

This community is also part of a cultural studies project with a podcast coming soon. I’m going to start diving into some of those ideas on the Thursday posts. It’s called Yoga Culture —

YOGA CULTURE: the story of how yoga got hot

This is the story of yoga culture: what is it, where did it come from, and where is it going? Yoga Culture takes an open-minded critical eye, looking at the good and the bad, the fun and austere, the mainstream and whacky in yoga’s popularity. Will yoga empower us all toward a more ethically-minded and peaceful future or is the modern version of the West a well-marketed lifestyle fad that will fade out with time?

The Yoga Culture Substack newsletter will have partial transcripts and extra extended interviews and behind the scenes chats. Even if you’re not into yoga, you might enjoy the cultural exploration! We’re going to talk about the stuff that is also about all culture and the conflicts and challenges it faces today, as well as the empowerment individuals can find through culture(s) and the way yoga has become a part of mainstream culture (medicine, art, ‘lifestyle’, etc.). Sign up if you’d like to stay tuned.

YOGA CULTURE
I explore the fun, traditions, controversy & nuances of Yoga Culture.
Move Your Mind gives writer-yogis something fresh to start their week.

Yoga Culture

So thanks again for being here or for joining me now! I want to especially thank the generous writers here on Substack who are recommending this publication and the readers who have been my patrons, helping to keep the paywall open for everyone. I appreciate this so much. You have been incredible in helping The Matterhorn to grow.

Next week, I’ll be back with the start of a series on Fashion and a post on Memory before the next seasonal project.

I’m fresh off a one night trip to Budapest for the World Athletics Championships. If you’re into it, you can read something I published about running last year: The Art of Running and the second installment. Or you can check out this epic Notes thread that fellow track nerd started last week. I was so inspired that I’m slipping in a short Saturday Brunch post this weekend (with a few pics of course!).

Have a great end to your summer and start to September!

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This summer, I’m posting short vignettes of places I’ve visited as part of the Summer Travel Series on The Matterhorn. It’s part of our ongoing look at culture and internationalism.

I asked about why you like to travel last month. A lot of the discussion was about keeping it local as well as the environmental benefits of such. This post is in that vein; it comes from a place I lived as a student for four years.

This weekend, I’ll be in Budapest for the Track & Field World Championships! I used to visit Budapest by train when I lived in Vienna and loved the local designers, great cafes, and gothic architecture that went along with the very real (no sugar-coating) creative people. Also the elevated walk over in Pest is magic (especially in snow).

This time, it’s a quick stop mostly for the Saturday eve finals. We’ve got finish line seats, so look for me on TV! [I’m American but happen to have Team GB official gear, so might be donning that with an American flag…it’s all the same colors after all.]

We’d love to hear from you in the comments if you’ve been to or know more about these places, or if the descriptions generate ideas and make you think of something differently. Thanks for reading! - Kate

IG for live summer updates!

Maine

Maine lives in my mind like a vivid swirling parallel world I’m always inhabiting from elsewhere. Don’t we, as writers, all have those? Imaginary intersections of places and times creating our current realities or those of our fictions.

Maine is my elsewhere. I guess it’s not my only one. Other former homes have also taken on this identity in my mind. The nature of a place and its culture move between each other to create its identity; as I inhabit them both, I, too, become a part of them. It’s easier to take pieces of culture with me than nature. Photographs and memories, instead, remind me of this natural beauty. But so do words. Those I’ve written and those of authors who take nature into their minds and allow it to flow out as language. I guess then it has already become cultural as well.

I want to consider these questions in thinking about Maine today, as well as considering any place:

What does place have to do with culture? Or, what does nature have to do with creating a sense of place? Or further still, how does nature shape society?

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Inhabiting the natural landscape

My encounters with Maine were first purely connected to nature: hiking and beach trips with my family, later camping by lakes and skiing in the mountains. I later spent four years living in Brunswick during university (and a couple of those summers living out in the boonies near Augusta at sleepover summer camps where I coached gymnastics).

College was also filled with many dives into Maine’s nature, thanks especially to my cross country coach who drove us to various woods, beaches, and (eek) steep hills to make the most of our experience there. (Thanks, Coach Slovenski!) A few times we got lost on our way to apple orchards or waterfalls or farms…but someone in the group of runners always had a team issued walkie-talkie that would eventually come into range of the vans.

Maine has a diverse landscape that attracts many nature tourists, all the way back to Henry David Thoreau who wrote The Maine Woods after several immersive trips to the state that included much interaction with the native Abnaki Indians.

Here is a beautiful quote from Thoreau’s book that investigates the way he has moved completely into nature:

I could trace the outlines of large birches that had fallen long ago, collapsed and rotted and turned to soil, by faint yellowish-green lines of feather-like moss, eighteen inches wide and twenty or thirty feet long, crossed by other similar lines.

I heard a night-warbler, wood thrush, kingfisher, tweezer-bird or parti-colored warbler, and a nighthawk. I also heard and saw red squirrels, and heard a bullfrog. The Indian said that he heard a snake.

Wild as it was, it was hard for me to get rid of the associations of the settlements. Any steady and monotonous sound, to which I did not distinctly attend, passed for a sound of human industry. The waterfalls which I heard were not without their dams and mills to my imagination; and several times I found that I had been regarding the steady rushing sound of the wind from over the woods beyond the rivers as that of a train of cars,—the cars at Quebec. Our minds anywhere, when left to themselves, are always thus busily drawing conclusions from false premises.

Although Thoreau had already famously escaped to Walden ten years earlier, this was a new level. Walden Pond, even at the time, was just a walk away from Concord Center. It’s not really the same thing. Maine still has “virgin forest” and places that are only marked by a town number rather than name for lack of habitants, as well as a bunch of others with populations less than a hundred.

(I’ll be talking more about Thoreau in Yoga & Writing next month; did you know he was into yoga?)

I had some of these experiences Thoreau describes during those cross country runs in college. Notably, on one run, a line of us ran just a couple meters away from a hidden moose. It might be surprising that a moose can hide, but they’re good at it! Seeing a moose on a run was a lot different from seeing it on the side of the road whilst driving. They are massive!

But beyond the forest and mountains (I’ll leave skiing out of today, or I would get carried away with it), there is the great coastline. In fact, there is 3500 miles of coastline in Maine! 5633 kilometers. People often say it’s as long as the equator, but it would have about 20,000 miles to go.

There are some great sandy beaches like Popham, where we also used to run each year and take Chariots of Fire style photos for the team website. Popham was also the film location of Message in a Bottle, one of those Kevin Costner romances I just can’t get myself to see, perhaps because I’m still embarrassed that for a year or so of middle school I went around saying The Bodyguard was my favorite movie.

There are also many beautiful rocky areas along the coast, often with towns created due to fishing communities. These are on islands and bays, often with small wooden homes and many colorful buoys hanging off of buildings.

Lobster culture

Now, if we move to a topographical approach, that is: nature + artificial physical features, and likewise consider landscapes created by humans, we start to see how nature has impacted culture.

In Maine, we must start with the lobster. It’s everywhere. Ok, maybe the moose is almost as ubiquitous, not just roaming freely but also on T-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers, and menus. Yes, you can eat a moose. It’s really really good. I’ve had my vegetarian moments (two years at one point), but I do try to eat as ethically-minded as possible. The Maine moose population is too large, so permits are given each year via lottery. In college, we had a “Jan term” which for me meant winter track training. Many local families would host us for meals. I was lucky one year to go to Winnie’s house, the lady who manned our field house front desk, and eat some of the moose she had hunted that year. It really was delicious. I hope this moose had a good life in the wild.

Ok, but what about the lobsters? Everyone knows about Maine lobster, right? They market it well. And it’s had a long history in this state, well before the British arrived:

Long ago, Native Americans used lobsters as bait and as fertilizer for their crops. Lobsters were so plentiful along the shores of Maine during colonial times that they were considered “poverty food” and were served to prisoners and indentured servants. (Servants eventually rebelled and listed in their contracts that they were not to be forced to eat lobster more than 3 times a week.)

Colonists began trapping lobster in the mid-1800s but it was the Rockefeller family at their summer home on Mount Desert Island and its view as a “delicacy” during WWII that made lobster into a treat.

MDI is home of Acadia National Park, where I went to camp with friends in high school, looking at the sunrise from Cadillac Mountain, supposedly the first each morning in the US. Then, again I went to camp and mountain bike at the start of my university studies as a sort of first-year bonding trip (US colleges do this kind of thing!). It’s a beautiful place but also a visceral manifestation of the divide of rich/poor in this state. It has been famously the home of the Rockfellers as well as many other rich vacationers, often from my home state (labeled as “Masshole” when touristing, even though the two were joined as one state until 1820). There is also political divide in this state. echoed in it being one of only two states that can split its electoral vote for US president.

MDI famously offers lobster ice cream at Ben & Bill’s in Bar Harbor (linked origin story). Or maybe you’ve heard of the lobster roll at McDonald’s?

While lobster may be a delicacy and less plentiful (and more expensive) than ever thanks to overfishing and climate change, back in the years 1998-2002, my college used to serve the entire student population and staff lobster at the start of the year and then again during graduation week along with their parents. It’s always smart to leave a good taste in one’s mouth when it comes to alumni giving! But also: it wasn’t so difficult or expensive for them to do. Lobster, on a good year, was still plentiful.

Additionally, when parents were in town with their credit cards, we would drive twenty minutes over the bridges to iconic Cook’s Lobster House, which felt like a different world. The tiny island villages surrounded by water were all about the lobster. The restaurant began in 1955 and has since been featured on a national Visa commercial, solidifying its stand as a part of Maine culture.

The Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland is an international annual event. It became the subject of David Foster Wallace’s article for Gourmet magazine in 2004. “Consider the Lobster” is also housed in a collection of essays under the same name.

Here, DFW tackles the complexities of animal cruelty with many a great footnote. He doesn’t have a solution. He’s both horrified by boiling these animals alive and eating them in such quantity and acknowledges the human impulse to simply ‘do it and not think about it too much.’ Of course, much of the essay is pure metaphor, although it is written for a food magazine. It’s DFW, so…

Trying to understand whether or not lobsters feel pain when they are boiled alive, goes in some deep places:

Since pain is a totally subjective mental experience, we do not have direct access to anyone or anything’s pain but our own; and even just the principles by which we can infer that other human beings experience pain and have a legitimate interest in not feeling pain involve hard-core philosophy — metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, ethics.

…

Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature’s claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming). (p. 246-248 of the book version)

[A footnote explains the legend of a ‘lobster scream’ is indeed vented steam escaping.]

So do you eat lobster or not? And should I eat it when I next go home and my parents want to bring some from the fish market?

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In addition to this debate, lobstering has made this state what it is. Here are a few further articles:

• Evidence of cultural group selection in territorial lobstering in Maine

• Maine Lobster and New England’s Crustacean Culture

• “Lobster” special in The Maine Thing Quarterly (oh, and Mainiacs love to use the homonym ‘Maine’ for ‘Main’ whenever possible, like every town’s Maine Street, for example)

• Strategies, Conflict, and the Emergence of Territoriality: The Case of the Maine Lobster Industry

• And check out fellow Substack writer ‘s article on decadent Lobster Mac n’ Cheese

  Cook & Tell

  Saltwater Summer

  Cook & Tell is a digital reboot of the foodletter my mom, Karyl, created 40 years ago, featuring vintage recipes and occasional “orts” from me. From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (July, 1983) Oh, billowing sails over rippling waves! Oh, blue-green breezes through daisies and buttercups! Oh,July! Oh, summer…

  Read more

  3 years ago · 22 likes · 13 comments · Amie McGraham

Literary histories

You might be aware that Stephen King makes his home in Maine, his native state. He also uses the setting for many of his spooky tales.

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, by Gary D. Schmidt, is a Maine-based YA novel sometimes taught in secondary schools about a whale, friendship, religion, and racism. It explores some of these small coastal towns and the homogenous nature of them as well as their inherent connection to the sea.

Another famous book that was written in Maine, in fact at Bowdoin College, my alma mater, is Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, an anti-slavery novel that some say sparked the Civil War some ten years later, mostly due to the backlash against it by slaveowners.

Bowdoin has also been home to other celebrated American authors, most notably Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter) and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. And other Maine natives from the past include Edna St. Vincent Millay and E.B. White.

There is a lot more in terms of the arts that comes from Maine, especially in its colleges and in Portland. For example, in the Portland Museum of Art. However, there is also so much artistry in the small watercolor paintings, handmade pottery, and books of poetry that one can find for sale at such places as The Lobster Festival.

I have yet to write a fiction set in Maine, but I think that if I do, it must play with this topography and interaction between culture and place. I can imagine spending a summer along the coast doing this, undoubtedly falling into cliché unless I can conjure the spirit of Thoreau and just look really closely at what’s right in front of me.

Thanks for reading! Please let us know if you have memories or a relationship with Maine you’d like to share. Or perhaps you’ve got some other related art! Links welcome.

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This summer, I’m posting short vignettes of places I’ve visited as part of the Summer Travel Series on The Matterhorn. It’s part of our ongoing look at culture and internationalism. We’d love to hear from you in the comments if you’ve been to or know more about these places, or if the descriptions generate ideas and make you think of something differently.

Thanks for reading! - Kate

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Listen to the podcast on your favorite platform.

As a follow up the my podcast version of The Sea a couple weeks ago, I’ve also recorded Whales. This was my second post for The Matterhorn last August and one with several mentions of Maine, which I’ll pick up with next week in an original post.

I also just saw more yesterday about the conflict over Japanese whale meat that I mention briefly in the essay. According to Quartz, “a sprawling trade agreement between the US and a dozen other countries—was put in jeopardy after Japanese officials told the US that a provision containing anti-whaling language was a deal-breaker.” According to the article, although not many Japanese actually eat whale meat, the government aims to support “tradition” and don’t believe other cultures should be able to impose their own on them.

Whilst recording this voiceover, I thought it felt like a good time to go back to Moby Dick and read a few of my favorite chapters. Anyone currently reading it?

We would love to hear about your own whale experiences! Let us know what you’ve seen, read, or heard.

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This summer, I’m posting short vignettes of places I’ve visited as part of the Summer Travel Series on The Matterhorn. It’s part of our ongoing look at culture and internationalism. We’d love to hear from you in the comments if you’ve been to or know more about these places, or if the descriptions generate ideas and make you think of something differently.

IG for live summer updates

*You can also listen to a preview of my article on Writing and Embodying Consciousness on the podcast:

Dracula and literary perceptions

Why are some places so ripe for literature? Why does uttering the name conjure mystery? How did Transylvania inspire Bram Stroker to write Dracula with Bran Castle as the home of his infamous vampire?

In fact, Stroker never even visited Transylvania. His ideas for the setting perhaps came from both legend and history. As Rolandia explains:

At that time, Romania was a country not known to many foreigners, mostly rural, with a strong belief in creatures of the night. A country that still preserved alive the memory of one of its most feared leaders, Vlad the Impaler. The name of Dracula has its origin in his father's name, Vlad Dracul, also known as Vlad the Dragon, a name he received after becoming a member of the Order of the Dragon. Dracula is the Slavonic genitive form of the word Dracul (Dragon), and it means Son of the Dragon. In modern Romania, drac means "devil", and this contributed to Vlad III's infamous reputation.

Although Bran is now a horrifically touristic destination as one might imagine, it is still beautiful and somehow maintains its mysterious aura despite the infinite line of foreigners teeming through it.

Like other areas I encountered in Transylvania, the natural landscape is captivating, perhaps intriguing by its raw beauty combined with castles and fortified towns.

Whatever version(s) of Dracula you have encountered over the years, you may have these feelings of terror connected to this region of Romania. The terror has been re-signified since the era of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, a real-life monster who made life difficult and dangerous for many Romanians and the previous persecutions of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, a Stalinist.

Herta Müller’s novel The Land of Green Plums as well as her essays is a great place to start to understand the effect of communism on the Romanian people. Müller won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009.

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Transylvania, Romania

Ten years ago, I visited Transylvania for three weeks. Most of the trip was a self imposed writing retreat (and solo travel) experience with a few days at the end in Sibiu at a conference put on by Societas Ethicas on ethics and migration. I spent a week each in the wonderful towns of Brașov and Sighișoara where I wrote at cafes, ran through the small streets, and talked with locals as much as I could.

First, a warning

I was visiting family members of my ex in France before traveling to Romania. They were shocked at my destination. They feared for both my things and my safety, and even encouraged me to reconsider travel there. Basically, they thought I was totally insane to be going there, especially alone.

When I first arrived and was waiting for a train in the middle of nowhere to take me from Bucharest to Brașov, I thought they might be right. But it was only because I was lost and felt like a sitting duck waiting. My fears were soon assuaged though. The more Romanians I spoke with, the more comfortable and welcome I felt. Several different hotel managers and owners told me I did not even have to worry about leaving my computer on a cafe terrace; it was exceptionally safe. Maybe I didn’t leave things quite so on display (I wouldn’t do that anywhere) but I absolutely did feel safe the entire trip.

Of course, the French I had talked with were thinking of the Romani or Roma (distinctive from Romanians) who would sometimes camp in their town. And also of course, many of the stereotypes about the Roma are just plain wrong; and many others are due to their circumstance as ostracized people.

In fact, many researchers at the conference were investigating both prejudices against Roma people in Europe and information directly about their cultural identities, families, economics, and more. In Romania, I also witnessed quite a bit of discrimination against them.

Walled cities

There is something about a walled city that feels like living in the past or on a movie set. I guess that’s why I love it: you’re immediately propelled into an imaginary world. I like to walk or run adjacent to the wall and on top (when possible) to get a full feel for the stone and its design, as if creating a full ellipsis of discovery for the time I inhabit it.

In Sighișoara, I found an inn called Pension Am Schneiderturm that was inside of the fortification of the small city. The stone kept it cool inside and the innkeeper shared his homemade liqueur and honeys with the guests alongside breakfast and apéritif.

Soren told us about the local animals, the town history, places to visit outside the town, legends, and the horrors of the past that had made his family escape to West Germany. He had fun telling tales of local vampires with a laugh, but became serious in mentioning the true terror that had been experienced on these grounds. He was proud to return to his home and proud of its way of life; he found great connection between place and culture.

One day, I took a van tour on a freshly paved road to visit Viscri, a tiny traditional village also with a fortified church. I didn’t realize it was also the home of British royalty. Romania was full of surprises.

Apparently, at least a few years ago, King Charles considered Transylvania to be his second home. He owns a traditionally restored house there and promotes the UNESCO sites and eco-tourism alike. Apparently his foundation planted over a million trees there locally.

Fresh food

Fresh food was everywhere on my trip! And a lot of vegan food as well. Often in tapas form. Somebody explained to me that all of the food was both local and naturally organic, with very few modifications or chemicals used for farming. It simply wasn’t needed with all of Romania’s fertile grounds. Apparently they were wrong; there is little organic farming and most is exported. Still, the food tasted fresh, and it was certainly local.

Additionally, Romanians of the Orthodox church eat vegan at least twice a week. Therefore, there are loads of wonderful vegetable dishes on any menu and a beautiful use of herbs and spices. Whether you are vegan or not, you can find delicious flavors which I would argue are in large part due to this reality.

And have you ever had a Romanian cabbage roll??! Sarmale often do have meat in them, like this recipe. They are fantastic. I was looking online for authentic Romanian cooking and fell short. Do let me know if you’ve got a good website or social media account for this. Although the account above seems to be a kitchen in Bucharest specifically dedicated to this fine treat.

Here in Basel, I have several Romanian neighbors who have shared parts of their culture with me, including homemade bread. They’ve made me want to explore other areas of the country.

I had planned to visit again not so long ago, but, well, the pandemic. And this is how Nosferatu opens, with the plague descending upon the people, paving the way for the tale of horror. Our recent experiences give new meaning to the century old unauthorized adaptation of Stroker’s novel.

What is your experience with Transylvania or Romania? Have you read Dracula? Do you know Romanian people or perhaps you are Romanian yourself?

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This summer, I’m posting short vignettes of places I’ve visited as part of the Summer Travel Series on The Matterhorn. It’s part of our ongoing look at culture and internationalism. We’d love to hear from you in the comments if you’ve been to or know more about these places, or if the descriptions generate ideas and make you think of something differently. Thanks for reading! - Kate

Join me on Threads

Listen to the podcast on your favorite platform.

I’ve got something slightly different for you today. As part of my podcast, I’ve gone back to record my first post here on The Matterhorn, which also happens to have a lot to do with summer travel.

How many of us go to the sea in the summer? How different is an experience at a lake or swimming pool? (I was shocked to discover that people can surf on the Great Lakes, so maybe it’s not all that different.)

Or, do some of you avoid water completely?

This summer, I’ll be at the Mediterranean and Adriatic at different times, but not the open ocean, which I think has a surreal charm. Where will you go? What are the different characteristics of these various seas and coastlines?

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Some of my most memorable sea experiences are from my time living in Hong Kong for eight years and traveling in Southeast Asia. Living on an island meant I was constantly at or on the sea: ferries to the other side of the city, quick swims after a run, Junk Boat entertainment…this constant seaside experience is probably when I really started to love the sea.

I remember several amazing little places that perhaps I’ll write about in detail sometimes. There was the tiny island near the busy climber-destination in Thailand called Krabi. Bali’s surf and yoga culture (which I’ll devote at least one episode of my new podcast project Yoga Culture to). Vietnam’s Halong Bay — sadly so touristic with trash floating on all over the water but still amazing geography and wonderful people; the trip to Sapa on the - eek - overnight train is also worth it (or at least was worth it when I was twenty-eight in 2008…). [Also, check out the affordable art galleries in Hanoi and support the local artists!]

One such destination was on a Filipino island called Bohol. I stayed in a brand new tiny local/foreign family run hotel about an hour’s drive from the airport. The tiny beach became my writing retreat for a week, and I learned about the conservation projects the owners hoped to start there. Tiny fishing boats lined the beach each day after the morning catch from locals. We ate fresh fruits, rice, and omelettes overlooking the little oasis.

And then I must write about Hong Kong itself — it’s on my list to do a month-long series. I’ve got way too much to talk about there.

I hope you enjoy the podcast version of my article and would love to hear about your relationship with the sea!

Share The Matterhorn: intersections of literature & art

This summer, I’m posting short vignettes of places as part of the Summer Travel Series on The Matterhorn. It’s part of our ongoing look at culture and internationalism. We’d love to hear from you in the comments if you’ve been to or know more about these places, or if the descriptions generate ideas and make you think of something differently.

The focus today is ‘local travel’ from my base in Basel - somewhere I can get to in less than two hours by train. On our discussion of why we travel a few weeks ago, we talked about the benefits of local travel quite a bit (especially environmental). I don’t known how long we’ll be living here, so I try to take the train somewhere new every other week or so, even if just for an afternoon. It helps that Swiss trains are amazing and if you’re local, you can buy a cheap card to go half price all year long. I read that the public transport here goes within a kilometer of every registered address in the country, which is pretty incredible if you consider all the mountainous regions!

The last time I visited Rigi was this April with my mother-in-law. We planned to do a little hike but when we got to the top with the mountain trains…it was snowing heavily and the paths were completely covered with ice! Everyone hopped off the train for about ten minutes to snap photos of ideas of distant mountains, then quickly hopped back on to catch it back down. Ah, the unpredictability of travel!

Thanks for reading! - Kate

IG for live summer updates!

Slowing down in the Swiss Alps

Mount Rigi — the Queen of the Mountains — is not especially tall (by Swiss standards) nor does it have the best ski pistes or après atmosphere. But her history gives every activity a layered subtext of culture. The routes are made slow by the original cogwheel mountain trains and allow every experience to become fully immersive.

There’s something for everyone on Rigi. In summer, there’s hiking, visiting cheese factories or farms, or paragliding for adrenaline seekers. In winter, most hiking trails can still be accessed by foot, snowshoe, toboggan, or nordic ski. The grazing pastures are covered with snow and once invisible ski trails cover the landscape.

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Summer

I first went to Rigi in the summer with a friend in town from New York. We had pre-planned our trip and the weather was unfortunately cold and wet. Worse than getting hypothermia, we worried our experience would be pointless without the famous views.

At first, it seemed so. We slowly inched our way up the mountain, enveloped by fog. While the interior of the old train fascinated us, we were more concerned about how we would actually make our way around. At the top, the cold rain pelted us in our amateur gear.

But we started out. And we found, first, so much beauty in the immediate surroundings. In the trees and the path itself. In the small plants and rocks. In the cows that we encountered up-close after hearing their bells in the fog.

And finally, the fog began to lift as we walked. So rather than find the train again, we continued on, down steep, slippery hills and around stubborn farm animals. We began to see the view that had been elusive. It was as if the entire mountain range across the lake had been held in a cache, released to us only after enough effort and patience.

Winter

My next trip was with my husband and son, this time in the winter. This time, we also had the luck of two clear, sunny days just after a small snowstorm.

We decided not to be too ambitious with our three-year-old on the first day. Jumping on and off the railway, we were able to complete several 20–30 minute hikes with him on groomed snow trails. We saw winter sports around us and other cultural pleasures: horse and carriage rides, outdoor fondue, a band preparing for Fasnacht celebrations at the train stop.

The second day, we rented a sled for 10 CHF to drag our son along the panoramic trail. We encountered cross-country skiers, snowshoers, and other hikers. Each of us greeting the others with ‘Hallo!’ or ‘Grüezi!’ or ‘Morgen!’ and a smile, something that has been lost in our cosmopolitan experience.

The views were incredible. Amazing. Sublime. They can only be described in cliché and fail miserably.

At the top, there was a marked photograph of all the mountain peaks, all visible that day. And as I read each name protruding from a tiny line, hundreds of names, I could only recognise one or two peaks.

How does one make sense of all this vastness and beauty that has not been conquered by humans?

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Intimate immensity

When on the mountain top, in the snow or atop the fog, we are protected from the dangers of the modern world — the infiltrations on our mind — we move slowly and we are present. Even in these two experiences during the global pandemic, people of different cultures and speaking different languages converge at train stops or mountain peaks. We are all again separated on our individual routes, often with no people in sight. We feel the space intimately, as if we are nothing, breathing in the world and dissipating into the universe.

As my husband says, we are all just little ducks, paddling and trying to stay afloat. The space of the vast mountains reminds us that we are minuscule. We can give ourselves over to now and to love — for nature, for ourselves, for humankind.

This ‘poetic space’ is what Gaston Bachelard calls ‘intimate immensity’ while drawing on Baudelaire’s poetry and spatial theories in The Poetics of Space (183–210). ‘Vast’ space is ‘slow and calm’; it ‘evokes calm, peace, and serenity’ (196).

Transportation transportation transportation

There are so many ways to move around Rigi and its vicinity that you might spend most of your day on transportation. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

When we took my son on the two-hour panoramic trail from Rigi Kaltbad to Rigi Scheidegg, we had the added issue of bringing our sled back to the place we had rented it. That morning from our hotel in Weggis, we took a gondola up to Rigi Kaltbad. After the walk (which took us a little longer with the kid!), we had to take a different gondola down to Klosterli, then a slow train up to change to another slow train down back to return our sled. Finally, we took the gondola back to Weggis to collect our things and get on a ferry to Luzerne, where our train to Basel left just five minutes later.

It sounds like a royal pain. However, the journey became the experience. We had no goal. We had only the movement of our feet in the snow, the view of hundreds of mountain peaks, the sway of our gondola, and time travel inside old wooden train carriages.

Historical Cogwheel Railway

In 1871, the Vitznau-Mt. Rigi cogwheel train became the first mountain railway in Europe. Its opening created excitement about the touristic area and about the capabilities of Swiss technology. Now, there are many incredible journeys up mountains in Switzerland that you can take by rail.

On Rigi, there are two main lines that go up to Rigi Kulm (the top) from Arth-Goldau and Vitznau. There are further ‘sport trains’ that run in the winter just between several stops for skiers, sledders, and anybody else who wants a chairlift alternative.

Gondolas

7 gondolas and smaller cable cars also run between destinations to help you get around and to give you some awesome views.

Ferries

Boats connect Lucerne’s main train station (right in the city centre) conveniently to Vitznau (railway terminus) and Weggis (cable car).

Bachelard through Baudelaire again understands ‘vastness’ through the ‘movement of a ship’ (193). He quotes Baudelaire on the same page to talk about this ‘ship, [a] beautiful volume resting on the waters’:

The poetic idea that emanates from this operation of movement inside the lines is the hypothesis of a vast, immense creature, complicated but but eurhythmic, an animal endowed with genius, suffering and sighing every sigh and every human ambition.

The large boat has both indoor and outdoor seating for 2nd or 1st class passengers as well as table service, including drinks and meals. After a long day of hiking in the rain, my friend and I enjoyed wine in real glasses on the outdoor 1st class patio. Though we clung to our fragile glasses over the slightly turbulent waters in our rain gear, we felt like ladies of leisure from a different century.

There are other touristic boats you can take on Lake Lucerne for several hours to different destinations or to no destination at all.

Hiking trails

As I mentioned above, there are many activities you can enjoy on Mt. Rigi. Here, I recommend you leave your skis at home, unless you want to try a classical cross country route. Rigi’s pistes are nothing compared to other ski resorts nearby, although the beginner areas may be a good option for certain members of your group.

The joy of movement at Rigi is by slow transportation or slow feet that can stop frequently and connect with the earth below them.

Summer

Hiking trails on Mount Rigi are expansive and diverse, from 20 minute wanders to hours of technical terrain. Diversions also make the hikes fun. Try to include a stop at a cheese farm or restaurant to make it memorable.

Several websites offer further photos and anecdotal details of the hikes beyond the well marked trails and maps. These include hikeanddine.com and Swiss Family Fun.

Winter

Winter hiking trails are similarly well marked and maintained. The interactive map shows what is open and what is groomed specifically for skiers or walkers without snowshoes.

Restaurants are open in the winter and most have sunny terraces to enjoy when the weather is nice. Stay warmer with hot cheese or glühwein.

Mark Twain

For American literature lovers, add some culture to your journey with the Mark Twain trail, which you can do on your own or with a guide. Twain did a three-day hike here and documented it in “A Tramp Abroad.”

There, he explains his journey, including a shortcut down the mountain on the railway:

One expected to see the locomotive pause, or slack up a little, and approach this plunge cautiously, but it did nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and went it reached the jumping-off place it made a sudden bow, and went gliding smoothly downstairs, untroubled by the circumstances.

It was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of the precipices, after this grisly fashion, and look straight down upon that far-off valley which I was describing a while ago.

Practical information

Where to stay

Hotels abound in Weggis, Vitznau, and Lucerne as well as at several stops atop the mountain. It depends on the activities you want to enjoy as well as if you have children traveling with you or not.

In the summer, we stayed at the friendly and practical city hotel in Lucerne called Hotel Central. Doubles roughly 180 CHF.

During the winter, we stayed conveniently near the ferry drop off in Weggis at Seehof Hotel du Lac. The junior suite was 240 CHF with a wonderful lake view breakfast. Besides a rather budget bathroom, we had a wonderful experience.

You can also splash out or sometimes find a good deal at the Rigi Kaltbad Spa. If you plan to use the spa anyway, which is included, the price is not so bad. You are right near the cable car, train stop, restaurants, several hiking trails, and beginner ski area about 75% of the way up the mountain. The views are priceless.

Day passes

SBB (Swiss Rail) runs deals for day passes that will take you on all trains, ferries, and gondolas in the region. The day pass works all over Switzerland but some mountain areas do not include their mountain trains or cable cars. At Rigi, everything is included so it’s a fantastic deal.

Travel connections

Lucerne is just across the lake and has a beautiful old town to enjoy as well as many lakeside restaurants. Basel or Zurich are each about an hour from there.

Other well-known ski areas, such as Wengen, Grindelwald, and Engelberg are within easy reach.

Really anywhere in Switzerland is only ever a few hours by train. You may have a few tight connections, but you can trust Swiss timekeeping to allow you all those movements without fear. Worst case scenario, the next route will take there a few minutes later or you can have a coffee and gipfel with a view while you wait.

Although there’s so much to see, try not to be in a rush.

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Works cited:

Gaston Bachelard. The Poetics of Space. Translated from the French by Maria Jolas. Beacon Press, Boston. 1994.

Mark Twain. A Tramp Abroad. 1880. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/119/119-h/119-h.htm#p305.

Originally published on Medium, February 14, 2022.

This summer, I’m posting short vignettes of places I’ve visited as part of the Summer Travel Series on The Matterhorn. It’s part of our ongoing look at culture and internationalism. We’d love to hear from you in the comments if you’ve been to or know more about these places, or if the descriptions generate ideas and make you think of something differently. Thanks for reading! - Kate

IG for live summer updates

Istria is a place I keep going back to. Do you have these places? As much as I love new discoveries in travel, going back allows one to fully relax or perhaps go deeper, discovering the tiny things that make a place what it is. The culture of everyday life. The narrow roads and paths creating labyrinths of place.

This Adriatic-lined peninsula is mostly housed in Croatia’s national boundaries but also sneaks into Slovenia and Italy. The layers of languages and histories emerge between the sharp blues, dark rocky coast, and olive groves.

If you don’t know the peninsula itself, you may know the small cities of Opatija, Pula, Rovinj…and very likely Trieste (especially if you are a James Joyce fan). Traveling the coast’s tiny roads and veering off to visit coastal towns, vineyards, or hilltop villages is a treat that can take deceptively long. It’s something we used to do before traveling with our son…who gets car sick in a very pungent way.

Now, we still go, but to a particular destination or two. We plant ourselves down for a week of reading, swimming, eating…you know, the normal boring summer stuff, that isn’t really boring at all. In our little excursions, often on foot or bicycle, we still discover new things. Today, I am sharing just a small taste and would love to hear about your experiences here.

Croatia

In my podcast conversation with Tom Fish of Not That You Asked two weeks ago, I was reminded of my love for Croatia as he spoke of two southern destinations with joy: Dubrovnik and Split. And I was also reminded why in the summer, at least, the Istrian coastline feels a little more relaxed, even if it is still crowded with tourists.

I first went to Croatia whilst living in Hong Kong. I had planned to go to a music festival with my then-boyfriend, but we broke up before the summer. I still went on the trip, just not to the festival. That summer, I made it to Zadar, Split, and Hvar, all wonderful places worth a visit. (Zadar is home to a Sea Organ and has a tiny maze-like city-island you can walk over a bridge to get to.) But I also noticed that as I traveled south, things got busier. I still have yet to make it to Dubrovnik (still busier after GOT), hoping for an off-season visit but always having trouble finding weekend or inexpensive flights during that time. It can wait! '

I’m one of these summer travelers who doesn’t want to go where the huge crowds are. That’s sort of impossible if you go to the Adriatic coastline, but there are places in Istria, the north part of Croatia, where it feels much calmer and RAW but still with the turquoise waters, grilled squid restaurants, and easy coastal lifestyle alongside beautiful stone buildings and Roman ruins.

Driving the Istrian coast

We used to drive from Vienna, along with millions of other Austrians and Germans. After the bumper-to-bumper traffic, we arrived at pristine places like the island of Krk to kickoff our summer fresh after a busy teaching year. Other times, we would start at the north, first spending a night in Ljubljana or a countryside spa in Slovenia with fresh honey on everything.

Not far up the coast from Krk is the beginning of Istria, starting with the Belle Epoque glamour of Opatija. Sure, you could say it’s lost its charm a bit. But that makes me like it more. I’m not one to want to go where everyone is going these days. Finding tracings of what once was as well as the start of reinventions and sleepy restaurants is a lot of fun. Maybe it’s less fun for the restaurant owners, but one can feel even better doing our parts for these less-visited destinations.

Then, skipping the busier Pula, we settled in somewhere on the coast a little bit farther north, either in a tent or small cabin, close enough to run by the sea in the morning.

On days we wanted something a bit different, we would drive farther to places like Grožnjan, a town up on a hill with art galleries and pizzerias. Or we could go to a vineyard or on a truffle hunt. Or see some boats in a marina. Or take a hike.

Rovinj (top photo) is also a wonderful day trip. It’s not somewhere I’d want to stay because it is tiny and touristic. However, the spiral road up to the hilltop cathedral is worth it for the view, the gelato on the way, and the little local shops for lavender, jewelry, or leather products.

Coke with red wine

Right, so that’s something that’s drunk in Istria with delight. A lot of the wine on its own is also very average, but if you’re drinking it cold by the sea, it really doesn’t matter that much. The coffee is also pretty harsh.

It’s not that there isn’t good food and drink, but it’s mostly in the pizza, ice cream, and grilled fish category. Great stuff, simple. Something I like about Istria is that although there are resorts and fancy places to go, it mainly feels very ordinary. Like an extremely foreign (to me) home away from home. There isn’t much of a fuss about things. The people I encounter are blunt but friendly. What you see is what you get.

My best memories of Istria are extremely simple:

Eating grilled squid and pizza diavola at a restaurant. Our son frolicking in the adjacent olive grove with a new friend who doesn’t speak his languages. They come squealing back: a sudden thunderstorm. Everyone moves inside the restaurant for grappa and tiramisu with local music until it passes.

Writing under the covered area by the sea with grainy coffee. Taking breaks in the sea. Waiting for my fingers to dry off, I gaze out at the incessant blue, almost losing a sense of reality.

Staying at a family’s villa. The owners come by with fresh eggs and herbs from their garden…daily. We try to sleep in the teepee in the yard, but the mosquito attacks drive us inside. We play board games like I used to as a kid in a cabin by the lake in Maine.

This year, we’ll be flying into Pula to go up the coast just half an hour, near where we had our wedding party in Vodnjan (near Poreč, where you can get boats to the islands). Oh yes, a few years ago, you could rent an Istrian villa rather cheaply. This is no longer the case! But you can still travel there for much less than other Adriatic and Mediterranean destinations. I’m hoping we get farther down the coast to Albania soon (and the national park established in part by Patagonia). But rather than look ahead to what’s next, I’m happy to enjoy what I know, finding newness through dissonance that only comes once you know a place a little more.

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I originally wanted to do a series on queer theory, gender-bending literature, and law & literature related to LGBTQIA+ issues for Pride Month — I will do it in the future! I’m working on a few other projects and also experimenting here. So this is a one off Tuesday Topic post, but I hope you enjoy it.

I guess this post could likewise fit into the parenting category of the last several weeks. If you’re not familiar with the film Paris is Burning, the main focus of today’s article, you’ll discover that it’s largely about creating alternative families.

Vogue, the word

The word vogue means something that is in fashion. But it has come to also mean a type of dancing or movement as well as to be synonymous with the fashion magazine.

The word comes from French where it also means “fashion” but also a type of “success” originally at least. The word comes from "drift, swaying motion (of a boat)" literally "a rowing," from Old French voguer "to row, sway, set sail" (15c.), not unlike the word vague, which means wave (like French New Wave cinema, or Nouvelle Vague). It makes sense that a word about the sea’s waves and rowing would be used for fashion, not only of clothing but anything that is at the peak of a wave. Furthermore, fashions come and go…and come again, much like the movement of waves.

Vogue magazine

For the 130th anniversary of Vogue magazine, the editors said this in retrospect:

Since its founding [in 1892], Vogue has never been just about the rise and fall of hemlines, but focused on cultural and societal shifts as well. For many years, the Vogue covers featured colorful “storytelling” pictures by leading illustrators that romanced “the woman of leisure” as she followed the sun, hit the slopes, and lived for the night. Once fashion photography was deemed an art circa the mid-1930s, the magazine began greeting its reader with stylized snaps of real-life beauties and professional models. Eventually it began showcasing actors (Cate Blanchett, Angelina Jolie, Lupita Nyong'o) and entertainers (Cher, Beyoncé, Rihanna)

Until magazines recently went largely online, Vogue also had a host of excellent writers. I used to suggest that many of my high school students look there for examples of great essays.

However, even in the words of Anna Wintour, “Vogue has become stale and predictable, and it has happened in spite of some of the best editors, writers and photographers in the business.” In “What’s Wrong With Vogue?,” Cathy Horyn of The New York Times explores what went wrong and comes up with the answer of web-based media.

I’ll be coming back to fashion in September, the month that Vogue’s September Issue coincides with the most important fashion shows of the year. Below is the trailer for the eponymous film and documentary that focuses as much as possible on the elusive Wintour. Additionally, other fashion documentaries may add for an interesting viewing list.

Paris is Burning and Ball Culture

Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary Paris is Burning that captures the drag scene of 1980s New York City is an important film in cinematic and cultural studies history, one that many Pose television viewers were unaware of when they first encountered Ball Culture (and vogueing outside of Madonna’s realm) on screen.

The film is available on youtube.com with Spanish subtitles if you don’t have a method of watching. (Better to pay if you can find it that way, of course.)

Why is it important? The film is a celebration of a certain articulation of queerness and the way people can form new brothers, sisters, parents, and cousins after being rejected by their own families. The documentary allows people who participated in Ball Culture in 1980s NYC, particularly in Harlem, to articulate their own dreams and desires, as well as their traumas and the fears surrounding - especially - AIDS at that time.

The ball itself is important because it embodies that celebration. At the same time, it emphasizes the need to retreat to an interior, to a particular kind of space in order to celebrate. It is a kind of acting, yes, but one that I would argue asserts identity rather than denying authenticity.

If you were to look at academic journal databases, you would find a slew of articles focused mainly on this film, including:

• "The Subversive Edge": Paris Is Burning, Social Critique, and the Limits of Subjective Agency

• Paris is Burning: How Society's Stratification Systems Make Drag Queens of Us All

• Gender/Racial Realness: Theorizing the Gender System in Ballroom Culture

• Brothers and Sisters: Sibling Loves in "Paris Is Burning"

• Performative Transformation of the Public Queer in "Paris is Burning"

The last article in the above list opens with a discussion of the way the subjects play with the idea of school, at once mocking it and yearning for it as a type of ultimate commodity:

In one of the universally ignored scenes from Jenny Livingston's 1 99 1 documentary Paris Is Burning, several subjects of the film perform the category "school." Like all categories performed in Paris, "school" puts the gender/race/class grid to work, demonstrating both the scriptedness and the uncanny, overwrought quality of a position which is incessantly naturalized in our daily media. For a few moments of the film, a young, androgynous, Hispanic male sports what is clearly a plain t-shirt, retrofit with letters that spell "YALE UNIVERSITY." The shoddiness of the imitation not only dramatizes how inescapably even consumer significations of "school" circulate out of the reach of the performers in the film - and thereby how much "school" is a project of (class) consumption - it also suggests the social overdeterminations of a category like "intelligence"; if one function of the school is to reward kinds of performance based on criteria of "merit," to produce intelligence and to reproduce conditions under which kinds of intelligence are recognized, then the uncanny faux t-shirt, worn in this context, reminds us that another function is to ameliorate social differences "coincidentally" described by race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. As Paris' performers suggest, "school" is a site of anxious performance, where the conditions of being "intelligent" run headlong into the social asymmetries reproduced by institutions of neoliberal nation-states.

It looks at the way the people of the film are constant outsiders, due to their sexuality, gender, race, class, and - here emphasized - education. The film is largely about access, or a lack thereof. But it likewise gives voices to the people Livingston gives screen-time to.

Just a couple years after the film finally aired (although filmed in the 80s), already several of the main characters had died - strangulation, heart attack…their lives were difficult. The NYT revisited what was going on already in 1993 with ‘drag’ more generally in relation to Ball Culture and the film:

Paris is no longer burning. It has burned. And not only because of the casualties. No one needs to go to a ball to see drag anymore: Dame Edna Everage has television specials, Ru Paul mugs on the covers of magazines, fashion shows feature drag acts on the runway. No one needs to go to a ball to see voguing either, not since Madonna gobbled it up, appropriating two Xtravaganzas in the process. Once mainstream America began to copy a subculture that was copying it, the subculture itself was no longer of interest to a wider audience, and whatever new opportunites existed for the principals dried up. After one show last year at the jazz club Sweetwaters, Octavia St. Laurent, for instance, returned to dancing behind glass at the Show Palace. And the balls, which had moved downtown in their moment of fame, have mostly moved back to Harlem.

More on Madonna in a moment, but for now, it’s interesting to look at the idea that a subculture’s fame could also lead to its erasure or at least correlate with it. The film’s success did not make the filmmaker “rich” but it did give her access to working on more films. Livingston understands her “privilege” despite being a female filmmaker as an educated, white artist.

Influence of Ball Culture and the film is also in the way we speak. As The Guardian investigated in 2015:

[Ball Culture’s] lexical influence is legion. As Daily Dot writer Mary Emily O’Hara pointed out: “If you’ve ever used words like ‘fierce’ or ‘shady’ or commented ‘yassss queen’ or ‘work’ on a cute Instagram pic, you’ve been speaking the language of the ball scene – likely, without ever realising where it came from.”

But even though Livingston attempted to give this voice to a subculture, the film is often met with rejection for using the participants despite the fact that the key ‘actors’ were paid against normal documentary journalistic practice. For example, a showing about ten years ago in Harlem was canceled:

Then a change.org petition was launched by the collective Paris is Burnt. It called for the cancellation of the event, blasted the film as an “anthropological foray into the lives of low-income TQPOC ballroom members”, and issued a list of demands to both the organisers and Livingston. The petition also drew a connection between the event’s all-white line-up and the rapid recent gentrification of Brooklyn: (“This is the appropriation of our narratives for the sake of entertaining a gentrifying, majority white audience that seeks to consume us and call it paying homage.”)

Perhaps if the event itself had included more authentic voices like those of the film, it would have been accepted. The only special guest was “Le Tigre’s JD Samson, a white, lesbian and genderqueer musician who has no connection to the ball scene.” Perhaps this goes back, then, to the issue of education and access. Who is put on stage? Who is given the camera? Although the Ball community was able to tell their story, it is all filtered through the lens and editing of Livingston. While her intentions may have been to support, celebrate, and also expose injustice, would it have been better told from within the community or did her lens create enough distance to share the story in a more meaningful way? We need an alternative telling to understand the difference in impact.

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Pose TV show

During the pandemic, along came a fictional television show on the same subject called Pose (2018-21). Although “‘Pose’ co-executive producer, writer, and director Janet Mock said ‘Pose’ would never reference ‘Paris Is Burning,’ since the two projects exits in ‘parallel universes’” many have noted that several of the characters have striking resemblances and storylines to the original film. Perhaps it was unavoidable…

Despite the insistence of its distinction from the film, the television’s creators discuss their love of the original. Janet Mock, for example, who describes herself as a trans woman of color but an individual who doesn’t speak for others explains how one might both find it a powerful and problematic film:

To me, “Paris Is Burning” is such a gift in the sense that it introduced me to a world and to people who were very much like me. I saw it when I was in high school at my friend’s house on VHS and it was powerful to be introduced to Octavia, to Venus, and to Corey. And for me, I think it’s a gift that [Jennie Livingston] was there at the time, because we know that many of those people are not here today. The remaining survivors are very much involved on our series. Yeah, there’s a complicatedness of whose gaze? Who controls the camera, who’s behind it?

Madonna and Vogueing

Both the film and television show bring us back to Madonna and the song and dance of Vogue that came out the same year as Livingston’s documentary.

For a bit of background, you can look at the FT’s Life of a Song on this hit. I love that series. Many forget that although Madonna is a hugely successful (and rich) (white) woman, she started out with a lot less: “Madonna found a surrogate family in the queer dance scene when she dropped out of college to move to New York in 1978. She was still a teenager when she left her native Michigan with, she says, $35 in her pocket.”

Still, many argue that vogueing wasn’t hers for the taking. Was Madonna’s song ‘accepted’ cultural appropriation?

In “The Historic, Mainstream Appropriation of Ballroom Culture,” them magazine investigates this topic and includes links to more recent documentaries about Ball Culture. The article goes through historical references to Vogue and considers both the integrity of Madonna’s dance and production’s influence by ‘real’ voguers as well as her appropriation of it:

Madonna released her single “Vogue,” on March 27, 1990. The video, directed by David Fincher, features voguers José Gutierez Xtravaganza and Luis Camacho Xtravaganza (among others), who also choreographed it. Considered by many critics to be one of the best music videos of all time, the video and song brought voguing into mainstream culture more than it ever had been, but Madonna’s work was not without its flaws. Madonna was and has since been accused of cultural appropriation for the track — all the celebrities the singer mentions in the song are white — while also erasing voguing’s original context as a creation of queer people of color. And because Madonna, an ever-changing pop singer, made the song, voguing was largely dismissed as a fad. While some in ball culture paid this no mind — they had always vogued and were going to continue doing so no matter the mainstream’s opinion — the singer was minting money off of a culture she had only just been introduced to, while many in that culture still struggled.

It’s a complicated scenario and one even more complex based on the mixed reactions from different communities, including those who consider themselves a part of Ball Culture. Madonna continues to have a strong support from the LGBTQIA+ community and vice versa as an advocate.

Here’s a nuanced consideration from Fandsided:

When you look back at the situation, though, is Madonna the one to blame? It’s a complicated case of cultural appropriation where the artist seemingly took all the appropriate steps, she appreciated the culture and made sure to give credit where credit is due. After all, she was inspired by the ball scene itself, she worked with two dancers from the scene, hired them for the video and even brought them on tour with her. But does that make it right, and if not, how could she have navigated that situation differently?

Or did it “help catapult a subculture into the mainstream” as the FT posited in 2022 on their Life of a Song column:

“Voguing feels both like precision and letting go. It’s like flying,” says Ricky Tucker, author of new book And the Category Is… Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community. In his “love letter” to the exuberant black and Latinx LGBT+ drag subculture that began in the Harlem ballroom scene in the 1980s, Tucker says that — like many queer music lovers — he was first turned on to a liberating scene by Madonna’s 1990 hit: “Vogue”. Others in the LGBT+ community remain angry that a straight white woman commercialised and in their view kitschified their culture.

…

Ricky Tucker believes it’s OK for queer fans to feel simultaneously empowered and exploited by the song. “I would be wasting my time if I were looking for evidence as to whether or not Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ was good or bad,” he says. “It’s more complicated than that.”

So, yeah, the answer is not black and white, as one might expect. Historically, it’s happened: the song, the subculture, the film, the television show, and all the narratives that surround them coexist. I would posit that it makes more sense to consider their impact now and what it means for communities, language, gender, music, unbiased journalism, and more. I guess that’s why Paris is Burning remains an academic hot topic and is often used in course syllabi.

Tell us what you think or add in texts you think we should see. Here’s a link to a recent NYT article about the term “Mother” and its origins in ball culture [paywall].

Thanks for reading and thinking!

Starting next week, for our summer term, I’ll be sending you a series of Summer Travel, kicking off with a podcast conversation next week. My family and I are off to the south of France soon where I’m eager to immerse myself in the language, food, and fashions. I hope you’ll be able to take a break this summer, even if it is in the after work hours by a swimming pool. And for those in the southern hemisphere, I’m a little jealous you’re at the start of your ski and snow-viewing season!

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Maybe you were surprised by the photograph of a lone man accompanying this headline?

Let’s start by talking about the (lack of) narrative around childless men. (Sorry, I’m going to use that word even though it is also problematic, as discussed in the next section, because this is the label being given to people who don’t have children, whether by choice or not. In other words, I’m not trying to label; rather, I’m trying to understand the narrative around the label.)

While it may seem ‘lucky’ that oftentimes men without children face less questions or judgment from society, sometimes they want to talk about it and have nowhere to go.

As this article in GQ discusses, it can be “hard to be a man who can’t, or won’t, have children.” Research shows also that men without children can be as “broody” or “depressed” as women in the same situation.

This article in The Guardian talks to men “mourning the family they never had”:

Dr Robin Hadley, 58, and childless by circumstance, recently completed a PhD exploring the experiences of involuntarily childless older men. “I found,” he says, “there was little difference in the desire to become a parent between female and male childless individuals. But that study also indicated that for some male participants, not becoming a parent had a greater negative effect. That’s because there are no narratives around childlessness for men.”

Which brings me back to the first article in this series on Parenting where we asked if ideas around parenting are too artificially gendered?

However, the fact remains that society still sees these roles differently. Perhaps there is more judgment on women who do not have children as well as more questions for them. I’m not trying to get at is it harder for men or women, because I think each individual’s journey is unique. I only begin with this opposition to consider more silent and visible narratives in juxtaposition.

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What is childlessness?

The term itself is something that many are trying to erase but it has a narrative to trace as well. Why erase it? Because it suggests that having children is normal. It also places the ‘burden’ of having children on women. Most men are not questioned about the reasons they do not have children, at least to the same extent as women, although as seen above, this can also be detrimental. And, perhaps paradoxically, more childless women than men have “positive attitudes” about their childlessness.

It also challenges to categorize people into those who don’t want and those who couldn’t as well as those who have lost children, for whatever reason, with the addition of the term ‘child-free.’ An investigation of both terms by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in The Guardian led her to some difficult online “misogynistic” communities but also clarified to her the issue of using the terms at all:

I was interested in how people without children may feel about that, so I’ve been asking them on- and offline whether they see the use of “childfree” as an improvement. People who had chosen not to have children generally preferred to be referred to as “childfree”, but those whose “childlessness” was involuntary, due to infertility, bereavement or life circumstances, felt erased by it. Many complained that both terms positioned having children as the default, when it shouldn’t be (“I’m just a woman living life,” said one respondent). Why define by deficit? Indeed, I’d say the overwhelming majority disliked both words, with one being seen as stigmatising and the other gleeful and nasty in its implication that parents somehow need “liberating”.

Doing this kind of research is important but not fun. Just plugging the world “childless” into google gives you heaps of videos about why you should be having children. Interestingly, the difficult stories of people wanting children or who have lost them are not the first to come up nor are the ones about rational reasons some people don’t want to have children.

But there’s some positive as well. Older involuntary childless communities are forming, including those with men, to share their grief over not having children. And research is setting things straight. While a lot of people assume (voluntary) childlessness is a new phenomenon, Population Europe and others have shared information showing its nothing new at all. It’s not some twenty-first century problem that necessarily needs solving, although some twenty-first century realities like urban populations, the cost of childcare or further education, and extended families living farther apart might influence someone’s decision not to have children (or to have fewer).

Let’s look at the narrative surrounding a couple of celebrity women (who have entered the narratives themselves) and then a really beautiful book by Meg Mason.

Celebrity women

Michelle Yeoh

Michelle Yeoh made history by being the first woman of Asian decent to win the Best Actress title at the Academy Awards this year. The Malaysian star who was a beauty queen and professional ballerina before starting her acting career in Hong Kong has long done nearly all of her stunts including those in the Oscar winner this year. If you want to hear my take on the film, I recorded a five minute podcast on why I loved Everything Everywhere All at Once. This is also a great article on RogerEbert.com that discusses why “It’s about damn time” that she got some recognition. (If you’re still not sure, check out “How Michelle Yeoh’s Stunts Overshadowed Jackie Chan’s in ‘Supercop.’”)

Yeoh used her award speech to talk about how important her win was for children watching who “look like [her]” but also to thank her own mom and mothers everywhere:

Although Yeoh does thank her “godchildren” and plays the role of mother in the film, she is not a mother in real life, at least of the traditional kind (as she may likely mother her godchildren or others, including her partner’s adult son…romper tells us “she is a proud stepmom and grandma”).

Yeoh has opened up about not being able to have children and this leading to the reason for her divorce from Dickson Poon (she now has a long term partner - Jean Todt). In 2018, Yeoh told you magazine:

Did she want [children]? ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘Unfortunately, I couldn’t. I tried IVF, everything.’ Was she philosophical about the situation? ‘At the beginning, no. I was desperate. I love kids and saw myself surrounded by them. But there’s only so much you can put your body and mind through. It comes to a stage where you have to accept it, move on and deal with the repercussions. And in a Chinese family, [having children] means a great deal,’ she says softly.

She further explains that this was the reason she divorced her husband, so they would not be “bitter down the road.”

It’s an interesting choice to talk about the intimate nature of both trying to have children and the reasons for her divorce. Ultimately, she may be helping others going through the difficulty of trying to have a child. While she is superhuman in so many ways, she was not able to have something that she wanted so badly, and part of the trajectory of her life is grounded in this aspect as well as the way she understands the narrative as fitting into cultural expectations or meaning.

Jennifer Aniston

For many years, the media grilled Jennifer Aniston about having children and she refused to answer why. They even went so far as to call her selfish on several occasions. As Time Magazine summarizes:

A persistent tabloid narrative holds her up as a totem not of female success but of failure; she couldn’t keep Brad and may be leaving it too late to have kids. Now she has bitten back. “I don’t like [the pressure] that people put on me, on women—that you’ve failed yourself as a female because you haven’t procreated,” she tells the fashion magazine Allure. “This continually is said about me: that I was so career-driven and focused on myself; that I don’t want to be a mother, and how selfish that is.”

The article also goes on to discuss the plight of other voluntary childless women, defending her ‘decision’ while unaware that Aniston was indeed trying to have children:

No matter that the instance of women who remain childfree at the age of 45 has risen sharply across industrialized nations, encompassing about a fifth of the female populations of the U.S. and my home, the U.K., our cultural assumptions remain entrenched against the possibility of happy, balanced childlessness.

The narrative created just emphasizes the craziness in speculating and questioning her about it at all. Eventually just last November, things reached a breaking point where Aniston felt it easier to come clean about her IVF trials in her 30s and 40s, perhaps simply to squash the perpetual questions that seemed to elude her ex male partners.

Originally in an interview with Allure, she discussed these matters as well as the media coverage:

But there was certainly pain in the past. The hurt of the "Does Jen Have a Baby Bump?" headlines was compounded by "the narrative that I was just selfish," says Aniston. "I just cared about my career. And God forbid a woman is successful and doesn't have a child. And the reason my husband left me, why we broke up and ended our marriage, was because I wouldn't give him a kid. It was absolute lies. I don't have anything to hide at this point."

The interview was picked up by everyone. Fashion magazines, the BBC, personal instagram feeds…as if it changed everyone’s feelings about “Jen” that she had indeed wanted children. Whatever had been her choice in the past, the media had been cruel. So cruel that in 2016, Aniston wrote an Op-Ed to the Huffington Post 'For The Record, I Am Not Pregnant. What I Am Is Fed Up.' In the piece, she talks about the nature of celebrity stalking but also discusses the way narratives around women and their bodies and choices is toxic: “The objectification and scrutiny we put women through is absurd and disturbing.”

Do you think this is changing? Is it changing a little because of the courage of celebrities like Aniston to speak up? Or does it simply reflect reality?

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Chelsea Handler

Chelsea Handler doesn’t shirk the title of ‘childless’…instead she faces it head on to explain why this is her happily made choice. In the following videos, she uses both humor and strong language (“shame” “horror” “selfish”) to describe the women who do not have kids, whether by choice (which she is mainly but not only talking about here) or not. She also includes the voices of other women in the second video.

I love when humor can help to dissect a difficult narrative. Watching someone say that America is run by “childless cat ladies” (in regards to leaders like AOC) is so horrific, where do you even start? But Handler puts it right back on the presenter. Humor, even when political or personal, catches people off guard and allows us to reconsider the way we may feel about something. You can feel Handler’s anger while she laughs, as if it’s therapeutic to open up a rift.

In fact, that’s exactly what she did. Many felt threatened by both videos (and she made the second in part to explain more fully the sarcasm in the first one). And then, in turn, “people [mocked] the conservative outrage.” It didn’t really seem to be moving us forward.

A writer for Cosmopolitan summarized comments on the Daily Show video:

After scrolling down the thread, I realised a large chunk of the comments are full of rage – mostly from people appearing not to get the tongue-in-cheekness of it all, and who have instead interpreted the sketch as a personal attack on their own choice to have a child.

The same writer channelled Tina Fey’s Mean Girls (a modern day Crucible) to describe the phenomenon and seek a change in society:

Without sounding like the crying girl from Mean Girls, why can't we all just get along? Who even has the energy to start online beef over someone else's life that has nothing to do with their own? C'est tragique.

Although rage, stereotypes, and misunderstandings made up so much of the dialogue around these videos, maybe just the fact that people are talking about it are helpful. By stating ideas perhaps once private, such as the childfree cat-lady takeover of democracy (!!), we can then start trying to understand where these fears and anger are coming from.

What’s driving this rage and even hatred? Is it more deeply and invisibly rooted in economics or religion or one’s own self loathing? Is it about trauma or misogyny or a lack of critical thinking skills?

Sorrow and Bliss

Of course, there are many literary protagonists who are childless, male or female, but few explicitly discuss it. I’ve seen a few novels lately that do; the one that really stands out to me is Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss. The book is not only an excellent read due to this topic but also because of the family relationships explored and issues surrounding mental health. Beyond this, the book is as touching as much as it is funny. Mason delivers prose on a level of careful diction that made me want to be sure I ingest every single word, for fear I might miss a delightful turn of phrase or important background information.

I previously reviewed this book for A Thousand Lives, which you can read here.

I don’t want to say too much about the topic for fear of spoiling the story. However, the novel asks questions about mental health and having children; i.e. how might a child affect one’s mental health, especially if one is already diagnosed with a mental illness? In this case, Mason cleverly avoids ever stating the diagnosis of her protagonist.

She explores a romantic relationship that needs more honesty. And she explores the protagonist’s relationship with her sister without sugarcoating the difficulty on the sister of having children. Essentially, the book is about being honest with oneself and those one is close to. It sounds simple, but it’s not so easy. And when it comes to the issue of having children or not, often our own honesty is clouded by millions of expectations and narratives that surround us. The book asks how we can strip those unserving expectations away and live our authentic lives, with or without children.

Have you read other books that deal with this topic or seen other compelling texts? Do you think the narrative is getting better or worse? What are the reasons you think people react so strongly to this topic?

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Hello Matterhorn readers! We’re in the third week of looking at parenting from a cultural studies and arts perspective. Apologies that due to other parts of this project, I haven’t had the time to dive into the literature in detail this week. I hope the ideas will grow through your own investigations. Thanks for being here! -Kate

The literary father

Besides my own relationship with my father and that of my parents with their fathers as well as my son’s with his father, I first think of fatherhood in terms of legacies of patriarchy. Many years of literary study have perhaps formed my ideas as such:

• Hamlet — seeking vengeance in the name of one’s father for a thrown (generically, any position) one does not really want to have, continuing a cycle of performance, greed, and violence one had tried to escape through physical departure and studying philosophy (in fact, three sons in the play are seek revenge in the wake of their fathers’ deaths)

• Pride and Prejudice — fathers can be lovingly caring and woke when it comes to the fate of their daughters (The Austen Connection takes a look at other Austen dads)

• A Tale of Two Cities — many types of fathers here; Dr. Manette is a heroic political prisoner…legacies of fathers and sons perpetuate the aristocracy’s atrocities in pre-revolutionary France…and we witness the terrible, vengeful grief of Gaspard whose child dies as a consequence of the stupid haste of the Marquis, famous for eating his chocolate (chapter VII).

• Black Boy — what father abandonment means to a gifted writer

• Star Wars — the late discovery of who one’s surprise father might be and how that might make one question their own inner potential for evil; can we escape our genes? Are legacies passed down through nature or nurture? Can you deny where you come from? Luke’s response to “I am your father” is “No, no, no…that’s not true…that’s impossible!…NOOOOOO!!!!!!!”

An evolving narrative

And there are other wonderful films looking at more literal and realistic fathers, such as those in the 1980s that challenged the status quo. Kramer v. Kramer reminded us that a dad might want custody of his kids. Three Men and a Baby offered a look at community parenting — a surprise baby on the doorstep that happens to be a child of one of three bachelor-roommates ends up being raised by all of them along with, eventually, the actor-mom who comes back and needs their help if she is to continue acting. Why not?

There have been others: Fatherhood, The Pursuit of Happyness, Like Father, Like Son (above trailer, try not to cry!). Here’s a handy list of films about fatherhood put together by IMDB. Number 1 - To Kill a Mockingbird - and Number 3 - The Godfather - both great films with a lot to think about in terms of morals and ‘fathers in society’…but of course both paint fatherhood in very different ways.

Harper Lee’s story and the father Atticus played by Gregory Peck in the Robert Mulligan film is a truth seeker, someone who is a patient and caring single father who gives his children a lot of independence while also trying to ‘father’ a community against racism and ostracizing people who are different (Boo Radley). Lee’s book is also on many lists of great tales of fathers, including this one from Mashable with several contemporary works.

Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo’s The Godfather also focuses on the father role, but through its exploration of ideas about legacy (not unlike Hamlet) exposes the problem with this tradition of patriarchal power within families. As Jack Walters explains in “The Godfather: The Father, The Son, and The Family Legacy”:

The trilogy explores the unbearable weight that is placed upon Michael’s shoulders as he attempts to uphold his father’s legacy whilst maintaining his own personal life and marriage – all whilst a silent war rages throughout New York City between the other powerful families that oppose him. But whilst the protection of his family legacy is Michael’s primary motivation, The Godfather also examines how this twisted ideal of family ultimately becomes the Corleones’ fatal flaw.

In the last few years, I’ve seen some really beautiful literature about fathers. George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo imagines President Lincoln’s reaction to the death of of his son and paints a beautiful depiction of his love for the child. Hamnet likewise imagines the reactions of Shakespeare to his son’s death, suggesting implicit reasons for nuances of tales like Hamlet.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me is a letter to his son with advice on becoming a man and specifically on being a Black man in America. He starts by talking about violence against Black men, clearly warning his son, but also immediately in the frame offering that this book is about rising above rather than fighting against:

Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be destroyed. Turn into a dark stairwell and your body can be destroyed. The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions. And destruction is merely the superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings and humiliations. All of this is common to black people. All of this is old for black people. No one is held responsible.

It’s a gorgeous book with many lessons. Coates, famous for writing Black Panther, has had a varied career thus far. His novel The Water Dancer is also one of my favorites.

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Advice on the internet

Speaking of advice, let’s look at what’s out there specifically for dads. I mentioned advice on the internet a couple weeks ago in relation to my ‘mom journey.’ Sometimes it can feel really exclusionary as well.

There’s loads of advice and websites devoted specifically to dads now, but it’s still in great minority to ‘mom advice.’ While a lot of parenting issues may be the same for all parents, no matter what you call yourself, the support and advice out there has historically been largely, marketed at least, for moms. So it’s great to see these aspects diversified even if a lot of the elements are not gender or ‘parent role; specific.

Here are a few of these examples:

• The Dadditude app - for mental health

• Dad.info Forum - for community

• DAD - ‘Direct Advice for Dads’

• daddilife - an everything website targeted for dads

• Fatherly - also a bit of everything…it’s interesting in perusing this particular website how the diction is decidedly marketed for males. For example, a “gear” section includes toys and diaper bags, but conjures Top Gear. I was really pleased to find the top section: Amplifying Our Voices, that focuses on inclusion and empowering all kinds of dads. In fact, it seems because dad narratives and websites are relatively newer and fewer than the ones ‘for’ moms, there’s more opportunity to both make them original and keep them from being super annoying, competitive, and overly sentimental in a clichéd sort of way. (Personal bias!!!) In fact, I may start going to dad sites now that I’ve done this research.

Thank you for reading and reflecting with me on fathering today! Please let us know your other ideas and reflections in the comments. Next week is our last in the parenting series of Tuesday Topics with a look at childlessness.

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First, some defining

We looked a little at the origin of the word ‘parent’ last week. Now let’s look at ‘mother’ for those of you who enjoy this kind of thing:

mother (n.)

"female parent, a woman in relation to her child," Middle English moder, from Old English modor, from Proto-Germanic *mōdēr (source also of Old Saxon modar, Old Frisian moder, Old Norse moðir, Danish moder, Dutch moeder, Old High German muoter, German Mutter), from PIE *mater- "mother" (source also of Latin māter, Old Irish mathir, Lithuanian motė, Sanskrit matar-, Greek mētēr, Old Church Slavonic mati), "[b]ased ultimately on the baby-talk form *mā- (2); with the kinship term suffix *-ter-" [Watkins]. Spelling with -th- dates from early 16c., though that pronunciation is probably older (see father (n.)).

Sense of "that which has given birth to anything" is from late Old English; as a familiar term of address to an elderly woman, especially of the lower class, by c. 1200.

Mother Nature as a personification is attested from c. 1600; mother earth as an expression of the earth as the giver of life is from 1580s. Mother tongue "one's native language" is attested from late 14c. Mother country "a country in relation to its colonies" is from 1580s. Mother-love "such affection as is shown by a mother" is by 1854. Mother-wit "native wit, common sense" is from mid-15c.

Did you notice how the word is similar in Sanskrit, Irish, and Lithuanian? Wow. This article in The Atlantic explains “Why ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ Sound So Similar in So Many Languages.” Babbel gets to the point a bit faster, explaining that although variations of mom/mother are of the 23 oldest in the world, there is also something else going on:

But here’s a slightly less complicated (and way cuter) explanation: the word “mother” didn’t arise randomly in the human lexicon. It’s actually just the outgrowth of the way all babies learn to talk.

In his groundbreaking paper “Why ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’?,” linguist Roman Jakobson pointed to the first syllable babies are usually capable of making: “ah,” or “mah.” These are usually the first sounds babies reach for because they don’t require complex mouth positions (or the use of tongue or teeth).

So, the same is true for dad, which we’ll look at next.

Beyond the idea of a ‘female parent’ (with many ways to interpret parent that we discussed last week), many connotations of the word mother exist, also in the verb form (great explanation linked). Sometimes it’s positive: I feel so much better; thanks for mothering me. Other times negative: stop mothering me, implying the person (‘mother’ or not) is perhaps too controlling or pampering or too involved with the speaking person’s decisions.

In these situations, my own son says to me, ‘You’re stressing me out!’ He’s four. Sigh.

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Mother-writers

This coming week, I’ll be talking with writer and literary researcher Kate Jones from A Narrative Of Their Own about mother-writers, including her own role as a mother-writer on the podcast. Although her work mainly focuses on modernist 20th century female writers (à la Virginia Woolf, hence the title), she makes natural comparisons to today’s society and the role of female writers, especially but not only, within it.

In the article linked here, Kate discusses authors such as Louisa May Alcott, Margaret Atwood, and Sylvia Plath as well as ideas and the language surrounding childlessness (which we’ll explore here next month). She also includes a poignant Jacinda Ardern / Boris Johnson comparison.

A Narrative Of Their Own

Wife. Mother. Other.

English literary critic Cyril Connelly once wrote ‘There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall’, giving credence to the theory that having young children negatively affects an artists’ ability to create good art. It is a truth that many parents will acknowledge: having a young child in the hou…

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3 years ago · 5 likes · 2 comments · Kate Jones

There’s been a whole thing about whether or not writers should have kids (here, compiled in LitHub), often comparing books produced to babies. (I don’t like this comparison!) There’s also been a narrative about ‘having just one kid’ if you want to be a writer popularized by Lauren Sandler and originally published as an article in The Atlantic. Really, of course, it depends on so much. While Louisa May Alcott in 19th century Massachusetts would have had few options to publish her writing and have a child, or even husband, there may be more options to women (and other parents) today. However, these options might depend on money, spousal or family support, culture, and other factors.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley responded as such to the Sandler article:

I have three children of my own and two stepchildren. The key is not having one child, it is living in a place where there is excellent daycare and a social world that allows fathers to have the time and the motivation to fully share in raising kids.

And Zadie Smith had a long, compelling comment that sparked several follow up articles and interviews:

I am Zadie Smith, another writer. I have two children. Dickens had ten — I think Tolstoy did, too. Did anyone for one moment worry that those men were becoming too father-ish to be writer-esque? Does the fact that Heidi Julavitz, Nikita Lalwani, Nicole Krauss, Jhumpa Lahiri, Vendela Vida, Curtis Sittenfeld, Marilynne Robinson, Toni Morrison and so on and so forth (i could really go on all day with that list) have multiple children make them lesser writers? Are four children a problem for the writer Michael Chabon — or just for his wife the writer Ayelet Waldman? The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd. What IS a threat to all women’s freedoms is the issue of time, which is the same problem whether you are a writer, factory worker or nurse. We need decent public daycare services, partners who do their share, affordable childcare and/or a supportive community of friends and family. As for the issue of singles versus multiples verses none at all, each to their own! But as the parent of multiples I can assure Ms Sandler that two kids entertaining each other in one room gives their mother in another room a surprising amount of free time she would not have otherwise.

Well then. I posit that Smith’s reply is hard to argue with. Maybe that’s just because it resonates with me (although I ‘only’ have one kid…back to this ‘only’ thing in a sec).

In America at least, and definitely Switzerland as well, there is a huge daycare problem in that it’s massively expensive. I know lots of women and several men who stopped working simply because the daycare bill for more than one child became as much if not more than their salaries. A lot of them were happy for a change or to have more time with their children, but the reality doesn’t give a lot of choice. And for parents with lower incomes or single parent homes, the reality is obviously much worse.

Austria, however, where we lived until my son was almost two, had free daycare as well as very inexpensive daycare ($150/month) should you need longer hours or want a private company with a particular pedagogy or language, since they were also subsidized by the government. That’s what 50% tax on middle class salaries can get you if it’s well managed! But, this reality also doesn’t mean that gender parity is perfect in Austria either.

What we talk about when we talk about mothering

The other thing about this whole conflict that arose from the Sandler article is the only child debate. I have one child and people ask me why all the time. Even if it is the most common type of household in Europe and a great part of the world. Even if research has proven that onlies are fine. (“No one, [researcher Toni] Falbo says, has published research that can demonstrate any truth behind the stereotype of the only child as lonely, selfish and maladjusted. (She has spoken those three words so many times in the past 35 years that they run together as one: lonelyselfishmaladjusted.)”) Certainly nobody quotes the writers who say it’s the best thing for my career. Ha! Some people express concern or pity, confusion or disappointment.

Sometimes I think people have two children so that others stop asking questions, because the questions do. not. stop. But maybe with two, you get the opposite: people don’t ask if this is what you wanted. If something has happened. They think it’s exactly what was planned. And from what I’ve witnessed, the assumptions or questions they receive are probably as frequent, just differently posed.

The amount of questions and shaming that go on, often because people are just projecting their own insecurities and fears, surprises me. We’ll take a closer look at this notion with childlessness soon (I experienced some of these questions until I was thirty-eight). But, man, shouldn’t we just let people do what they want, as long as they’re not hurting anybody? And, shouldn’t we be careful not to judge when we have no idea what went into decisions or luck when it came to having kids or not?

But at the same time, if the relationship and timing is right, it’s great that people do talk about both choices and what someone may have gone through. It’s becoming slowly more acceptable, for example, to talk about things like miscarriages and abortions as well as fertility treatments and postpartum mental health issues or what it’s like to be a stepmom. With talking, people can relate, sometimes start to heal, sometimes find solutions, and basically share their experiences with someone else in a caring way.

Some novels I’ve read in the last few years seem more open to these dialogues. Later, I’ll mention a few that are more open about not having children. Here are some of them:

• Love in Five Acts, by Daniela Krien

• I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness, Claire Vaye Watkins

• No One is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood (also about childlessness)

• Dept. of Speculation, by Jenny Offill

Selfies of motherhood

I took a bunch of selfies when I first became a mom. Like, a lot of selfies. These were all taken merely with the intention of capturing a moment for myself. I had a premonition that I would need to look back on this time, perhaps because I may need to resignify parts of it or because I was afraid the fatigue would make me forget so much of it.

What’s funny is that I remember taking a lot more photos that look a little like the bottom right (exhausted…confused…alone…), but when I go back to search these are hard to find. In fact, there are many, many more that show the ‘glow of motherhood’ I wasn’t always aware that I had. There are hundreds…and I don’t dare delete them, especially the less flattering ones. There are selfies of me with my eyes closed as if sleeping taken perhaps as wishful thinking or provide some kind of evidence that indeed I needed rest (I’m not sure whom I could appeal to besides my husband who was just as tired as I was). There were many days I was so tired that I felt like I was barely alive whilst awake. It felt dangerous to go out in public, as if I would make a mistake, let go of the carriage handle or say something odd to a stranger.

The Matterhorn: intersections of literature & art

17. Self Portraits

Part of the ongoing series on Identity and Power I took a painting class in college as part of our Art History program, and one thing we had to do was paint ourselves. Somehow the pose I chose inadvertently put my armpit at the center of the composition, and so it hangs in my parents’ basement. Don’t worry; I wi…

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3 years ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · Dr. Kathleen Waller

From a journal reflection:

An old friend, a fellow pole vaulter, from college wrote a comment on my most recent Instagram post: I love your posts — I can pretend I live in Europe as a writer!  And then I realized: this is what I am.  This is what I’ve made myself. I live in Europe. I am a writer. I am free. 

And this comment comes five months after my son’s birth. I am still a writer. I am even more of a writer than I was a year ago. Am I still free?  

Of course I am. I’m also lucky: many people are not free because of the places they live or situations they are in (mothers or not). But despite the added responsibilities, I am free. People add responsibilities of many kinds into their lives at different times, whether having children or caring for a family member or friend or taking on extra work or having the burden of ill health. My added responsibility is insanely exhausting but also extremely rewarding and, ultimately, in my case, a choice.

What does art teach us about supporting a life? What does parenting teach us about art?

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Athlete moms

The parts of my identity most linked to gender are: athlete and parent. Maybe this is more about how other people see me. Maybe this is also more about sex, that is biological rather than constructed by society, since both elements are physical (because I am the birth mother). It’s the areas I’ve felt the challenges of being a woman and the judgment of others within that gender role and sex as well as the areas in my life that I’ve been ‘divided by gender,’ but these have also been places to (positively) assert my gender identity as such.

I discussed the plight of the powerful Allyson Felix in her maternity struggles in The Art of Running last year. Here’s the excerpt from my article:

While receiving support from both the USATF and Nike in the past, Felix was not guaranteed a salary with Nike after announcing she was pregnant in 2018 (she has since gone on to win both Olympic and World Championship medals after having her child, only While receiving support from both the USATF and Nike in the past, Felix was not guaranteed a salary with Nike after announcing she was pregnant in 2018 (she has since gone on to win both Olympic and World Championship medals after having her child, only retiring just this past summer). Felix was rightly outraged and used her voice as power, publishing an Op-Ed with the New York Times: My Own Pregnancy Story, which the subtitle: “I’ve been one of Nike’s most widely marketed athletes. If I can’t secure maternity protections, who can?” (A video version is available here, featuring her own voice as well as a montage of a few others.) She discusses not just getting the respect and care she deserves but also helping those coming after her, especially African American women at greater risk for complications.

She and several other athletes essentially forced Nike to change their policy by going public and being supported by the media to do so. Additionally, because we are in the age of social media, Felix has been able to control her narrative. Now, she has her own brand of running shoes designed for women: Saysh. The shoes may be a kind of text all their own.

The Matterhorn: intersections of literature & art

The Art of Running

Part of the ongoing series on Identity and Culture I am a runner. These words have been uttered from my mouth many times over the years. Often, meeting people for the first time – at college, moving to new countries, starting new jobs – this would be part of my introduction. I was part of my schools’ teams of competitive…

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4 years ago · 5 likes · 9 comments · Dr. Kathleen Waller

Here are a few other articles related to the topic:

• Allyson Felix, Alex Morgan and other athlete mothers changing the game

• They are Olympians. They are mothers. And they no longer have to choose.

• Meet the Women Who Are Changing What it Means to be a Mom and a Professional Athlete

• Three athletes who got better with motherhood

• Why Serena Williams’s Retirement Is Different

• Podcast - Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill on The Midpoint (recommended by our podcast guest next week)

Advice on the internet

I mostly hate parenting advice on the internet. But at the same time, it can totally save your ass. Like anything, you have to be discerning of course. Is it backed up by research? Does the advice make common sense? Does it make you feel better about yourself or worse?

To give you an idea of the kinds of things I actually do look at in terms of parenting advice, here’s a really quick take:

• When I was pregnant, I always looked up the size of the comparable fruit that my fetus was. I found it rather humorous.

• I once looked up sleep advice for babies, found about 72 contrasting ideas, and vowed to never look for it again. Same for ‘baby led weening.’ Same for ‘kiddy nose picking.’

• I love these two Instagramers below, and I think this is the only ‘parenting advice’ that I look at these days unless say there’s sickness and then OF COURSE I’m all over Web MD, the NHS, and the Mayo Clinic. But that’s not really parenting advice, just good old fashioned googling medical advice (and of course we go to the real doctor as needed! I’m mostly kidding…). Anyway, here are the IG people — the first one is both super funny and poignant, from a parent whose child went through cancer and sparked her to start videoing herself during the pandemic; the second is a therapist and shares her own ‘mom struggles’ in a really open yet supportive way:

And today, I’m going to leave it at that. But we’ll come back to these ideas later on. Tell us about your own ideas of artistry and ‘mothering.’ Or your favorite films and books that deal with the topic.

Thank you for reading The Matterhorn today!

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Parenting

This recent article for The New Yorker goes back to 1968 when a mother’s love for her gay son led to the formation of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). And I think this quote from the mother - Jeanne Manford - sums up what it means to be a parent of anyone, that is, to love unconditionally:

Defining

Cambridge tells us that a parent is “a mother or father of a person or an animal, or someone who looks after a person in the same way that a parent does.”

Even without a biological child, most adults at some point parent. They parent another child or an animal. They look after a friend.

Although parenting originally was linked to biology and ancestry, it no longer necessarily has that meaning.

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

parent (n.)

early 15c. (late 12c. as a surname), "a mother or father; a forebear, ancestor," from Old French parent "father, parent, relative, kin" (11c.) and directly from Latin parentem (nominative parens) "father or mother, ancestor," noun use of present participle of parire "bring forth, give birth to, produce," from PIE root *pere- (1) "to produce, bring forth." Began to replace native elder after c. 1500.

parent (v.)

1660s, transitive, "be or act as a parent to," from parent (n.). Intransitive sense of "be a parent" is by 1959. Related: Parented; parenting.

I also love that ‘parenting,’ according to the same source, used to be called ‘parentcraft’ in some places. It makes it sound like either an art or a manipulative practice, I’m not sure which. I think sometimes I channel each of these with my son.

Culture and parenting

Here are a few different ideas about parenting from around the world.

Yogi Sadhguru from India talks about parenting as being ‘inclusive’ in a way that questions philosophically who is a parent and who is not:

Here’s Ysis Lorenna talking about what she sees as cultural differences in parenting between the UK and Brazil:

Then, there’s the idea that it “takes a village” to raise a child, which comes from Africa but that Hillary Clinton made popular with her book. Here is clinical psychologist Natasha Babul (who grew up in foster care) sharing her ideas about this concept:

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Gendered words and roles

Many now use the more generic parent in place of mother or father as well in order to avoid gender biases within the roles associated with the words or complicate things when families have two fathers or two mothers, or more than two parents, or single parents, or transgender parents…

Basically, there are a lot of options, and that’s great.

Some of the articles mean well but create more complication in their advice. Take this one from Australia for example in MamaMia:

Newscorp reports the handbook urges people wanting to refer to mums and dads to say 'gestational parent' instead of mother and 'non-birthing parent' instead of father when talking to colleagues and students.

It’s crystal clear, however, that the ‘mum’ may not be a ‘gestational parent’ at all. Other examples they discuss perhaps make more sense:

UK health officials have asked nurses at two hospitals to substitute the term 'breast milk' for 'chest milk' or 'human milk' in an effort to be more inclusive to trans and non-binary parents. 'Breastfeeding' will instead be referred to as 'chestfeeding'.

Some studies like this one try to research the effects of mothers vs. fathers (and their absence) on children. Most confirm there is very little difference between gay and straight parents (which tends to be the researched opposition). A lot of this research was done to either prove or disprove the capability of gay parents. It seemed like these studies were forgetting also about the large number of children who only live with one parent, which is 23% of children in the US.

And then if it’s a single parent family, that person would take fathering and mothering roles themselves? Or through friends and relatives?

Of course, there have always been many kinds of alternative families and in some cultures, families have never looked like a home with a mom and dad and kids. In the Western World, some television and film have given positive models to viewers, such as Modern Family, Punky Brewster, Doc McStuffins, Little Miss Sunshine, Uncle, and even the Wayne Wang / Paul Auster collab we looked at a couple weeks ago: Smoke. A different and wonderful kind of Alternative Family is also looked at in Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris is Burning, which I’ll be coming back to in June.

[Uncle is still on BBC iPlayer…I loved it! Check out this trailer.]

It’s good to have different kinds of role models, but parenting is about giving love, helping children understand the world, giving caring boundaries as well as encouraging independence at the right time. It’s about helping children be safe and happy. Although, it’s not always or usually the parent’s fault if that child is struggling either.

Still, there are societal factors, and sometimes biological factors, that change situations for (traditionally named) mothers and fathers. Laws as well as social constructs around maternity and paternity leave, for example, affect people differently. In the small but international city of Basel, I have seen many dads on the playground with their children during typical working hours. But my stay-at-home dad friend in the surrounding countryside tells me he gets strange stares from the locals when he does the same thing. The stares are even stronger when he’s there with his husband. At least in Switzerland, it usually stays at that: stares.

I’m going to stick with the stare for a bit now. There’s actually a thing called the Swiss stare which happens at really odd times in my experience. Swiss blogger Mike Callaghan (who lives in Canada) explains the act as “not rude” but as survival: “The Swiss stare to ensure their very survival.” If we follow from this logic and the explanation in the rest of his blog, then the stare in the case of my friend might mean several things: a warning for being different (not so good…), a curiosity at difference (perhaps with desire to engage with the object but unsure how to do so, especially if they speak different languages), an unintentional stare of fatigue. Perhaps there are more possibilities as well. The point is that we really can’t take it personally, even though it’s difficult not to, and instead share with others the way our difference is valid, healthy, and to be celebrated.

Still on stares, it makes me think back to an experience in Hong Kong. We had a refugee student from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who was Black (relevant to the anecdote). I was his advisor in part because we could speak French together, which was one of his Mother Tongues. Several teachers and the director took a kind of parenting role with him, because he was living on his own. So in a way, we were all forming a kind of alternative family, one that could not replace having his family from home around but that tried to do what we could to support him.

On one occasion, the young man had a problem with his leg that required going to the hospital and I accompanied him on this trip. We were in the New Territories, which meant that looking around the hospital, most people were from Hong Kong or China and were Asian in race. Many school children in the area would also have quite a homogenous upbringing, relatively speaking. So, we sat in a waiting area and were just having a chat. This girl of about twelve years old or so slowly walked toward us and stopped right in front of my student. She stopped and stared. It was probably only a couple of seconds, but I was worried about what she would say and trying to think of what to say to my student.

Suddenly she spoke up, in very good English: ‘You are so beautiful!’ Then she shook his hand and walked away. The young man was beaming and laughing. Not all of his experiences were this positive, but he was one of those people who really tried to see the best in humanity despite the horrific violence in his home, and I was happy that he had witnessed it again at that moment.

Back to my point about laws and social constructs, there can also be biological factors on parents and their roles such as the impact on a person before and after giving birth as well as breastfeeding, or “chestfeeding.” And the way family and cultural traditions might create certain ways of acting or thinking about one’s role within a parent’s new role.

But is there truly any difference between a mother and father in their parenting roles? Is there a difference to a person who chooses not to parent, in the traditional sense, or is not able to? What are the pressures we all face in the various roles that can be called parenting, and what are the rewards?

For many, it may seem like a no brainer: just treat people with respect and if the kid is well cared for, then great! But we still have discourse fighting the variety of parents, families, and personal choices that are out there. Recently, a woman was attacked on the floor of the US House of Representatives when Marjorie Taylor Greene told her she was “not a mother” because she had adopted her children (the biological children of her wife). And in a few weeks, we’ll look at the attacks (often more subtle, but just as dangerous) on childlessness.

This month, we’ll take a look at narratives around fathering, mothering, and childlessness. We’ll look at films, books, and shorter pieces on the different concepts. We’ll investigate the connotations and denotations. We’ll consider further questions.

What issues around parenting frustrate you? Inspire you? Fascinate you? Confuse you?

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Finally, I’ll leave you with George Saunders’ opening to his Sunday post this week:

Welcome! If you’re new here, I’m Kathleen Waller and this is my newsletter about cultural studies, the arts, and writing. After four weeks of looking at Paul Auster’s oeuvre, today’s post is about using his work as inspiration for our own. If you scroll to the bottom, you’ll see links to the Paul Auster series. Thanks for reading!

Please sing the title of this piece to the tune of ‘Moves Like Jagger’ by Maroon 5 et al:

Did you do it? Out loud? There’s absolutely no rational reason for it. It just popped into my head, part of the lifelong real-life musical I sometimes think I’m a part of. Although, as we heard in one of the video interviews I included this past month, Auster does like to move around the room while he writes. So, maybe it’s more relevant than my strange brain connections.

There, now that that’s out of the way…at the risk of spending too many weeks with Paul Auster (is it possible?), we have one last week where I will lead you through some writing strategies and three prompts or challenges, depending how you see them.

First, a roundup of some takeaways you may have already discovered implicitly through the last few weeks’ investigations —

Write by hand or typewriter

Auster is perhaps famous for (still) writing on his typewriter. He also frequently writes by hand.

While it may not be practical to always do so, taking the time to slow down with writing in this way and to embrace the tactile nature of writing (if we are physically able to do so) can have several effects. We pay attention to particular words more carefully. We slow down the pace. We exchange information in our brain differently and process what we are writing as we are writing it differently. (Read the link to see research supporting the continuation of children learning handwriting, again when they are physically able.) Sometimes even just turning off your phone and your computer’s wifi can accomplish something like this task. That way, it is just you and the page. You have the answers.

Move around the room in the middle of composing

This is more difficult to do if you’re writing in a cafe or office! As I mentioned above, Auster talks about moving around his room during writing sessions. I mean, I think it’s only natural. It’s probably healthy for our legs, back, etc.. But also, the movement gives him ideas. It pushes words into his fingers. Give it a try if you don’t already.

Relatedly, simply turning your gaze out the window can have a great effect on your brain. I listened to a neuroscientist talk about this positive effect of looking out at the horizon. Try it; it’s relaxing. I try to do it in the middle of composing on a computer or by hand. It helps me take a breath and consider where things are going.

Don’t aim to do too much in one writing day

Auster also often talks about just writing a couple of pages in a day. I’m not sure this is always true, considering his prolific career and the length of his recent book about Stephen Crane. However, it seems he is satisfied with just a few pages. He must do some editing as he goes, or carefully considers the words he puts down from the start.

Of course, this isn’t the only way to do it or necessarily the best. Some might find it more effective to let your fingers flow with ideas and language all at once, then go back and cut and edit as you like. But maybe the best thing about this is to give yourself some kind of limit — time or page or word count — so that you leave your little writing space eventually and do some other things with your day as well.

Expand yourself through genre or text type

We’ve investigated Auster from a variety of angles. From his early days as poet and translator, to his large oeuvre of fiction, to his screenwriting and directorial debut, and finally to his non-fiction, including essays, memoirs, and a book of biography and literary criticism.

Why not try something else? Especially if you’re feeling stuck, or just because you fancy it, it might just be the project you need right now. This thriller I’m almost ready to send for query (!!) is a totally new genre for me. No matter what happens to book, I’ve loved diving into it. By writing something new, we also have to investigate the building blocks again, making us perhaps more aware of the choices we make as we write.

Try using critical theory to inform your writing

Ok, maybe Auster claims in some of the interviews we looked at that he is not interested specifically in poststructuralists or any particular kind of theory or philosophy.

Ha! It’s there. Even if he does it subconsciously, he’s playing with ideas that other critical theorists and philosophers have written about. Or maybe it’s coincidence. Still, it can help to prompt you to write some fresh ideas.

(Mr. Auster, if you ever read this, I mean no offense or do not want to start a fight. Instead, you are welcome to discuss it with me on the new podcast…please…)

Play around with pronouns

I don’t mean playing with pronouns in a 2020+ kind of way (I mentioned this interview in The New Yorker last month that you might want to check out if you are interested in thinking about the power of gendered and non-gendered pronouns, which might also apply to your characters or the people you may write about in non-fiction.).

Instead, we’ve looked at the way Auster has used second person in his memoir writing (“We are all aliens to ourselves.” / “The inventory of your scars, in particular the ones on your face, which are visible to you each morning when you look into the bathroom mirror to shave or comb you hair. You seldom think about them, but whenever you do, you understand that they are marks of life…” - both from Winter Journal).

He also writes in the third person about Paul Auster, especially in City of Glass, but he does this metafictional trick elsewhere, too. Try out different narrative perspectives for a story you’re already working on. It may seem like a lot of work to change it, but it’s worth it if it changes the whole feeling and perhaps even message of your story.

Be open to unexpected collaborations

Maybe Auster’s films didn’t get the best rating by the critics, but that’s not the only point, is it? He talks about these projects as teamwork. As getting away from the isolation of being a writer. And it was a dream of his to do it. He’s Paul Auster, so he just did it.

When Wayne Wang called up Auster about his Op-Ed in The New York Times, he said yes. This led to the sequel (written on set) and the ensuing film that again starred Harvey Keitel.

What else do you take away from Auster’s work or from my articles the last four weeks?

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Challenges: write like Auster

1: Memories as any other human

Two weeks ago, we looked at the methods Auster uses to discuss his own life in memoir. One important idea he keeps coming back to is that he writes his memories as if they could be anyone’s. It’s seems paradoxical to bother to write about one’s life when one thinks it may be universal. Although Auster does not even choose to spend much time in his writing on the things that others might consider extraordinary.

Instead, things we may all experience: shame, laughter, grief, love…these are the things he shares with us through anecdotes.

Try writing in second person, about yourself. This will have the affect of perhaps at first disorienting the reader as well as dissociating yourself, perhaps giving you more liberties and distance in the way you address the memories.

If possible, choose a time from childhood that you can connect to something you’re going through right now. I don’t mean in a pyschoanalytical kind of way, unless you want to go there, which is fine! I don’t even mean it has to be pscyhologically connected in any way in a trauma informing sort of way (although it could be).

Instead, it might be symbolic — a playground accident from twenty or sixty years ago reminds you to get back up after failure.

Or it might be a parallel experience — recall a moment in your childhood at the same age as your own child or consider a moment in a classroom and now - if you are a teacher - consider some connected moment from the present (well, not this moment as you write, but you get what I mean).

Try to find human connection through your experience. Your experience is unique to you, but should connect to others. In fact, it will even if you don’t try to make it. But try to keep this idea in mind as you write. ‘I experienced this, but somebody else felt something like it when they went through a different experience.’ This is why it’s important to write it. Of course, that’s why it may be important to write it for others: we’re not just teaching about our own lives, no matter how (in)famous we might be.

And it’s also important to keep this aspect in mind even if we are just writing for ourselves. The act of writing connects us to all humans. We create tracings of ourselves. We are reminded that we are part of the universe in this way.

2: Write one great page

Not perfect. That doesn’t exist. But limit yourself to one page. It’s cheating if you change the font and spacing after! I don’t care what font and spacing you use, but just select it before you begin. Or write by hand or even typewriter if you like.

You can do this in medias res, that is, take a day of writing your novel/dissertation/or whatever you’re working on, and only allow yourself to write that one page.

Or, if you’re not in the middle of something or want to try something different, you can use anything you want or one of these prompts:

a. Use a phone call to spark a page of writing. It might just be a ring, or a buzz in someone’s pocket they secretly look at under the dinner table. It might be a whole conversation — expected, unexpected, scary, sweet, sad. I’m thinking of an old post I did on phone calls (it’s one of my favorites) and the first page of Auster’s City of Glass:

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. Much later, when he was able to think about the things that happened to him, he would conclude that nothing was real except chance.

The Matterhorn: intersections of literature & art

11. The Phone Call (everyday performances)

My grandmother’s light yellow rotary phone sat in our basement for years unused, simply for the purpose of playtime. Why did my siblings and I love to twirl those numbers? The anticipation of a call? The feel of the machine? The power of holding the receiver and controlling the conversation with Grandpa in Minnesota? Now…

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3 years ago · 2 likes · Dr. Kathleen Waller

b. Write a page of only dialogue between two people who love each other but haven’t told each other yet. Maybe they’re fighting about something. Maybe they’re talking about the weather. Maybe one of them is being really annoying and trying to impress the other.

c. Describe your face. That’s it. Look closely or feel it with your fingers. Do it in narration or have a character describe it. Make it symbolic or completely aesthetic. I wonder what you’ll discover there.

3: Get outside yourself

Auster went through a revelation after attending a modern dance performance, although he can’t or won’t articulate exactly what it was about the show rationally that helped him. Suddenly, he was able to write prose again! He quickly finished a novel and was well on his way to becoming a successful author.

It’s easy to get caught up in the rhythms of the days. Rhythm can be wonderful; it can help us relax and be productive and even to enjoy the little things we do each day or week. But sometimes, it’s good to shake it up, especially if we are feeling clouded by deadlines or word counts or whatever is blocking you at the moment.

So, this week, find something different you can do or go to. It doesn’t have to cost money — you could attend a free concert in a church or a free exhibit at a gallery. You don’t live in a buzzing city? No problem; watch something you wouldn’t normally watch, like a highly recommended film that’s something you would never choose yourself. Or try to craft something. Or learn how to do a headstand. Or paint your fingernails green.

Even better if someone invites you to do something a bit random or that you wouldn’t choose yourself…and you go, just for the hell of it.

Things I’ve done in the past few months that made me feel fresh and ready to write: crocheted a blanket after thirty years away from crocheting (it’s also something my grandmother had taught me to do and she died last year, so maybe I could write about it for prompt 1), painted an ensō, went to an exhibit of Wayne Thiebaud, taught myself to do a really crazy variation of dancer pose after watching a video of it on Instagram, bought (and wore) two denim jumpsuits…

I’m sure you can think of something to do this week! Do it. Then write. Not necessarily about it, but just write while your brain is all fresh and juicy from it.

Does this count as a prompt or writing challenge? I’m not sure, but I hope you enjoy it and it helps you with your practice.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please hit the like button or share it! Posts like this will be part of my Yoga & Writing project, coming in September. Patron subscribers will receive discounts on related courses.

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Other Paul Auster posts in this series:

This is the last installment of our deep investigation of Paul Auster this month. However, next week, we’ll use these investigations as a springboard for our own writing. So far, we’ve looked at:

• An introduction, including Auster in the news recently

• Auster’s use of critical theory in creation

• The author’s non-fiction

Typewriters & metafiction

You might be thinking: what’s a typewriter got to do with Paul Auster & the movies?

I’ve mentioned that Auster (still) writes his books on a typewriter. Auster collaborated with Wayne Wang on a couple of films, one of which featured the typewritten story by a character called “Paul,” based on a short article Auster had published in the New York Times. He’s also often interested in metafiction and inserting versions of himself (Freudian doubles?) in his fiction. To a seemingly exponential effect, these elements interact within and between his works with the effect of asking us to question our realities (and that of the author’s) as we insert ourselves into art, making a part of our real worlds.

In fact, it was the original real-life article that prompted Wang to contact Auster for a collaboration.

I looked at this near-infinite maze of reflection through a theoretical lens of mise-en-abyme in a dissertation I wrote (freely accessible through HKU Scholars Hub), called: “Mise-en-abyme in Wayne Wang's New York and Hong Kong films.” To add to that element, the other protagonist in the story is a photographer who documents a street corner in Brooklyn where he has his shop over the years. There are many layers of fiction, reality, and artistry working together.

Here, Auster talks about his film work and the way he wanted to direct silent, philosophical films in his twenties and going to see a bunch of movies at the cinema as a student in New York, then as a poor writer in Paris:

Auster also talks here about the difficulty of being a solo writer at times. He had many experiences on sports teams and found that the act of creating a film gave him that team community he had been missing.

As a writer who used to be a part of sports teams, as an athlete and coach, as well as be a part of teaching teams, I can relate. It can take a lot more effort to form your community when you’re working in isolation. As much as I love time to myself, that’s something I miss. I gain some element of the team through writing collaborations, digital kinning, and running partners. Yoga classes and workshops I deliver also fill this void at times. So do friends and family, but this is different than working on a project together, toward a common goal. You-readers-who-work-alone, how do you find your communities?

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Smoke

This beautiful indie film is about Auggie, who owns the Brooklyn Cigar Co. In the same vein as Clerks, the shop is the meeting point for the characters we meet and a way to process the experiences of both Auggie and the main protagonist, writer Paul Benjamin.

One day, Paul is saved by a young man named Rashid who is in search of a lost father. They form a great connection and the related side story of finding the boy’s father is sparked. Paul and Rashid watch baseball and have great conversations about life in the writer’s apartment.

It’s worth checking out simply for the great cast: Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Stockard Channing, Harold Perrineau Jr., Giancarlo Esposito, Ashley Judd, and Forest Whitaker.

“Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story” was published in The New York Times on Christmas day, 1990. Although Auggie is a pseudonym, Auster claims the story is true. Basically this friend of his who owns a cigar shop has been taking photos of his streetcorner for years, capturing the people and the place. As Auster looks through the photo album with him, he remarks:

And then, little by little, I began to recognize the faces of the passersby on their way to work, the same people in the same spot every morning, living an instant of their lives in the field of Auggie's camera.

This is a beautiful clip of (fictional) Paul looking at Augie’s photo album with him. It contains echoes of ‘old Brooklyn’ as well as Shakespearean allusion:

Blue in the Face

This sequel film is a little more piecy and experimental. The story doesn’t follow as clear of a line; some would call it more postmodern in this way, at least in describing the structure.

And it’s not surprising considering that this second film came from work done on set for Smoke:

"'Blue in the Face' came as a result of improvisation done in rehearsals of 'Smoke,' " Mr. Keitel explained. "I had asked Wayne if I could try some improvisation with the actors. Wayne said yes. Out of this improvisation came Wayne and Peter's idea to make 'Blue in the Face.' " (The title comes from the adage that says that actors placed in front of a camera will talk until they are blue in the face.)

…

Each take was filmed as a full 10-minute reel, with no time to cover the action from multiple angles. During the shooting, directors held up flash cards to tell the actors how they were doing. The cards carried messages like "faster," "get to the point," "lighten up" and, of course, "boring!" When Mr. Wang became ill, Mr. Auster, who had never been behind a movie camera, replaced him. Shooting began on a Monday morning and was finished the following Friday. Because there was no screenplay, a credit line reads, "Situations created by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster in collaboration with the actors."

The film feels like a free exploration of what it means to be a New Yorker or an actor and centers more on Auggie’s character and relationships than the first. Keitel told The New York Times that he hoped it would be an inspiration to young filmmakers without big budgets to just go ahead and make a film.

And then, there’s this awesome, raw clip from Lou Reed:

Mise-en-abyme

In the research I linked above, I explore the concept of mise-en-abyme (especially, but not only, theorized by Jacques Rancière and André Gide) in connection with an exploration of identity in these films as well as another pairing of films by Wayne Wang taking place in Hong Kong.

Both of these films contain many elements of metafiction, including the novelist named Paul Benjamin, reflective of Auster’s two first names, and a shop owner who Auster later claimed is “a part of me” (p. 28). The many writers and artists within the films as well as some inserted documentary, like that of Lou Reed, constantly play with the notion of identity for the viewer.

Here’s a short excerpt from my research about this connection, specifically connected to the work of Stuart Hall and cultural studies (pp. 28-9):

Auster seems to have fragmented his own identity into each of the characters in the film. The audience may conversely pick up with one fragmented identity that most closely resembles their own. [Stuart] Hall explains that the shattered being emphasizes the future of “what we might become” rather than a definition established by society:

[I]dentities are never unified and, in late modern times, increasingly fragmented and fractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions. They are subject to a radical historicization, and are constantly in the process of change and transformation. (Questions of Cultural Identity, p. 4)

Every author gives us pieces of himself in his writing, but Wang and Auster each split their experiences, memories, and dreams into many characters. The “multipl[icity]” of reflection allows for “intersect[ions]” and, therefore, “transformation.”

A lot of the research is about linking concepts of postmodernism’s instabilities to positive manifestations of new culture and the formation of new identity through, for example, alternative families, like the adopted son that “Paul Benjamin” forms a union with.

A couple weeks ago, I spoke how Auster’s work is often not only linked with postmodernism but seen as perhaps the prime working author in this artistic movement.

Just to give you a sample of how I bring together researchers like Derrida, Hall, Deleuze, and Ackbar Abbas, here’s another short excerpt (p. 19):

For Derrida, Becoming is différance; it is the friction in the frames themselves, the juncture of récits. In Questions of Cultural Identity, Stuart Hall links Derrida’s use of writing as différance and its inherent paradoxes with the paradoxes of identity creation: “Identity is such a concept -- operating `under erasure' in the interval between reversal and emergence; an idea which cannot be thought in the old way, but without which certain key questions cannot be thought at all” (2). This space can be looked at as the Flesh that bridges the Actual with the Virtual for Deleuze, though he chooses to remain on one side of the Flesh. Perhaps Deleuze was not able to see the possibility of a functional unstable postmodern identity that Wang embraces in his films.

Culture is a necessary tool in talking about identity; but is culture stable in itself? Do we seek identity through established culture or can we create culture?

I expand on these ideas with analysis of the examples of Wang’s films. So, if these topics interest you, maybe following my line of reasoning in the paper will be helpful.

Other Auster films

Auster also wrote and directed Lulu on the Bridge (1998), again starring Harvey Keitel and set in New York. This time the protagonist is a jazz saxophonist who’s been shot during a performance by a deranged man.

In fact, Auster is connected in some way to a ton of cinema, especially as a screenwriter but also with cameo appearances. All of these you can easily find on his IMDB page. Many are adaptations of his novels, such as these edgier words: The Music of Chance (1993) and In the Country of Last Things (2020, in Spanish…and also featuring a typewriter).

However, this is his only solo director stint, perhaps because of such poor reviews:

The film is original and intermittently touching, but ultimately frustrating due to the meandering nature of the riddle-like script and Auster’s lethargic direction. … Nonetheless, pic falls apart in the last reel, and the downbeat ending, while original, is bound to frustrate viewers.

One can only speculate on how German helmer Wim Wenders, whom Auster originally suggested for this project, would have approached the material. Auster lacks the technical skills to translate his episodic story into an intriguing movie the way Wayne Wang did in “Smoke” and the companion piece, “Blue in the Face” (on which Auster was credited as co-filmmaker).

“Lulu” contains many powerful moments, but Auster doesn’t succeed in turning what is basically a riddle into a coherent and resonant film, faltering particularly with the sluggish pacing.

Well, I would say it’s pretty cool that he tried. And maybe if Auster had stuck with it, he would have garnished success in the director category as well. I wonder how the author feels about it now.

Wang had some early flops as well, like Life is Cheap…But Toilet Paper is Expensive (1989). Although I have to admit I sort of love that film. It’s strange but it shows some interesting elements of old Hong Kong, including the Kowloon Walled City.

For further reading, I recommend these articles (in addition to my academic research):

• Man in the dark: Paul Auster and the cinema (interview with BFI)

• Paul Auster: "Je m'intéresse au cinéma depuis mon enfance" (RTS Culture, in French)

• Against the Ontology of the Present: Paul Auster's Cinematographic Fictions (in Twentieth Century Literature)

I’m struck by how many writers work in several huge realms like Auster. I also think of Jorge Palinhos, interviewed in this publication last December, and writer-creators like Inua Ellams, discussed in The City as Text, or, of course, David Bowie.

Is it about meaning-making? Reaching people? Money? Bursts of creativity and ideas? Probably some of each. But I do think that working among genres allows us to fully access both our own ideas and a variety of readers/viewers. It also keeps us from getting bored. Or working in too much isolation.

What keeps you writing and why do you choose to stick to one genre/text type or to open yourself to a variety? This might apply to you as a musician or painter or some other kind of artist as well. Are the reasons more about what’s within, whom you will reach, or how you will work (ie with other people or in a certain place/time)? We’d love to hear your ideas here.

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This month, I’m looking at writer Paul Auster from a few different angles. So far, we’ve looked at him in the news, introduced his fiction, and had a look at his intersections with critical theory. Next week, I’ll investigate some of his film work with you.

Today, I’m focusing on his non-fiction and, more specifically, his memoirs and autobiographical writing. Although the interesting thing about Auster’s memoirs is while at once intensely personal and detailed, they also stand for everyone.

And let’s throw Burning Boy into the mix, though it is not a memoir of course, he writes the biography (“The Life and Works…”) of Stephen Crane with some of the same stylistic and thematic features as he writes of his own life journey.

They also blend with his fiction. Although the fictional stories are imaginative, Auster plays with many of the same ideas there.

How much of fiction is real life? How would you write your memories for others to experience?

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Death and childhood

Auster’s first full book of non-fiction was an early text following the death of his father. Portrait of An Invisible Man was first published in 1979, several years before City of Glass propelled him to literary fame. [Linked text is the one used for citation.] This shorter work — a 78 page essay — became the first part of a volume called The Invention of Solitude, published in 1982, that contains other essays, mainly on the act of writing.

Auster was not close to his father; he calls him the “invisible man” because although he did a lot of things with friends or family, he never really seemed present. It was as if he were drifting through life without ever leaving a mark. He was not even physically present at the birth of Auster, his first child; the author implicitly posits through the tale that maybe this experience or emotion was too far out of the range of his father’s capabilities.

The death of his father in his mid-sixties was a shock. Going through all the things in his house became a strange practice, causing Auster to reflect on his always-absence as well as his own finitude: “And then, suddenly, it happens there is death….We are left with nothing but death, the irreducible fact of our own mortality” (p. 3). The moving through objects and deciding what should be thrown away, sold, or given away…apparently nothing would be kept. Auster writes:

Things are inert: they have meaning only in function of the life that makes use of them. When that life ends, the things change, even though they remain the same. They are there and yet not there: tangible ghosts, condemned to survive in a world they no longer belong to. (p. 9)

Looking at the description of this process again now, I thought of the touching and subtle film Driveways (Andrew Ahn, 2019), where a woman cleans out her dead sister’s home. There are many parallels: the young son, the distance in the relationship, the existential questions. Essentially, both Auster’s memoir and Ahn’s film show the way we confront ourselves through the emptiness and abstract memories death leaves behind. The gaps and puzzles seem to lead us to changes in our relationship with others and the world we inhabit.

Despite the distance of Auster’s relationship with his father, he discusses the invisible man’s caring nature toward his sister who experienced severe mental illness and a trip his dad made to Paris when he was ill and poor, finally showing pride for what Auster was able to accomplish through a ghostwriting deal in Mexico.

But it is disappointing when the father pays little attention to his grandson, Daniel. It’s tragic to read the scenes where Auster describes loving his son in ways his father did not love him, knowing that Auster’s son and baby granddaughter have since died in such a terrible way and that he was estranged from his son for quite some time, although he does not discuss this in interviews. [I discuss this in the first issue of this series.]

The ending of the memoir now reads very differently:

Past two in the morning. An overflowing ashtray, an empty coffee cup, and the cold of early spring. An image of Daniel now, as he lies upstairs in his crib asleep. To end with this.

To wonder what he will make of these pages when he is old enough to read them.

And the image of his sweet and ferocious little body, as he lies upstairs in his crib asleep. to end with this. (p. 78)

Playing with pronouns

Auster writes about his experiences with death to a great extent. He includes reflection on learning that his grandmother had killed his grandfather (judged as self defense, but Auster isn’t sure) and also attempted suicide. Even though these tragedies happened before he was born, he considers them a part of his experience. Somehow this is not only from a historical or psychological view: it seems to be a part of his body.

Later, Winter Journal explores his own humanness and body following the death of his mother. Although published in 2012, a decade after her death, he discusses the way this death shocked him even more, giving him panic attacks:

“I didn’t see my father’s corpse, but I saw my mother’s corpse. It’s a horrible thing to see your parent dead, especially your mother, because your body began inside her body. You started in that person. It’s a very, very traumatic business.”

Of course, he was also much closer with his mother, raised mainly by her. The memoir includes details of his own life and childhood as well as his relationship with his mother, but it does so in the assumption that these things also “happen to everyone else” (p. 377 or p. 1 in original). That is, all people age (if they are lucky enough to keep living); all people have families, childhoods…all people experience seasons and bodily functions. He is talking simply about being alive, about the “phenomenology of breathing” (ibid).

And this is why he writes in the second person; it is a story for everyone. Auster often plays with pronouns and names in his books as well, including using forms of his own name as protagonists, complicating the first/second/third person experience. He explains this to Columbia Magazine (the university he also taught at for years):

“Writing in the first person would have been too exclusionary,” says Auster, who speaks in a velvety baritone with a slight nap, perhaps from the Dutch Schimmelpenninck cigarillos that he chain-smokes throughout the day. “I see that my experiences are so similar to everyone else’s, because we all have bodies, after all. Something always goes wrong with our bodies. Or right with our bodies. First person would have been pushing people away. Third would have been too distant. So second seemed just right, where I could address myself as an intimate stranger or an intimate other. But then the ‘you’ has this rebound effect on the reader, who gets sucked in, and is experiencing it in a different way than a first- or third-person text.”

He describes feeling unique as a child, thinking his imagination was something special, such as the “two secret letters [of the alphabet] that were known only to you” (p. 577). I really love the way he talks about boredom:

Boredom must not be overlooked as a source of contemplation and reverie, the hundreds of hours of your early childhood when you found yourself alone, uninspired, at loose ends, too listless or distracted to want to play with your little trucks or cars…. Dreaded boredom, long and lonely hours of blankness and silence, entire mornings and afternoons when the world stopped spinning around you, and yet that barren ground proved to be more important than most of the gardens you played in, for that was where you taught yourself how to be alone, and only when a person is alone can his mind be free. (pp. 592-3)

These ideas remind me of the many hours I spent looking out car windows as we drove from Massachusetts to visit relatives in Minnesota and Virginia. I still love to go for a drive or look out a train window for hours and let my mind drift. I still love to be alone.

At the end of the follow up Report from the Interior, there is a beautiful story of a reading challenge set by a teacher. Auster read well more than the other children and the teacher thought he was cheating, keeping him after class to berate him. Of course, Auster had simply been a voracious reader and the teacher eventually understood, handing him a handkerchief:

…and every time you think of about what happened to you that morning more than half a century ago, you are holding that handkerchief again and pressing it into your face. You were twelve years old. It was the last time you broke down and cried in front of an adult.

The passage highlights the intimacy of writing, for we - the readers - all witness Auster’s tears through these stories. And then in some way, we allow our own to exist more peacefully.

I do think the use of second person here allows us to superimpose our own memories more easily and also consider Auster as an ‘everyman’ despite his fame. Narrative perspective — including person and tense as well as the level of narrative omniscience — changes the way we understand a text.

Often, when I’m drafting a book, I play with different types of voice. It makes things a bit more difficult in the editing process! But it allows me to play with the ideas differently. In the first drafting sessions — the sketches — I allow whatever perspective that comes to mind to exist. Sometimes, we can also include other perspectives as frame / dialogue / epilogue / etc.. Writers: what do you do?

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Non-linear journeys

These books read like memories feel: they are all over the place, often random. They play with the idea of fate and life’s journeys: Did x cause z? Am I remembering this episode correctly? What does the before have to do with the now?

We move quickly to different times in these books. The fictional tome 4 3 2 1 allows four different possibilities, parallel universes, dependent on different factors the protagonist experiences in childhood. Auster moves through writing with this awareness that life has possibilities and that we may be subtly moved to a different line of journey by outside factors. And then, by suggesting they coexist, he suggests we have a choice in how we react to the things that affect us in childhood. It seems this is why he keeps going back to that time in his autobiographical writing.

However, the tale of Stephen Crane that he gives us is mainly linear (in terms of time) for the nearly 800 pages that it graces. I guess when one is dealing with artifacts rather than memories, one may be taking unacceptable liberty if one is to play with the possibilities. And also: Crane is dead. His life has a linear outcome. Auster is still making sense of what his life means, as we all are.

Still, there is similarity in the way Auster includes many details of Crane’s life, finding as many small things to share as possible to help us get a well rounded picture of the author, whom he hopes is not “forgotten” as he has been over the years. His “disappearance” parallels the invisibleness of Auster’s father. Perhaps he considers that there may have been an inner being in his father that Auster had neglected to know. Perhaps this being can be shared through writing.

And then Crane also has parallels with Auster himself. The passages of a young writer trying to make his living echo those Auster writes of his life in Paris:

The four young men who shared the fourteen-dollar-a-month room had one double bed and a coal box to sleep in and on, three in the bed and one on the box, tucked in fully clothed because of the chill in the room…

When his father arrived at his tiny room in which Auster was suffering with the flu, he was appalled and sprang into action to help him. It seems that implicitly, Auster suggests he has been lucky: he, too, could have died very young like Crane. Instead at 76, he is still writing.

Writing about writing

Auster is known for his use of metafiction in his novels and he often writes about being a writer through his memories and even in the research he does of other writers. He is interested in what it means to be a writer, as an identity and philosophy.

Auster was in a funk with his writing before his father’s death, no longer sure about poetry and translations. A reawakening in prose coincided with the death of his father. Perhaps the experience of losing someone so close and yet so distant at the same time sparked him to dig deeper in his writing in the years that followed. He links the two experiences together.

It was attendance at a modern dance performance that initially got Auster to write prose. As discussed in Winter Journal and this interview, he was suddenly able to write again:

Then, as I’ve described in Winter Journal, I went to that dance rehearsal, and something happened. A revelation, a liberation, a fundamental something. I immediately plunged into writing White Spaces, which I happened to finish the night my father died. I went to bed at two a.m., I remember, a Saturday night/Sunday morning, thinking how this piece, White Spaces, was the first step toward a new way of thinking about how to write. Then the phone rang early the next morning, just a few hours later. It was my uncle on the line telling me my father had died that night. That was the shock. Coinciding with the fact that I had returned to prose, that I felt it was possible for me to write in prose, finally, after so many years of struggling to write fiction, and then finally abandoning it.

Here are a few other examples —

From The Book of Memory (p. 187):

Written language absolves one of the need to remember much of the world, for the memories are stored in the words. The child, however, standing in a place before the advent of the written word, remembers in the same way Cicero would recommend, in the same way devised by any number of classical writers on the same subject: image wed to place.

From “Reznikoff x2” (p. 373 of Collected Prose, 2003):

Charles Reznikoff is a poet of the eye. To cross the threshold of his work is to penetrate the prehistory of matter, to find oneself exposed to a world in which language has not yet been invented. Seeing, in his poetry, always comes before speech.

From “Hand to Mouth” (pp. 175-6 of Collected Prose, 2003), after a discussion of writing several plays and novels that were abandoned then seeing some of his articles published in the Columbia Daily Spectator:

When I look back at those days now, I see myself in fragments. Numerous battles were being fought at the same time, and parts of myself were scattered over a broad field, each one wrestling with a different angel, a different impulse, a different idea of who I was.

In the above embedded video where Auster talks about writing Winter Journal, he also discusses the act of writing as a strange sort of enjoyment. At once “hard work” and “exhausting”…it give him a kind of “pleasure” all the same.

I would posit that writing is living for Auster. He has said many times in different interviews or in writing that it is a thing he cannot control, that he must write in order to live. This short response to a question from Yale Daily News seems to sum it up:

If you are a writer, does writing feel like at least a part of your life force? Or does it haunt you? Is it a compulsion, a desire? Is it rational or does it move to imaginary worlds?

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I often think writing is this kind of life force for me. Less about publication or profession, the act of writing in itself helps me get in touch with my authenticity, helps me let go of external forces that do not serve me, and helps me to find the beauty in the world. I wrote a lot before I understood why I was doing it.

I also think writing can be something I can dive too far into — too much writing depletes me rather than energizes. It is a classic example of a pharmakon — a poison or a remedy. Auster speaks of it in this way, almost as a curse, and often dissuading young writers to go into the profession unless they must. But at the same time, his joy can be clearly witnessed in his interviews (including the above, in which he talks about this strange kind of joy). Perhaps we need the lows with the highs to make it meaningful.

Today, I’m picking up with our Tuesday Topic of the month: Paul Auster, introduced here last week.

For those of you not into Paul Auster or who want a few extra interesting reads, check these out:

• Patagonia, whose gear I swear by for skiing (sponsorship?!), has made a lot of cool ethical moves in the past year. The latest is a protected national park in Albania with the last fully ‘natural’ flowing river in Europe. My summer is pretty booked, but I know where I’m going in 2024.

• This book review of Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America in The New Yorker is enlightening and terrifying: How America Manufactures Poverty.

• Brett Goldstein has so much to offer us! I’m enjoying the new season of Ted Lasso (which he often writes and also stars in) as well as his film podcast and recent Sesame Street cameo. Here’s an interview with the man on his future.

Paul Auster: Bringing Theory to Life

Some think critical theory merely forms literature into cultural capital. Others think it deadens the beauty of a story. Instead, I would posit that theory can make a book both more accessible and more alive. It makes the invisible visible. And it throws the text into conversation with the world around it and other forms of art.

Literature (and films we will look at next week) that seems to have theory at its nascence brings a different level of engagement from its readers. This “access” and “aliveness” that Auster discusses above feel all that more sharp in the way he seamlessly infuses, maps, and plays with theoretical writings by artistic and cultural scholars.

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In his interviews, Paul Auster often considers the impact of books, and specifically fiction, on society as well as the different impact of writers in different cultures. Aspects of critical theory that address such — the power of art in the world — are often dismissed by him as having any sway over the way he writes. However, he is an author highly discussed in academic circles and one that, at least implicitly and sometimes explicitly, contains discussions of poststructuralism, postmodernism, existentialism, and other lenses of understanding texts within his writing.

I ended up talking about Auster quite a bit during my lecture at Pratt: From Theory to Fiction. Even more so than in this recording; in the actual lecture, I had several questions that brought me back to Auster and theory.

As I mentioned last week, the inception of my relationship with both Auster’s work and critical theory came during my first year as a student at Bowdoin College. This tying, on a personal level, could not be undone. As I learned about French poststructuralists, I learned about Auster. I saw so much of them in his work. Conversely, his fiction seemed to add to this theoretical discourse.

But, I would also posit, that theory — and perhaps especially of this poststructural nature — is at its best when it is completely in harmony with the world. It should not, in other words, be something that is put upon a text or a reader. It should illuminate a message and place the work within a larger intertextual discourse.

Today, I explore Auster’s relationship with theory and the way he has been placed within discourses as well as his completely free approach to writing. I would argue that this, however, is not a tension at all.

Working in the in-between

As I mentioned last week, Auster’s early published work was nearly all translated poetry and critical essays. Living in France, he was constantly navigating the in-between of culture and language.

In that liminal space, the constant crossing of thresholds, one can find deeper discoveries. I like this succinct explanation of the concept by Arup Ratan Chakraborty in Anudhyan: An International Journal of Social Sciences:

The word ‘liminality’ or ‘liminal’ is derived from the Latin limen meaning ‘threshold’. Liminal space is the ‘in-between’ location of cultural action, in which according to various cultural theorists, anthropologists and psychologists meaning is produced.

Homi K. Bhabha and Edward Said are good starting places to investigate this concept further. Their work in cultural studies largely falls into postcolonial discourse but is in no way limited by that designation. Culture is everywhere and their work is relatable to everyday experiences. Below is an interesting lecture and discussion of this concept via Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution.

Jennifer Howard-Grenville et al further discusses the concept in a way that can be applicable to our realities in “Liminality as Cultural Process for Cultural Change” (p. 525):

Turner (1977, 1982, 1987) suggests that liminal occasions are characterized by heightened reflexivity. They are "privileged spaces where people are allowed to think about how they think, about the terms in which they con duct their thinking, or to feel about how they feel in daily life. Here the code rules are themselves the reference of the knowing; the knowledge propositions themselves are the object of knowledge" (Turner 1987, p. 102). That is, individuals use their human capacity to step back and think about their situation, considering consciously what regulates their behavior. It is here that people can "talk about how they normally talk."

In this way, the many in-betweens of Auster’s writing helps us to think about our own worlds, to learn something about ourselves.

Auster creates many layers in his texts also by utilizing metafiction and working between genres. He writes literary fiction, detective stories (as The New York Trilogy is widely considered), non-fiction, and screenplays. Sometimes there are artists working also within the texts, writers or photographers for example, that seem to add another layer of awareness within the text. He clearly does this in the collaborations with filmmaker Wayne Wang, which I’ll talk about in two weeks. But he also does it in City of Glass with a character of his same name (Paul Auster) and in Man in the Dark through an aging book critic.

These many layers create an effect you can visualize as mise-en-abyme, or placed into infinity, as Jacques Rancière especially theorizes. I’ll talk about this idea more in a couple of weeks with the focus on film since it is related to some academic research I’ve published. In the meantime, we can think about the concept as creating reflections both within the stories and externally for the reader. These elements create a more versatile understanding and allows us to go deeper with ideas, but giving power to the reader to navigate and make our own sense of these Borges-like labyrinths.

Despite these navigations and frequent use of imaginary elements in his work, Auster claims he is “a realist.” What does this mean? I guess he is concerned with truth and with people. Neither of those elements are in contrast with writing fiction. As Virginia Woolf tells us famously in “A Room of One’s Own”:

A postmodern author?

Can one be postmodern if one rejects the notion? I’ve read interviews where Auster denies any use of postmodernism or poststructuralism in his work, yet so many scholars seem to find it there. As a recent article about Auster describes:

His early books, including 1987's "The New York Trilogy," were existential, postmodern detective stories of outsiders with conflicting identities that found a receptive audience, especially in Europe. Auster, who barely read French postmodern theorists such as Jacques Derrida, rejects the characterization, however.

Yet, I’m sure, just like many others, that it is there. Could it be instead that Derrida and Auster have arrived at similar conclusions and questions about the world through their lines of thought about the world?

Sure, it’s possible.

Postmodernism is hard to define and is - by definition - in flux, so we may be coming to this reading with different understandings of it. For a thorough yet succinct tracing of the history of the term and general forms of use, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good overview. A much shorter overview from The Conversation is also a good read as well as this one from the Tate.

One way of understanding postmodernism is not only as a reaction against modernism or as something coming after it, but as an exploration of relative truths: “reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually.” Auster’s 4 3 2 1, then, in addition to his works of metafiction and plays with language(s), gives us this possibility through a world of parallel universes where the protagonist’s identity and fate are changed by different factors. Although the story is filled with many relatable human experiences, we are able to consider the play of many factors in the world that might impact our own outcomes.

David L. Ulin from The Washington Post observes:

“4321” is a long book, and it can meander through the details and detritus of a life — or quartet of lives. Still, what’s compelling always is its sense that the most important time exists within us, the time of memory and imagination, out of which identity is forged. Like everyone, Archie and his family must live in time, and die. But like everyone also, the measure of their existence is not necessarily what they leave behind but who they thought they were. “The word psyche means two things in Greek,” Archie’s aunt, a literature professor, tells him in one of the novel’s most trenchant passages. “Butterfly and soul. But when you stop and think about it carefully, butterfly and soul aren’t so different, after all.”

In this way, I would argue, Auster’s books as postmodern art both attempt not to find universal truths, like the modernists, and find common elements of humanity, perhaps without specific language to give them. The paradox of this multiplicity and universality is a constant illumination through his oeuvre.

In an interview with the Paris Review, Auster tells us: “The greatest influences on my work have been fairy tales, oral traditions of storytelling.” He discusses his use of metafiction and similarities with (postmodern Argentinian writer) Borges, for example, in the contexts of playing with secret tensions and ideas deep inside him rather than engaging in any theoretical discourse.

Auster talks with Granta about ‘existential doubt’ and 4 3 2 1:

A natural writer

In the video below, Auster explains how he doesn’t have a choice but to write. It is a part of him. Not some lofty idea as a youth, but something to spend his whole life on. It brings him a lot of joy despite the marginalization by American society and the constant solitude.

Perhaps because it is such a natural part of who Auster is, he rejects the idea that theory could influence his writing. It doesn’t mean he is not a careful writer however. He often writes first by hand then typewriter, at a slow pace to avoid laziness, in his words, and to carefully find the correct words for his ideas.

I can’t help but think that so many great literary figures and theorists are entrenched deep in Auster’s brain. He mentions writers like Borges and Dickens and Tolstoy easily and frequently in interviews. He worked as a critic and lecturer; is highly aware of the discourse that’s out there.

So what if he simply uses what suits him without putting a label on it? That’s exactly the direction that many have taken theory in the twenty-first century, as Post-Theory (which I again discuss in that lecture; see also for example this source) or into the realm of Cultural Studies, which is interdisciplinary. Although perhaps continuing to label where the theories come from in connection rather than an absence of labels altogether is what is really being done in the academic world. In this way, we can trace knowledge as well as give knowledge from the arts power in the articulation of its relevancy. Isn’t this why some people are afraid of Critical Race Theory?

Here, Auster says to avoid being ‘too clever’ as a writer unless there’s a real need for it. This resonates with his work, where we see echoes of theory and philosophy, but always in a natural and meaningful way.

I think Auster is doing this kind of improvisation I discussed in regards to jazz last month. He knows and understands so much of the literary discourses out there — in addition to the English and French languages — that they simply come out as improvisation, free expression of identity and ideas.

What’s your view on and experience with critical theory? Does it help you to understand Auster’s work in any way?

What do you think about Auster’s view that writers are marginalized in America? That nobody really listens to them?

In the spirit of Derrida, I’ll leave you with the questions.

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