Happy New Year!

As this post publishes, I am flying somewhere over icy Canada on my way back to Japan. We had a lovely, busy time with family in Boston…all that precious downtime to catch up with reading has been slightly postponed to January evenings and weekends. A perfect time for hibernation! I also have just the right space for this endeavor — our traditional tatami room, laid with bamboo flooring and empty save a folding table, Muji lounge cushions, and a velcro dart board.

I have a wonderful TBR pile, partly from books I picked up here. I’m excited to read ’s The Big T in full, a previously serialized novel which I started reading on Substack and ordered to greet me in Boston, and Anne Michael’s Held, a recommendation from Kate Jones. At an annual visit to one of my favorite bookshops — the Concord Bookshop (Massachusetts) — it was Uketsu’s Strange Houses and the third installment of Solvej Balle’s brilliant Groundhog-Day-esque On the Calculation of Volume that piqued my interest. I also picked up Zadie Smith’s latest collection of essays as a gift to my husband…let’s see who gets to it first.

More pressingly, though, are re-reads of Pride and Prejudice and The Unbearable Lightness of Being for some upcoming teaching. Perhaps these will be completed before landing…home.

A physical home — for me — keeps changing, and I do think that going back home to my parents’ house where I grew up and then boomeranging to Fukuoka is helping me adjust to what this particular new home is and means to me. How it connects to my roots and my present and my direction is somehow explored in this connection or this time and space of reflection. The dawn of a new year also inspires me to settle into new types of routines and mindsets, or slight adjustments, that allow me to keep evolving.

This coming year is one that I plan to start publishing more again — hoorah! I’ve missed it over the past year or so. I’d like to share with you here just a glimmer of a few projects I’m working on or towards —

1. A triptych of novellas that includes the finished, slightly more sinister and surreal, The Man from Brooklyn. The two other stories take place in Paris and London and are in various stages of drafting. I’ll look to share some snippets soon.

2. A second newsletter that moves back to essays and cultural studies through the arts but in a new way, drawing on my experiences living internationally, and offering something more practical and educational at times, such as related workshops and a sub-strand for teachers. I’ve been working with a designer and am excited to envisage this taking shape. Look for a launch sometime this spring!

3. Continuing the Creative Lab and Encounters series here; keeping The Matterhorn as a playground of exploration for fiction and literature.

4. Short stories inspired by moments of everyday life that experiment with stylistic or philosophical concepts.

Finally, thanks very much to some recent interest in my writing from Substackers and . Ian had me as his guest on a new podcast about writing and publishing, specifically focusing on self and indie publishing. We had such a great conversation that he had to cut it into two episodes! You can listen here: Part 1 / Part 2. Matthew is a voracious reader and recently included An Interpreter in Vienna in his vlog review and reading discussion. It was wonderful to be in such good author company.

Feel free to share any of your projects in the comments! Hope your year is off to a wonderful start.

For the first time since arrival the entire week’s weather is forecast below 30 degrees (86F); autumn is in Fukuoka, but I am in the Amami Islands, toward Okinawa, where it is still just as hot and humid. I have been jetted off with seventeen-year-old students for an ecological and cultural week. The itinerary is filled with buses, boats, and flights, dropping us down in spots of beauty or cultural fascination…or those set up for touristic experiences.

We kayaked through mangroves and observed a professional fish slicer, who is also a firefighter and online sensation (sashimi influencer?); we avoided the bite of a paralyzing spider on a forest walk and were warned about snakes in the bush whose venom could kill within the hour; we dyed t-shirts with mud and learned about the values of local textiles; we danced and cooked at the community center. It was rich and vast, but I found myself craving the peace of solo exploration or at least just some time to read or reflect. To write.

This is unsurprising for a school trip. Those who have done it will tell you of the joys and of the utter exhaustion. But I’m not putting in a complaint; it is what it is. What fascinated me, what gave me hope in this warped reality that is emerging on our screens and streets, is that one evening with an hour before dinner, two students asked me if I could take them down to the adjacent beach to read. They, too, felt constrained by the constant move toward the next activity or the waiting for the next thing to start.

With heavy books in hand, we began our departure, but before we moved down the hill and out of reach, several others came running along with their books to join. A total of nine (out of thirty-one) and one with a journal and pen. “I’m writing a sci-fi story,” he said, “But today I think I’ll just write some random stuff.” Later that night at the talent show he would perform a solo Frank Sinatra tune, completely off-key, but with the enthusiasm and humble confidence of somebody who writes.

During the short walk, the others told me about character development and critiqued the quality of the prose in their hands (unbidden). And as we approached the sea, they all spread out to sand, logs, and rock for perches to turn pages and immerse themselves.

Another evening, I led the students in a multilingual journal reflection. Nobody tried to duck out. Some moved into poetry.

I was thinking about inspiration and the beautiful, and often vicious, natural world vs the incredible, and often overwhelming, displays of culture and personalities we find in cities. In Amami Oshima, I had wrongly assumed most of our guides would be local, but many had moved there from Tokyo during the pandemic. These transplants, some of whom had also lived in the US in places like Los Angeles, had come for the peace.

I often consider escaping to some place like this. Not Amami, but a similarly secluded place. The Alps? The Maine Woods? But cities also regenerate my mind.

Back home on the evening before departure, we had managed to organize a babysitter for a visit to the Asian Art Fair, a quick stop at a tinsy-tiny Irish pub showing the baseball, and a seven-course meal at a French brasserie. The slightly cooled weather lifted me into the night and the experience lingered in my mind during hours on the bus with the teens, looking out at vast greenery and Pacific Ocean. I thought about the hikes and bike rides along the coast we could now tackle in Fukuoka. I thought, too, about the flâneurism of fall and the way autumn leaves complement the echoes of the buzz of Paris Fashion Week everywhere and the movement of happy creatures into art spaces and cozy cafes.

Then I realize that I’ve landed in one of those magical spots where it’s easy to have both — the city and the countryside — even within a day. With the weather comes the chance to travel within adjacent spaces: to see, to dwell, to be a part of these scenes and find language to interact with it all.

We are moving to Japan after one short-long year here. With my in-laws and friends in the London area, it’s not a real good-bye; more of a see-you-soon.

Japan is far, but it’s always been one of my elsewheres. After first studying its art and literature at school, then several trips to the cities and mountains from my near-decade-long base in Hong Kong, I have been enamored. A couple of years ago near the start of The Matterhorn, I wrote a series of posts about or related to my new home.

These posts on Japan feel very naive in anticipation of living there. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t. And I guess as I start to learn from the inside out, I imagine looking back at this with dread for all that I would then say. And still more — I imagine those I encounter, the Japanese and her longterm inhabitants, who would have much deeper, vaster knowledge than I.

Yet — these musings are not meant to give us full grasps of certainty. Rather, they reflect my thoughts alongside my research. This is never the goal as a writer: to give the reader all. Because it is impossible, silly even. We can try. We write in different genres to also clue you in to how much reliable research (fact, not truth) might be in the words and how much might be for the sake of discovery, of beauty, of questions.

I’ll leave you with some of these posts from my archive. There have been a few about Beckenham this year, too, and the novella following The Man from Brooklyn roughly takes place here. I’ve got an idea for fiction set in the mysterious park as well, which I’ve mentioned here before. We’re not done with this place. For now, though, onward —

Thank you for reading!

A novel by Mircea Cărtărescu (translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter)

SOLENOID
noun — “a device, consisting of a wire wrapped in the shape of a cylinder, that acts like a magnet when electricity goes through it” (Cambridge)1

⬩

This post is a snippet of a journey, some pieces of the puzzle about what it means to be a writer and, therefore, what it means to live.

Maybe that sounds a bit too dramatic for the collaborative discussion of a single book. But I didn’t say it has the answer. No, instead this reading project has become something more than itself. Paradoxically, perhaps, my collaborator and I have decided to be reductionary in our approach. Once I attempt to provide some context to the project and the book, with the assumption that most readers haven’t read it, we bring you our condensed responses to six selected passages from the 672-page tome. The hope is that the gaps provide as much potential for realizations as our prose.

At its core, Solenoid is a novel about a school teacher and former-aspiring author living in communist Bucharest. However, the story moves through memory and life experiences to grasp existential questions while seeking acceptance. Mircea Cărtărescu’s poetic prose takes us to deeply internal moments of pain or love alongside greater questions of human solidarity and the supernatural, at least as it lives in our minds.

, the author of , recommended Solenoid to me back in October 2023 in the comments of an essay/podcast about “The Intrinsic Link between Memory and Novels,” which would certainly discuss this novel if I were working on it at this time. I happened to be in London and attempted to find the book at several bookshops where I was greeted with perplexed brows from shopkeepers and the suggestion that they could order it for me. I wanted to have a look, to feel it in my hands and check out the prose myself, but the book’s continuing absence intrigued me more. With further discussion elsewhere from Nathan in regards to this book, though he was still in medias res of the experience, I was propelled to order it online.

I picked up the book immediately upon receipt despite a large pile already on my desk. After an opening sequence about head lice, I was hooked. Unsurprisingly, the subject of lice was not what inspired my appetite for more but the manner of the immersiveness and courageousness of the writing. After a couple of slow months when I was multitasking with research related to podcast recordings, and a long trip to my parents’ in Boston where the heavy pages just wouldn’t fit into the Christmas-present-filled suitcases, I dove all the way in during a winter of introspection. Finally after several stops and starts due to other trips when the book just wouldn’t fit, I finished. I was left with a feeling of awe and the need to talk about the experience into which Cărtărescu had taken me.

Nathan wrote a short essay about his experience with the encounter of Cărtărescu’s writing in “Wire-bound words, or, a brief discussion of magnets” where he alluded to the possibility of today’s post. He writes:

I recommend reading his entire early response (and traveling with him on his experimental, philosophical, and often personal journey with fiction).

SLAKE

Wire-bound words

Hello dearest reader. Back when I was a close-up magician, there was a… how can I put this?… system I used. I cannot describe this system—its mystery must remain enclosed by the rules that so bind that prestidigitative world—but it was a rare and beautiful and complex thing that few bothered to put in the time to learn. I held it close to my heart, cheri…

Read more

2 years ago · 34 likes · 77 comments · Nathan Slake

Regarding this life-changing feeling, I had the impression that Cărtărescu had articulated ideas I felt deep within that were previously indescribable. He gave language to the abstract musings or these fleeting things that you feel you might grasp within a dream or during a run (in my case)…instead, they retreat to the recesses of the mind, not in the head but in small places like my left femur or right index finger or ninth vertebrae in my thoracic spine. Albeit, the great Romanian author wrote these thoughts in still cryptic forms, symbolic segments of puzzles that constantly shift, moving faster the closer you are to placing them together.

This idea of the embodiment of the vastness of these ideas is also reflected in Solenoid. Cărtărescu’s work is as much of the body as it is of the great beyond. It conjures Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” in this way — at once an individual caught up in a macabre game of power and (in)justice as well as a remark on a political ideology (for Kafka, colonialism; for Cărtărescu, communism).

This was an implicit subject of a discussion that Cărtărescu had with his translator, Sean Cotter (whom the author holds in great esteem and as part of the creative process), and which is available in a video via Bass School at UT Dallas (also embedded at the end of this article). After reading a passage in Romanian and English about tattoos that cover the body inside and out, the authors discuss Kafka and others who write authentically without the need to write for a reader. Paradoxically, the effect can become something that speaks more vividly and deeply to a reader. This authenticity is something Cărtărescu attempts to achieve in his writing. One way he does this is through a process of writing his manuscript without editing (according to him)2.

The pair also created something to aid us with the puzzles of the text, or perhaps to radiate the labyrinth into a multidimensional, infinite amplification. The Solenoid Reader is available for free from the publisher as a download. I’ve only scratched the surface, but it has the effect of Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project that bombards us with quotations, musings, anecdotes, and poetry. Of course, Benjamin’s work was published posthumously, which is part of the reason it is presented in puzzle-form. Perhaps this creates a more authentic artwork, according to the discussion from Cotter and Cărtărescu. I also think of books like Moby Dick, To Walk Alone in the Crowd, Orlando, and Istanbul: Memories and the City that all seem to eschew definition or linear narration.

At the link, you can also read the translator’s description of this accompanying text, which concludes: “Solenoid readers follow these raveling threads through this group of texts toward other texts, searching for further coincidences and still further constellations of meaning, reading in the shelter of these frightening stars.” I think his words here mostly refer to the original novel as well. It is a “Vertical Book,” in the words of the author, one that moves us up into some kind of abyss whilst simultaneously grounding us in the everyday world of human “solidarity” and love. Although some may see his style and length as grandiose and even imperious, I took away this message more than anything.

And, if you happen to listen to the video, you will hear a story of an accidental meeting with a reader in Guadalajara who was “saved” by this book. Cărtărescu seems to put more value on the shared tears of humanity between author-and-reader than on his awards and accolades. As a teacher-writer myself, I think that human connection of the teacher he was in the eighties is still a strong part of who he is as an author. Because great teaching, after all, starts with connection and giving voice and epistemological power to one’s students.

⬩

Without further ado, we bring you the chosen passages and our responses…

Passages from Solenoid, selected and discussed by Nathan and Kate —

1

The Fall, the first and only map of my mind, fell the evening of October 24, 1977, at the Workshop of the Moon, which met at that time in the basement of the Department of Letters. I have never recovered from the trauma. I remember everything with the clarity of a magic lantern just as a torture victim remembers how his fingernails and teeth were pulled out, when, many years later, he wakes up screaming and drenched in sweat. It was a catastrophe, but not in the sense of a building collapsing or a car accident, in the sense of a coin flipped toward the ceiling and falling on the wrong side. (p. 32)

Nathan: We circle back to the Workshop of the Moon (amazing name, by the way) later in the novel, but this is the moment when we glean what this story is truly about. This fork in time, this reflection by Mircea seemingly about his own life and how he has inhabited the other side of that coin but that what you hold is the wrong side, the way it all could have fallen.

Kate: It’s so fascinating to go back to this paragraph after reading the book. I love when a novel responds to its opening. Truly, this is a catalyst for some kind of plot (though abstract), but at the same time, it holds the seeds of certain more developed themes — trauma, writing ‘success’ and visibility, dreams/nightmares, fate… I read it completely differently now. In fact, I remember being confused about the logistics of this aspect of the plot until watching the interview (below). Somehow it felt superfluous at the time of reading. However, now I see this mundane contest and failure as much more symbolic of other ideas in the novel.

2

As long as I can remember, I have had a strong feeling of predestination. The very act of opening my eyes in the world made me feel like I was chosen – because they weren’t a spider’s eyes, they weren’t the thousands of hexagons of a fly’s eyes, they weren’t the eyes on the tips of a snail’s horns; because I didn’t come into the world as a bacterium or myriapod. The enormous ganglion of my brain, I felt, predestined me to an obsessive search for a way out. I understood I must use my brain like an eye, open and observant under the skull’s transparent shell, able to see with another kind of sight and to detect fissures and signs, hidden artifacts and obscure connections in this test of intelligence, patience, love, and faith that is this world. As long as I can remember, I have done nothing but search for breaches in the apparently flat, logical, fissureless surface of the model within my skull. (p. 76)

Nathan: The quote is from near the start of the book where several key and repeating themes are established. Predestination and fate, the introspection of self-awareness and consciousness. We are aware because we are aware. Such awareness can extend within and without. As a scientist, often I have grappled with a sense of fate, for good or for bad, that has positioned itself across the path of my life. I selected this passage not only because of the themes but because it is a perfect example of Mircea’s prose. Phrases such as “the enormous ganglion of my brain” and “fissureless surface of the model within my skull” are what I am here for. It is what pulled me in from the start. If you like this then there is a high chance you will enjoy the book.

Kate: This is a great quote. I’m so happy you chose it and think you hit the root of it clearly in your response. I’m interested, too, in the corporal elements not only here but throughout the story. It’s so visceral, occasionally disgusting and other times magical in consideration of the mind-body connection (and beyond). I don’t know to what extent your research works with biological aspects of the human body, but I can see how you might respond from this scientific perspective. All the time he talks about his brain (etc.), there is also a kind of surpassing of it, where the skull becomes invisible and the connections of the brain are almost tangible and visible. I love this way of thinking about the protagonist’s consciousness.

3

No novel ever gave us a path; all of them, absolutely all of them sink back into the useless void of literature. The world is full of the millions of novels that elide the only sense that writing ever had: to understand yourself to the very end, up to the only chamber in the mind’s labyrinth you are not permitted to enter. (p. 209)

Kate: These passages about writing were so difficult to read because they speak of this horrific fear about wasting time writing (or reading). Cărtărescu comes back to this ambiguity about the writing practice continually in the book, trying to perhaps make sense of its purpose. He seems to question writing as a compulsive act at times, taking away from his real life. He also constantly plays with the dialogue of literature, implicitly or explicitly. On the one hand, he elevates it to a kind of sublime space. On the other, it is something just as ephemeral as a butterfly and, perhaps, unable to explain anything in clarity. However, there is this pervasive idea of the personal, both that writing is for the author and that specific individuals can connect with the shared consciousness of that author. The labyrinth, it seems to me, refers to Borges. Although it is also a more general puzzle that includes all literature. Also, the “useless” comment makes me think of the foreword to The Picture of Dorian Gray: “All art is quite useless,” which shows its elevation beyond something of everyday use.

At times, Cărtărescu really made me question the purpose of the time I spend writing. So immersive was the experience that I felt like throwing it away one minute, but fighting within myself for those reasons the next, even if they may feel tiny and invisible. I think this is what the protagonist concludes as well, but it’s unclear because the conclusion is also about living with those on Earth instead of floating off into this metaphysical world, untethered. 

Nathan: It’s already possible to see some patterns from the book, even from just these so far. The interiority of the writer and the reader. I have never felt introspection like I have when reading this book. I found the act of reading Solenoid – and continue to find it, even now, several months later when coming back to Mircea’s words – arresting. That is the only word I can place here. Do we expect to find a path in literature? I don’t know if I’ve ever approached reading with a vision or desire to understand myself. Perhaps that is why I started writing.

4

Hinton used his mind in the same way to understand the unintelligible, to record, like the poet whose eyes he had, the inexpressible. Through analogy and telescoping, he spent his life in an attempt to surpass the intuitive forms of three-dimensional space, the only forms where our mind feels at home, because it was shaped by them and has their form; to compel a three-dimensional brain, focuses on the volumes of our world, to let its hemispheres diverge; to contemplate, aimlessly and dreamily, until the familiar forms melted and, suddenly, like an epiphany, opened a portal to the fantastic dimension immediately above our own, a dimension until then accessible only to saints and to the enlightened. Breaking through the prison of these three dimensions through the use of mathematical reasoning equals, in fact (or doubles, as proof that in the end, all the paths of knowledge converge on an incandescent point, mystical-poetical-logical-mathematical), ecstasy, divine infection, the blinding state of satori. (p. 352)

Kate: I love so much about this passage and the pages that come before it about the tesseract (which immediately conjured A Wrinkle in Time for me). The interdisciplinary nature of Cărtărescu’s thinking moves beyond boundaries we often categorize knowledge within. Why not consider “satori,” the Japanese Buddhist word for awakening, as something achieved through mathematics combined with poetry? It feels seamless within the context of this mind we are privy to. It also feels like a wonderful way to experience the world as a mathematician or physicist at this level of philosophical and abstract thinking, although perhaps overwhelming as well. It’s something filmmakers like Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer) and Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) attempt to capture through other means of depicting consciousness3. Partly, I think this passage demonstrates the ability of humans to think beyond what is already known or taught. In some way, we each have this capability.

I wonder, Nathan, if we both selected the passage because we are avid Murakami readers? I felt so much of his parallel worlds and Zen movements within the text, but especially here. Or rather, there is a kind of summary of those points that are implicit throughout the rest of the book.

Nathan: I find it both amusing and unsurprising that we selected the same passage. It was inevitable, I think. This was one of the many moments where Mircea would take a subject and run with it for several pages, as well as circling back later in the book. The exploration of the tesseract was eye opening. And you’re right, even though Murakami is a completely different author, there are overlapping themes. “Zen movements within the text.” How right you are. It is impossible for me to articulate the sense of feeling I get when reading certain of Murakami’s books, but “Zen movements within the text” is an apt description. These two authors are different in style and prose, but the conjuration of feelings they invoke are so similar. 

5

I picked up a sign that read, “Help!” left behind by someone in the departed crowd. The word might have been scrawled onto the cardboard with a bloody finger, by one inscribing the secret name of each of us and of our species. “We live for a nanosecond on a speck of dust lost in the cosmos,” I said to myself, and I returned to the dentist’s office, where the four chairs glowed, pure and fulfilled, in the light of their own panels of bulbs. (p. 568)

Kate: So just before this paragraph are seven pages of “help! help! help! help! help! help! help! help! help! help! help! help! help! help! help!” repeated endlessly in a “song of our fearful agony” delivered by a “chorus.” It feels like a Greek chorus, somewhat outside of the text, but responding emotionally to its content. I must admit that I came across these pages when flipping through the book, and it inspired me to read faster to find out what was going on. It felt like a cry we all feel at times. Sometimes, I let it out quietly if I am home alone, as if acknowledging we need help allows us to get it, even from ourselves. As writers, perhaps we cry out implicitly throughout the writing process for some kind of connection or shared pain. What do you think? 

Rather than bring us into a deep dive of despair, the passage seems to bring us together. A shared humanity. Common existential questions about our world and our isolation. Now, in this paragraph, he’s come back down to Earth, in a dentist’s chair of all places. Several passages deal with bodily pain, including a frightening trip to the hospital as a child, made more frightening through the denial of his memory by his mother. The sharpness of mortality -- a mere “nanosecond” of life -- somehow coexists with this mind that appears to live in an infinite type of world, connected to all even with that searing isolation.

Nathan: What I love about this quote is how wild it must be for anyone who hasn’t read the book. So much within a few words that have been sliced out of the page. Here we find another recurrent theme, that of existentialism and our place in the vast timescale of the universe. Even a nanosecond is too long, I suspect. And you’re right, Kate, the passage begins a process of re-grounding the reader, asking us to accept and be at peace with the existential mystery of life. I have said before about the feeling the book gave me as I read, and I think this is part of that. It was meditative at times and that, in part, why was it was a joy to read it at a slow pace.

6

The essential ambiguity of my writing. Its irreducible insanity. I was in a world that cannot be described, and definitely not understood, through any other kind of writing, insofar as it can be truly comprehended. Revealing is one thing, and the painful process of reverse engineering, which is true understanding, quite another. You have before your eyes an artifact of another world, with other dawns and other gods, an enigmatic Antikythera mechanism4 that shines, floating in the air, in all the details of its metal brackets covered with symbols and gears. It was difficult to retrieve it from the bottom of the sea, from all its oyster beds and undulating algae, to meticulously clean off the crust of petrified sand and rust, to grease it with glittering oil, to set every gear in place so all the teeth fit together, and this is what my manuscript has done, up to this point: it has revealed, brought to light, unveiled what was hidden behind veils, it has decrypted what was locked in the crypt, it has deciphered the cipher of the box where it lay, without even a dash of the unknown object's shadow and melancholy dripping into our world. (p. 574)

Nathan: So here we are, near the end of the book. This is a long passage dealing with the process of the narrator’s writing of a manuscript. I selected it because it is, quite surely, self-referential to Mircea’s own process and his feelings of what it is to write. The manuscript – the same one you hold when reading Solenoid – is an artifact dredged from the waters of the author’s own mind, complete with its inherent mystery, a labyrinth that can only be explored once it has been committed to the page and the waters drained from its many chambers. We, the reader, find ourselves exploring the words as much as the author does. Such exploration requires effort. At least, that is my interpretation. Having listened to Mircea’s interview (linked below), the fact that he does little to no editing, letting instead the words merely arrive on the page unaltered, seems to fit.

Kate: I agree with your interpretation about this metafictional passage, Nathan, especially after listening to the interview as well. I guess even if it’s not an accurate representation of the author and his practice, it allows us to come to similar conclusions through the writer-narrator (à la Borges, Murakami, Kundera, or Auster…). I like this idea of the ‘secret’ being ‘revealed.’ Although the world he describes is some sort of completely abstract and incredibly earthly duality, as if they have a reciprocal relationship with each other rather than merely coexisting, the message is rather simple and clear. That is, he asks us to live in the real world and try to seek that pearl in the “oyster bed” despite the world’s harshness and our own traumas.

I’ll end by thanking you again for introducing me to this incredible text, Nathan.

★ READERS — Please share your thoughts about these passages, even if you haven’t read the book. The passages are numbered for easy reference. Thanks for joining us today in the culmination of several months of reading, pondering, and discussion. It has truly been a rewarding project! ★

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Like me, Troy is an ‘American expat,’ a writer and editor from California living on the Gold Coast of Spain about 30 minutes outside of Barcelona in Europe’s answer to Fire Island: Sitges. He’s had a wide array of careers and experiences in the past, ranging from gardener to taxi driver to interior designer, and currently also defines himself as a house husband and dog daddy.

As an admirer of Troy’s work, I was intrigued when he announced a new publication called that he planned to launch this June. His current serialization — Lamb — ends each week with the following:

LGBTQ+ fiction and writers remain a marginalized population in the world at large, and even here on Substack there is a relative paucity of queer content.

If you have a queer bestie, coworker, frenemy, nemesissy, softball team, gym buddy, book group, favorite guncle, Aunt Butch, or adored florist-caterer-handyperson-bartender—please help extend my reach to the wider community by sharing this post directly with someone who will appreciate a queer story.

Troy’s work related to visibility and community both within queer communities and more general connections outward from these spaces is a wonderful way to use his writing voice. I thought also of my students and the way this publication might inspire them in different ways. As such, I asked if he would be willing to do something in written or audio form for Matterhorn readers and was so pleased that he accepted. He came up with a wonderful combination of philosophical discussion and how-to for writers, with quite a few recommended reads or views embedded within.

In fact, Troy has already completed a soft launch of Qstack, with a novel excerpt from . But come June 1st, the full Qstack Directory of LGBTQ+ Substacks will debut, with guest posts and community projects.

In the meantime, you can learn a little today about queerness in fiction and add your ideas in the comments. Thank you, Troy!

Layering Queerness in Fiction

If you’re reading this, and you’re interested in writing characters with diverse sexual identities, congratulations, you’re halfway there already!

Not everyone is called upon to write stories about characters significantly different from their own general demographic, and that’s OK—nobody needs to rush home and start writing a story about a queer character just because they want to be inclusive.

On the other hand, surely you will have already met some queer people in your life, and they have had some effect on you. As writers, we collect experiences—not in an acquisitive, transactional sort of way, but with an attitude of genuine interest in the diversity of people from which we may draw inspiration to create characters that are as alive in their own way as we can make them.

Certainly for many writers, our main characters are often people who are similar to ourselves in some important aspects. So far, most of my own main characters are cis gay white men—I don’t get extra points for writing about a marginalized community that I happen to belong to; but I also don’t lose points because my main characters are not trans or women or people of color, though I have had occasion to include diverse identities in supporting characters.

“Write what you know” is a great beginning, but there’s no telling all the diverse characters you will need to populate your stories in years to come.

Definitions and Terms

But maybe we should start with a definition of who we are. Specifically, we’re talking here about sexual identity rather than gender identity—as a cis man, I’m going to leave discussion of diverse gender identities to people who live that experience.

Here’s a short rundown of the rainbow at hand:

• Gay - someone who is sexually attracted to members of the same gender, usually men for men, although sometimes used by women as well.

• Lesbian - a woman who is attracted to other women.

• Asexual/Ace - not sexually attracted to any gender, but may be open to romantic relationships.

• Aromantic/Aro - not romantically attracted to anyone, but may feel or act on sexual attraction.

• Demisexual - attracted to people with whom they share a strong emotional connection.

• Bisexual - attracted to people from more than one gender identity.

• Pansexual - attracted to individuals irrespective of sex, gender, or gender identity.

• Queer - an umbrella term intended to include anyone who does not identify as cis/heterosexual/straight.

• Polyamory - engaging in multiple romantic and/or sexual relationships with the consent of all people involved.

“How To Write Straight Characters”

For half a moment, I thought about a cheeky take, along the lines of “The Heterosexual Questionnaire” by Martin Rochlin, Ph.D. in 1972, who tried to flip the script by asking questions like:
 
            “What do you think caused your heterosexuality?”

            “When and how did you first decide you were a heterosexual?”

            “Is it possible your heterosexuality is just a phase you may grow out of?”

My proscriptive story writing version might have gone something like this:

DON’T call them “breeders”—it’s rude, and reduces their humanity to a single unfortunate consequence of their behavior.

DON’T rely on stereotypes—if all your straight male characters are football players marrying their cheerleader sweethearts and having 2.5 kids each, then you are simply checking off a list of “straight” characteristics, not infusing them with realistic personalities.

DO allow straight characters to live to the end of your story—they shouldn’t all die in childbirth or bar fights three chapters in to give us something to feel sorry for them over.

But this is ridiculous, of course, and yet the sort of advice you will find if you Google “How to write queer characters”—which I did, finding tips exactly along those lines—and so perhaps not so very ridiculous after all.

Stereotypes BAD?

Standard advice places stereotypes as the biggest set of things to avoid when writing queer characters (any characters, really) and yet we have plenty of instances when stereotypes were turned on their head to great effect.

As just one example, let us take as our text the hit TV show Modern Family (2009 - 2020), the sitcom portraying an extended family of three couples in various pairings: a May/December and interracial coupling with Jay and Gloria, a heterosexual marriage between Claire and Phil, and gay couple, Mitch and Cam, with their panoply of wisecracking friends.

Mitch and Cam were hilarious in part because they did have some of the stereotypical characteristics associated with gay men, but also other traits which developed into well-rounded portraits of modern gay men attempting to navigate their experience of themselves and each other with kindness and grace.

What worked was how often they unleashed their penchant for drama, glitter, and arch rivalries to the hilt, and then fretted over what people would think—were they acting authentically? Were they judging themselves (and each other) as harshly as society often does?

Portraying effeminacy, or any stereotype, in gay men (I will leave aside “butchness” in lesbians as a similar stereotype with its own set of intricacies) is hurtful when it is weaponized as a means to mock us and undermine our personal power, and to oversimplify our personalities based on behaviors we may not even exhibit.

Incidentally, I would like to acknowledge that even though many gay men are not in the least effeminate, there is also absolutely nothing wrong with being effeminate! Shocking but true!

Homophobia, at its core, is misogynistic sexism turned toward people both gay and straight. So while we may sometimes say “Don’t give stereotypes like effeminacy to your queer characters” we might also recognize that it is often not the characteristic which is wrong, but the process of taking a trait, running it through a sexist lens, and then weaponizing it as a blanket generalization.

The point is: it is possible to write characters who have stereotypical behaviors and mannerisms, and still have it read as a positive and complex portrait, showing needs and motivations, and inspiring a balanced understanding.

One further specific stereotype concerns the wish for happy endings in queer stories. There was a time when queer characters mostly led sad and lonely lives, punctuated only with furtive encounters in dirty movie houses, or luring virginal ingenues into lives of fruitless degradation, and ultimately, suicide. Perhaps it made for titillating reading to midcentury pulp fiction enthusiasts, but the downside, when all the characters that “look like” us look like that, is of course that young people were not able to imagine ways to live which didn’t involve unhappiness.

It was also another tragic consequence of the AIDS crisis that many of the most famous stories emerging in the 80s and 90s, just as the gay civil rights movement began hitting its stride, turned to the depiction of the horrific suffering and injustice of that time.

The cynical side of that period in our history was the exploitation of our devastating losses to further a conservative agenda which attempted to prove an essential “disease” of homosexuality—what was inherently sick made manifest. It was—is, of course—complete nonsense, but nevertheless explains why so many queer people nowadays still wish to highlight and celebrate positive depictions, and wince when someone chooses to write a story with less than glowing themes or outcomes.

With all due respect, I want to urge every writer to feel free to tell the stories they need to tell, whether comedy or tragedy, something in between, or deep in left field—your story doesn’t have to be anything other than what it is. The only question you need to ask yourself is: Have I given my characters a true and authentic humanity within the context of the story? If you can say “yes” than you are doing the work you are called to do.

Character Worksheets

Perhaps the most important thing to remember when writing characters with diverse sexual identities, then, is that they deserve the same degree of development as every other. When we develop as writers, we are aiming for rich, complex characters with whom your readers can identify, whose personalities inform every other aspect of your story—plot, theme, tone, style, to name just a few.

Do you already use character worksheets to build up a picture of your characters based on set questions like appearance, family history, occupation, etc.? There are templates to be found online that can prove helpful to take your characters from cardboard cutouts to living, breathing people your readers will come to love or hate—for all the right reasons.

If you are having trouble developing a character who is not heterosexual, here are just a few of the many questions you might ask to prime the pump:

• Are they open about their sexual identity, or do they keep it private or even try to hide it? Why do they take that approach?

• What attitudes or stereotypes did they experience as a child, in the place where they grew up, in their family or among friends? Was their experience accepting, or did they face discrimination—and how did they react to it at the time?

• How do they approach romantic and sexual relationships now? Are they satisfied in their relationships, or are there challenges?

• What kind of community do they find themselves in during the course of the story? Do they feel like they belong, or are they isolated?

Writing a story, in many ways, is a constant exercise in asking questions of your characters, and finding answers which resonate with their personality as they move through the events and scenes which make up your plot.

Sometimes I like to think of it as improv: you have a setup to start a scene or story, but you don’t have a script, just actors on a stage. You tell them how to begin—start at point A, aim at point B—but it’s up to the actors to inhabit the characters they are playing, and the script—your story—emerges as they interpret the idea.

It’s a constant process of iteration between you the writer (director) and your characters (actors) as you test out different ideas and approaches by allowing the emerging personalities to influence the course of the story, and sometimes suggesting new ways it might take a more authentic or interesting turn. 

Where To Start

Why not start small, and imagine What If: What if the sister, the cousin, the best friend or boss of the main character were asexual, gay or demisexual?

Go crazy: What if the next door neighbors are a lesbian couple with mad sword skills and an arsenal of kitanas in Your Zombie Apocalypse? How about a straight celebrity couple looking to hoist their rainbow flag with a parade of queer co-conspirators? Perhaps a gay hairdresser whose supernatural ability with scissors sets the world on fire, one fabulous hair day at a time?

Better yet, try googling “queer writing prompts” and spend a little time sketching out an idea, no commitments, just try something on for size. The possibilities truly are endless.

And Reading, Of Course

And then there’s reading—the perennial answer to every question when we start in a place of not knowing. Here are just a few steps in a queer direction, some of which you can watch as well as read:

Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series centers on the interconnected lives of a straight trans woman, a straight woman, a bi woman, a straight man, and a gay man all living out their hopes and heartbreaks in a post-Stonewall era San Francisco.

Several of the plot lines and complications grow out of their various identities, including:

• Blackmail over an affair with a trans woman.

• Another extramarital and interracial affair which results in a pregnancy.

• The death of an extramarital lover.

• The unequal economic status of two gay men in a relationship—one of limited means, and one a well-off doctor.

• The perception (and assumptions) of racial identity as it intersects a lesbian relationship.

• Sexual promiscuity among straight, bi, and gay people.

Although Tales of the City is generally considered more comedy than serious drama, it realistically explores how diverse sexual identities can inform the direction of plot. There are a total of 10 novels, with the recent publication of Mona of the Manor (2024), and four TV miniseries if one were inspired to follow all of the characters through over five decades of an evolving zeitgeist.

Another book turned into a movie is Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hours, inspired by the pioneering feminist author Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway. In this fictionalized imagining of a single day in the lives of Virginia Woolf herself in the 1920s, married but closeted woman Laura Brown in midcentury America, and out New York lesbian Clarissa Vaughn at the dawn of the 21st century, the three women face devastating turning points in their respective times.

How about some good old-fashioned non-fiction to open up your understanding of asexual, aromantic and demisexual perspectives? In Eris Young’s Ace Voices: What It Means To Be Asexual, Aromantic, Demi or Grey-Ace chapters look at everything from dating, love and sex to mental health, family, community and joy through interviews with people speaking out on a much misunderstood subject.

If you wanted something a little closer to our Substack home, you might follow some queer Substacks—the Qstack Directory of LGBTQ+ Newsletters debuts on June 1st—and get a little perspective from the rich diversity of voices just a click away.

And finally, give my own serial novel Lamb a look, the story of two gay school friends coming of age in a post-AIDS world, told through reminiscences, journal excerpts, letters, and short stories. We are currently just about a dozen episodes in—plenty of time to catch up and fall in love with the sweet but misunderstood main character. Says one reader: “I am excited and terrified by how much I’ve fallen for dear Lamb.”

Thank you for reading, and many thanks to Kate Waller, a true friend and ally, for the opportunity to share about this complex subject.

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When do you feel the most present? Do you feel present when reading, writing, or creating? And what helps you to feel that way? A recent ski trip prompted me to think about the way that the state of being present affects my writing, or at least the process of writing.

One might also extend this to the interior space of the text. In what ways can presence enter fictions? I’m also thinking about things like telling a narrative in the present tense. It could change the presence of the reader as well. Or, is the character present or are they always thinking about the future and anticipating or stuck in the past.

What does presence have to do with consciousness and our unique perspective of the world? I wrote about consciousness a few months ago, touching on philosophy, neuroscience, yoga, and literature. It’s easy to think about presence in a straightforward way without considering the way it might be experienced differently be each of us. Also, the past and future paradoxically affect and even create the present. So I’ve been thinking about if there is a sort of pure freedom from them at all, and if we would wish that freedom in the first place.

A few recent word-sketches in my notebook as well as a recent sketch | text I shared with you had me pondering on the concept of this subject. I’ve brought them together here for you in this post on The Matterhorn Brunch.

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1

Skiing is my obsession.

No, I don’t heliski or go to the dangerous-yet-fantastical spaces that mountain guides reach, that extreme skiers take their chances on. But even the pistes in the Alps, Appalachian, or Dolomites create mystical scenes and surreal spaces of the mind. In places so alien, they don’t feel like Earth anymore. I inhabit the edges of mountain peaks and formations of snow that change every hour. I dream of these summits and drops when I’m drenching in the heat of summer, laying still on a beach, with sweat pouring out even in inertia. My mind goes to these descents through our planet’s most beautiful territories.

You look down at the top of a steep trail. Skis hanging in the air over the edge, it appears like a straight drop until you’re close enough that you could slide over the threshold by mistake. Once you pass this point, there’s no going back. Many see the border and stay far away, raising their necks a moment before drifting off to safety.

But there’s a small crowd here. We’re checking it out, getting in the zone. We’ve all done it before, whether the same piste or a similar one. We know we can. We anticipate the rush from our comfortable perch. We move toward a mind’s place of calm, as if singing us into a dance that is premeditated and free.

We nod to each other, allowing each one’s proper turn. We map where they go, what the terrain is like. We can see the undulations or ice better this way. But there’s no real plan. It’s like soaking up a moment, sizing up a room filled with people. You let the energy permeate your skin and you become a part of it.

And when it’s time to go, I separate from the small crowd and really go for it. There’s no other way that works. I don’t mean it’s top speed, but it’s top speed with control. I mean, I throw my whole body and soul into it. Everything else disappears. It’s just me and those muscles I’ve conditioned to work together with the equipment, an extension of myself, and my mind making quick subconscious judgments for turns and squeezing toes or dragging a pole or releasing in speed. I’m almost unaware of the decisions made as I propel myself down, turning for pleasure, and simultaneously enjoy the rush of the speed and sensation of my strength throwing my body in space the way I want it to.

I don’t admire the view. That thing so many have come to witness. Instead, I am a part of it. Not for others to see, but for me to inhabit. Like the mountain goats we spot from the gondola who don’t consider what is elsewhere or of another time. Future and past are irrelevant.

In the wake, my breath comes strong. I soak in the mountain air. I finally look up, out, at the Alps surrounding us. Too many to name. They remind us again how small we are. How tiny the space we occupy in the universe is. How insignificant. And yet, those immense jagged edges and mounds of smooth, hanging ice enter my mind. The whole universe in one.

2

“Maybe this is the best time in your life.”

Time seems to be moving at a faster rate though I know it’s impossible. I wonder if it’s age or the way I occupy time. Or if it means that in having a child, I’m giving away time. Not to him but to some life force. Quickening its pace in the awareness of his constant growth like a time-lapse film of a daffodil emerging from its bulb and blossoming.

He doesn’t seem to notice or care. I’ve learned that playing with my son is a kind of meditation. At one time, and still sometimes, the pulls of motherhood felt at odds with everything else. Though enjoyable, it was a kind of wasted time unless attempting to also, say, listen to a podcast or fold up the laundry.

When he wants to play with me now, I’m more aware of the ephemeral. It’s gone. A lot of that time is already in the past, irretrievable. I throw myself all in. Leaving the phone, the anxious thoughts, the writing that goes on in my head for another time. Now we are all restaurant or Playmobile castle.

We love it and it goes. It goes somewhere invisible, undocumented and often forgotten. Maybe something is still created. Some kind of love or energy of experience that stays with us. I try to force the presence more deeply, to imprint the moment on my brain. I tell him to do it, too. Look at what we are doing together! Isn’t it fun? Aren’t we having a wonderful time? He is annoyed: Mummy, keep playing! Come on. Sometimes I take a photograph to print for the albums and for him to look back on.

When it’s time to do something else, it scares me a little. The moment is over. It’s the realization that a lot of the time, neither of us will hold on to the specific memory of the action we are completing. It will wash over us like most non-consequential activities throughout our days.

Does it still matter? Is it still worth it? If the passing of time erases this moment from existing, is it worth existing at all?

3

5:47 a.m., seated at my writing table by the large window where a tree once filled the empty space. They took it away because it was old. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Stillness. It only accentuates the subtle constant movements — of a bird’s flight, of my internal organs’ perpetual motion.

Standing to look at a painting works this way, too. The grand narrative arc gives way to the details — each with a story of its own.

When I still my mind, first the big things surface — loves or fears, they bubble up and I free them. Rumination is not stillness but a large swirling orb, contained in a brain only trying to release into subtleties. No, it is the tiny tensions…memories of beauty…questions about the universe - gigantic but so abstract they become small again…this is where I want the discoveries to lead me. No matter how joyous or dark, I always feel a calm in its wake.

I feel the pen’s ink gliding onto smooth paper, catching words from my brain that fall unbidden on the page. The table’s wood beneath my left hand steadies me as the phrases tumble into legible patterns. There is a light moving between my mind and this writing, between that gaping hole before me and the world beyond my view.

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Thank you, readers, for celebrating one year at The Matterhorn with me this week! It’s been a very rewarding few days, first reaching 1000 subscribers just before the anniversary and then being featured by Substack, both with my Maine article as a staff pick (thanks and for the nomination!) and then as a full newsletter feature. I appreciate all your support and want to welcome the new readers today!

Fresh off of the Summer Travel series, I’ve got a special and unusual Saturday Brunch about my recent trip but will then stick with Tuesday Topics of Fashion & Memory for a few weeks until unveiling the next direction of the project. (Unless something crazy happens like last weekend! You never know…)

I apologize for so many photos and videos! 🙈 I certainly don’t normally share family snapshots in this space, but hopefully they illustrate a few points here. Have a great weekend!

A last weekend of summer travel

And summer it surely was. The 33-38 degree temps (that’s 90-100 for American readers) we had been experiencing in Basel for two weeks sans-AC had just broken into thunderstorming brilliance before it was time to hop on a short flight to Budapest for one shining night of top-quality track and field. The cool storms, however, lagged several days behind our flight, which meant that Budapest experienced its hottest weekend of the year and the athletes had a hot track to contend with.

Despite or because of the heat, they put on an incredible show at the World Athletics Championships. However, the heat also showed that these athletes are human. Forty percent of the marathon field dropped out, including defending world champion Tamirat Tola, and athletes on the track were visibly overheated at times. Still, many managed to set records or personal bests, some of which we witnessed in person.

Ok, so what am I writing about today besides sharing my delight? Admittedly, part of this post is that as a track nerd, I’m just so high and star-struck. As an athlete and coach over the years, and sometimes just a spectator, I’ve been lucky to witness track & field greatness before, but never so much in one night and in such close proximity. I want to write about the humanity within Greatness. About what it means to witness something in real life. About flags and nationhood.

Some questions came to mind during and after this weekend experience. I won’t fully answer them all today, but I’d love to hear your ideas about any of these questions in the comments:

What does it mean to witness?
How has the meaning of live events changed since the pandemic?
What’s the purpose of human touch? Why do we want to touch Greatness?
What is the purpose of a high five or handshake? An autograph? A photograph?
Do champions benefit from sharing their success with fans?
What does Greatness mean to a child?
Is Greatness forever?

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Close encounters of the track & field kind

We were very, very lucky to have front row seats at the finish line on Saturday night (link to Day 8 schedule and results here and you can view roundups from each night on ‘s Substack publication). We had been trying to get tickets for the Paris Olympics next summer, just a three-hour train ride away, but the bank-breaking prices only offered us trial heats from distant views. Instead, my husband found these tickets for the cost of a hamburger meal out in Switzerland (no exaggeration). If you’re interested in something similar, we saw that the indoor games are in Glasgow this February. Although the prices are a bit steeper, they’re nowhere close to those of the Olympics.

This area we were sitting in was frequented by some athlete families or associates as well as a few athletes from the early days of competition. We sat next to a couple of Italians who threw their flag over the wall like we did with our American and British ones (my husband is British and I am American; our son is both, or whoever’s winning), joking with them that we would just have to rearrange the order depending on the relay outcomes. A Hungarian family to our right was not bothered by the foreign flags that invaded their territory and were well-equipped with permanent markers and a bit of swag for autograph purposes.

The associated snack bar (with very meager offerings!) gave a view into all the little press boxes…except BBC and NBC. Sigh…no Michael Johnson. While his running in the nineties was incredibly inspirational, his commentary for the BBC is not only well-informed but also poignant, brutally truthful, and also kind.

This love for MJ has been the subject of articles from and myself as well as the catalyst for an epic esoteric Notes thread about the championships.

So we did not encounter the great Michael Johnson, but we had other opportunities that did not disappoint. What did it all mean? This surreal feeling…was it the knowledge of our presence in celebrity, in fame? The witnessing of events that would play out in unknown fashion? The international camaraderie of the sport, where athletes are known at times to help one another even at a cost to their own performance or place?

Or was it simpler than that? We have all come to appreciate live events even more since the pandemic. The human nature of greatness in this experience was also marked by its proximity, even the sweat of athletes that gladly accepted on our hands.

These photos are of a remarkable interaction between my son and Kenyan Emmanual Wanyoni, silver medalist in the men’s 800 meters at the age of nineteen. The time he spent smiling to connect, high-fiving, and allowing my son to touch the medal were a completely intimate and selfless experience. He was sharing his glory with a young person who didn’t fully understand what he was witnessing while the media boxes waited for the young medalist’s arrival.

Some of the greatest encounters we had didn’t involve this level of closeness but were still as memorable. Dutch athlete Femke Bol - 400 meter hurdle gold medalist and soon-to-be come-from-behind hero of the winning 4 x 400 team on Sunday - arrived in a corral to await her final leg of the semi-final of the relay race.

Once she was lined up with the other thirty-two athletes, I noticed something unique. She was the only one to practice her handoff in the pen. I witnessed her counting and positioning her left arm in the right position to receive her baton. Perfection. Finesse. But also: humility. She is a champion but does not assume that she will perform well without this attention to detail. She owes it to her team and herself, her fans as well.

Another legend who traversed in our midst, just over the pit of photographers, was Armond Duplantis, world record holder and gold medalist in the pole vault. His vaults on the other side of the track were still magical from a distance.

Close up, he walked with the other medalists whom he gave a lot of credit in his classy interview. The Swedish flag was his cape; a superhero walked in the flesh with fatigue and honor.

Fame is fleeting

Some others, like Wanyoni, came closer, into the pit for handshakes and autographs for our Hungarian neighbors. Christian Coleman took a selfie with us. Yes, that’s him there up at the top of this article. Men’s 4x100 meter gold medal winner.

Who? Many of you might be asking…a few years ago, MJ’s reporting would have been focused on him. The tides had turned to Noah Lyles, who delivered on his promise of three gold medals.

While Lyles was completely overwhelmed with signature and selfie requests, albeit very kindly and with a lot of joy to share, the three other gold winners just hung by. Their faces said, ‘Come on, Noah.’ The women’s team, who also won gold, was waiting nearby for photos and press. We were waiting for Lyles, too — he was nearby and a roar of his Greatness hovered around him as he was pulled up into the stands for a hug from somebody he knew (I presume).

I looked at the other three, likewise amazed by them, but saw humans who were happy but tired, and a little bit alone. And then it dawned on me that one of them was Christian Coleman. Christian Coleman. 2019 World Champion in the 100 meters (and 4x100 meters). A few years ago, it would have been him in Lyles’ place.

And Fred Kerley! Also a 100 meter World Champion in 2022 and silver medalist at the Tokyo olympics. He, at least, was now busy signing an autograph.

We called over, “Hey Christian! You were amazing. Congratulations. Can we have a photo?” He swiftly agreed, jumping down into the moat that separated us from them. A humble, kind smile followed his thanks and he took not one but SIX selfies of him with us while the thousands of massive cameras waited for him to join the others1. After the photo, I shook his sweaty hand and again emphasized how impressed we all were. The look in his eyes was everything. He had certainly not been jaded by success over the years.

Earlier in the evening, my husband was grabbing popcorn with our son and spotted David Rudisha, world record holder in the men’s 800 meters. “David! You’re a legend! Would you mind taking a photo with my son?”

A lot of people wouldn’t recognize Rudisha. Does that make his glory less, weaker over the years? Fame is fleeting. The importance of this victory, both personally and for fans, however, can be lasting.

There are different kinds of heroes for different people. I had to name the figure in the photo for most of the friends I WhatsApped, but one friend, who happens to be an excellent 800 meter runner turned ultramarathoner, responded: Amazing! He’s my all-time hero!

What’s in a flag?

In an age of nationalism rising again in the name of far right conspirators, it’s wonderful to see people take back the joyous side of celebrating nationhood as a cultural team — one that can compete but also celebrate the success of others. It’s something we talk about in the Olympics and that spirit of both celebrating and competing in a peaceful international setting. But it’s also the nature of track & field. After youth clubs and university teams, nations become the teams, like Premier League or NBA teams.

Lyles had something to say about this. Something that I think emphasizes the way this competition is about an international mindset. Although one could argue his comments were about giving himself even more credit, when you watch the video I think it looks like much more than this. He both expresses pride in his American citizenship and a view that looking inward too much can be dangerous:

The comments sparked a lot of comeback from NBA players especially. There are points that the NBA includes a lot of international players, for example. What do you think? I would love a hot take on this from , recently returned to Substack, who often writes about the NBA and teaches history.

We brought two British and two American flags to Budapest. The idea was to hang one of each on the wall and wave the others…or possibly give them away to athletes.

Following British Ben Pattison’s bronze medal finish in the 800 meters, he looked shocked and excited just a few meters away. “Ben, here you go!” My husband threw him one of our flags and he graciously accepted, beginning a victory lap he had only dreamed of.

This young incredible athlete also overcame a heart condition and surgery, which he explains in this video…whilst still wearing our flag! Although we were hoping to get it back with an autograph, it’s wonderful to see him wearing it with so much pride. Remember, it’s still about 34 degrees (~95) at 9:00 p.m., so any extra clothing is a conscious choice.

When the GB women’s 4 x 100 meter team came up with their own bronze, the team of four found themselves one flag short. Daryll Neita, probably the most decorated of the group, was searching in fatigue until we caught her attention. Just as graciously as Pattison, she accepted. The team of four gave the fans a fun show for photographs as they celebrated.

Later, when I shared the photo and comment that this was ‘our flag’ on Instagram in my star-struck craze, Neita shared the story on her own site in continued appreciation. Although the encounter would now reach thousands of fans, the initial toss and smile of response were the most impactful parts for us.

Trying to understand Greatness

Do you need to have insider knowledge of these feats to understand them or can you just observe and be impressed? Do you need to have know biographical information? Do you need to have tried the sport yourself?

I would argue that having some of this background knowledge makes it a richer moment. Duplantis walking with a flag would not mean so much if you didn’t know who he was. A strong looking guy with a Swedish flag might inspire you to find out more, but you probably wouldn’t feel all that much. I used to compete in the pole vault and I guess something else that happens is you watch something that you can at least imagine in sensation. But I’m still not sure if knowledge of the way it feels to hold the pole down the runway and when it moves into the box makes me appreciate him more. Maybe by not knowing, one can likewise learn through observation. Maybe in some ways, it’s even more impressive, lived merely through imagination like a good book.

Encountering a champion athlete live is both like a first encounter with an iconic piece of art and not. We can likewise learn about a painting (for example) by its story and its artist. We might understand the medium or style from practical and historical points. When we see it in person, we experience awe, the sublime.

This can happen with live sport as well. Instead of its mediation through a television screen, the experience of witnessing something before you - even when the view isn’t as good as the camera’s - gives you an added experience within the aura of the event itself. In fact, you become part of the event, and might even be captured on the screen to be replayed for years to come.

But it’s also different from art because the event will have an outcome that cannot be anticipated. It is part of this unknown that makes it special to witness. The event is one of humans, and their humanity makes it special.

The athlete is more like the artist. The event is the painting. Perhaps a painting is special because we can see a human mark on its beauty; who else looks for those brush strokes, the mark of the artist’s hand?

But the event is fleeting of course. We can only view it again and again in video clips.

Sha’Carri Richardson marked history as a champion twice, the second time anchoring her team to a championship record. Her story is one of comeback and perseverance despite media portrayal of her after she struggled following her mother’s death.

Richardson was already Great; some would say she’s on her way to being a GOAT. But she wants to be seen as a person before anything else:

“It almost seems like we [Black women] have to be superheroes,” Richardson said last year, “It’s just irritating because you take away the abilities, you take away the speed, you take away the talent … and we’re still human.”

Outside of the arena

Being human means, of course, that these athletes have lives outside the arena. I’m not sure how much of that world the new Netflix documentary about the American sprinters plans to capture, but at least sometimes the athlete is just a person.

We were back at the airport twenty-four hours later and saw several athletes wandering around in their national gear, like the French man below. But at least one Great man in our presence - Fred Kerley - had chosen a white t-shirt and khaki pants.

Do you interrupt these athletes? Congratulate them? Do you let them be ‘normal’? For me, the clothing choice said it all: Kerley was trying to blend in. Impossible with that height and physique and beard. But we let him be and later noticed him eating at a table with other unmarked athletes.

Whilst waiting in the Easyjet corral, a fair bit different from the ones the relay racers had waited in, we looked on our phones at the upcoming indoor championships in Glasgow, which sadly don’t work with our schedule (but maybe for yours?). There was a Norwegian athlete nearby, in her gear. My husband looked her up: Lene Retzius, the national pole vault champion and record holder who had come in 15th in the championships. She was too far away to even say, “Hey, well done,” so we let it go.

On arrival, we saw her in the distance grabbing her poles where we used to grab our stroller. I used to grab poles like that with my teammates, with a bus ready to take them where we would place them gently in the middle aisle, reminding the non-vaulting teammates not to step on them.

But she did it alone. The national champion and record holder.

Did she feel Great in that moment or only tired?

Does the artist ever rest?

A painting remains the same. But a person - the artist, runner, vaulter - they keep evolving. They have different phases of their lives and that event or moment will always be a part of them. Even if others don’t know of her Greatness when they see her on the street, her achievements mean something to her.

I was reminded again of the human element of Greatness, of touch and connection. The international hugs we witnessed on the finish line, despite failures, were the mark of friendships and respect. The high fives and handshakes were personal connections to a person who had experienced a great day in their life.

It was a kind of love, really. Was it not?

A love for the sport. For human perseverance and achievements. For one’s flag and the support of a nation. For Great moments in sporting history.

But also a love for each other.

Hello! If you enjoy my posts about the writing life, you might like my new publication (and community) over on Yoga & Writing. We are just getting started. This summer, I’ll be launching the podcast with topics like setting an intentional space, using your gaze for effect (in writing and whilst writing), and what the Transcendentalists saw in yoga.

You can join us here:

Yoga & Writing

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Welcome! Yoga & Writing is a community and education platform for writers, yogis, and those curious in finding ways to access and cultivate their creativity, authenticity, and strength. Every Thursday, I alternate between cultural/philosophical/practical essays on yoga and writing and discu…

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3 years ago · 2 likes · Dr. Kathleen Waller

Writing Spaces: La Palette

How does one get to sit on one of the reserved tables at La Palette in the morning?

This is a question you might one day ask yourself if you find yourself as a writer in Paris. La Palette is the Parisian cafe where Hemingway and Picasso used to go and where movie stars drink champagne for apéritif. One of the most famous in Saint-Germain-des-Près now listed heavily in tourist guides, though thankfully not always. But in the morning, it is rather quiet here, tucked away on a tiny little street corner of Rue de Seine, yet just a stone’s throw from The Louvre across the river.

The best spots - several cafe tables looking out at the sixth arrondissement with the wall behind them and a heater atop (if needed) - have little réservé signs on them every morning. These spaces provide the shelter of the cafe and its waiters with an open view to the morning — to the cold ancient stones warming in the sun, vines slowly creeping up surrounding windows, to the people going to the boulangerie for fresh bread, to the bicycles and street cleaners taking advantage of empty pavement.

Not anyone has indeed called to reserve the particular spots. No, they are held for the regulars. The art gallery owners and their entourage. At one time this group of regulars included, on some days, Jacques Chirac. One would think it were a seemingly impossible task to crack the shell. Even the movie stars tend to sit out in the open plaza space, though perhaps by choice; they want to be seen.

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Surprisingly, it’s not. Hard to crack. Well, not if you are persistent only in time and patience. If one were to simply will their way in, I’m quite sure it would backfire. However, a certain nonchalance, observation, and politesse make it quite easy to slip into these spaces.

Sssh. Don’t tell anyone!

But I’ll tell you now: you must simply become a part of the place.

If you’re only visiting a day, then forget about it. But if you plan to start your morning quietly here for several days…or weeks…in a row, there is not so much you need to do. You arrive, politely say bonjour to the waiter and other seated guests (even if you don’t speak French), sit in an unreserved spot (do not ask for the reserved spot yet!), order your coffee or breakfast, do your writing, stay as long as you like (order another drink if it’s more than an hour), pay a small tip with the bill, and go. You arrive the next day and do the same thing. Perhaps exchange a few pleasantries with the waiter or another patron, even a ça va? will do. Do this for at least three days.

Then, if you are feeling both confident and relaxed, on the fourth day, move toward a reserved table (but not the two right next to the street — there it is a special privilege), and before you sit, catch the waiter’s eye to say: ‘C’est bon ici?’ or something else very simple to that effect. Et voila. Unless you have done something to annoy the waiter, you will get your special table and those talking or reading the newspaper nearby will nod at you with respect.

Now, you might be thinking: why do I need to sit at these tables or get the approval of the other customers or the “garçon”? Well, you don’t, of course. But if you want to inhabit this place and look out onto the street, to capture the energy of the early morning in Paris, to create from a space without people at your back, then you might want to sit at one of these tables and feel like you are a regular, because in fact you are.

You will know, then, that you have been accepted. You can write and linger as if it were your personal morning ritual.

This task will be much easier if you live in Paris, attend frequently enough to be remembered, or stay for several weeks at a time. I realize this is not the reality for most! For one thing, Paris is expensive. But if you happen to find yourself in this situation, maybe you’ll want to try to see how it feels. Or, you may decide to bring this type of morning ritual to wherever you live or go on writing retreats.

Don’t come to La Palette for the coffee or food. I mean, both are ok, but the coffee especially is not worth traveling for. There’s much better coffee in the neighborhood at Saint Pearl and a few other coffee-snob spots. (I get it, I’m totally a coffee snob!) But if pure caffeine and a writing space are what you’re after, then La Palette fits the bill.

Maybe it won’t for you. Writing spaces are personal. For me, the place has history. It’s where I wrote the majority of my first novel on a monthlong stay in a closet-sized Parisian flat during my time as a PhD student. There, I met a writing friend who was doing something similar. We would say our hellos, then get into the writing, sometimes pausing occasionally for a little chat, but mostly remaining focused.

I’ve also met friends in the interior or on the terrasse in the afternoon and evening for a drink and a catchup. The place feels completely different at these times, but still there is something friendly and joyous about it.

And some mornings are not as peaceful: delivery trucks, dogs, animated discussions between the owner and a regular, large tourist families…but you have to just go with it. They can become a part of the words getting written in front of me or a short distraction to reset my mind. Yes, I used to see Jacques Chirac there occasionally, but this made no difference on the calm energy of the morning. Olivier Martinez, however, showed up on his motorcycle with a young woman just a bit before his separation from Halle Barry. Likewise, nobody made a fuss, but the energy seemed focused on their table of croissants and orange juice at the center of the terrasse until they zoomed away.

Maybe I keep going back for the nostalgia. There is so much that’s better about many new places in Paris. The city, though, is also about nostalgia, isn’t it?

And writing? I guess writing needs just the right amount of nostalgia mixed with progressive thoughts and freshness. That would probably describe the way I spend my days in Paris, which is only a three hour train ride from here.

I can’t go for month-long stays these days. But even a single morning of writing here, perhaps just next to the reserved tables or - if I’m feeling bold and recognize the waiter - jumping right onto one, can give me just enough comfort and dissonance all at once to create something fresh that propels me forward.

I’ve come to write here with my baby son strapped to my chest; I’ve come alone; I’ve come with friends; I’ve come in all kinds of weather. But the feeling remains the same: my dreams and imaginations mix completely with me reality into something like hope.

Paris in the sunshine feels like that hope. But Paris also rains…a lot. And its winters can be rather dreary. Somehow, though, Parisians find a way to enjoy their outdoor space at cafes, and no, it’s not only for the smokers. Here, we want to feel everything. Whether hope and joy, or pain and sadness. Cold toes make my fingers move differently on my laptop keys.

The joy of the Parisian rain continues in my soul from wherever I write. But maybe, upon this reflection, I need a local place to occupy where there’s more out of my control than just the squirrels who jump onto my balcony.

I’ll probably keep it a secret, though, until I’m done with it.

Where do you write and why? How does it influence what you write (or vice versa)?

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I originally published this article with The Writing Cooperative on December 21, 2022. It seemed to really speak to people! For this reason, I’m sharing it here with you. Apologies to those who may have already seen it. Many thanks to editor Justin Cox and Matterhorn reader Jennifer Unger (you’ll see the reference in the article).

Although this article is written with a writer-audience in mind, it may be interesting to consider from the reader’s perspective. What kind of text do you want to spend your time with? What settings or topics or even moods change the type of writing you want to read? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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I’ll be investigating other ‘writing workshop’ style ideas in my new project on Substack: Yoga & Writing. You can sign up now to hear more about it and join the community.

Yoga & Writing

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Welcome! Yoga & Writing is a community and education platform for writers, yogis, and those curious in finding ways to access and cultivate their creativity, authenticity, and strength. Every Thursday, I alternate between cultural/philosophical/practical essays on yoga and writing and discu…

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3 years ago · 1 like · Dr. Kathleen Waller

Make Your Reader Work for It

‘I don’t understand this!’

‘My head hurts.’

‘What does this mean?’

‘Where are you going with this idea?’

Can you imagine those comments on a piece of your writing? Ouch. Those are not the statements and questions one would typically consider positive feedback from your readers. Writing is about making ideas clear, they say. Make your writing a riddle and people will stop reading.

In the ancient art of theZen kōan, a teacher — or sensei— poses a riddle to a student. Not only is the riddle unclear, but there is also no clear answer.The importance is in the act of discovery.

Poststructuralists do something similar in their writing. Through methods of deconstruction and difference, dichotomies and questions are presented versus clear answers and solutions. Jacques Derrida, for example, is famous for finishing essays or lectures with many questions, irritating some and enrapturing others.

I started thinking about this concept in regards to writing articles or essays when a reader of my newsletter with whom I also used to teach English told me, ‘You really make your reader work for it.’ She had given me constructive criticism that was hard to take before. Eek, what had I done? How could I fix that? Then she quickly clarified: ‘That’s a good thing! I really have to think when I read your work. It’s fun.’

It became one of the best compliments I’ve received. This style, though, also likely means I put off a lot of readers who might not be used to it or feel they lack the time. I’m willing to trade-off some potential readers for others who will be highly engaged. How about you? It might depend on what kind of writing you are doing and for what purpose you are seeking an audience.

Active reading is more engaging. It allows your readers’ creative and critical thinking to shine. You might also get more out of writing this way, creating a sort of ongoing discourse, even if you may have less people who stick with you. The paradox, however, is that the riddle itself, the tensions and questions posed, should all be exceptionally clear in delivery, even if that clarity includes nuance and double meanings. You can (and should, in my opinion), for example, include a clear thesis and paragraph points whilst allowing other spaces of deeper thinking to open up. The point is not to confuse but to illuminate possibilities.

Lessons from the classroom

As an English literature teacher for twenty years, I found that what motivated kids to read more and be ready for an engaging class was challenging reading. If it’s too easy, they’re bored. It doesn’t matter how long or short the book or article is. For example, I’ve had reluctant readers hanging onto every word of the 467 pages of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. The book is filled with riddles and unexplained phenomena.

There are (still) teachers who like to give reading quizzes that challenge the students on details to see if they have ‘read well.’ Instead, I liked to give oral ‘quizzes’ simply challenging students to think about some of the big ideas presented in the book. Those who had read actively were excited to have an opportunity to share their ideas. Others were encouraged to go back to the text, searching for quotes like detectives, to support or refute their points through details. Or, we would look at challenging excerpts together to model what more could be taken from a text in understanding, for example, its dichotomies, so that student’s could discover layers of the texts on their own.

I was, however, meticulous in teaching the structures of writing — five paragraph essays as an anchor and a variety of text types all with different formats and rules. These structures help ideas to be clear but also allow one to play with the structure, to make it their own, and to push the boundaries of where that structure can lead a reader.

While their essays — especially for examination — had to provide clear ideas with clearly analyzed evidence, the deeper their explanations went, the more they might make us consider more than what they actually said. Examples of evidence should make your reader consider others they know about themselves or want to research further (either in support or opposition). A great conclusion should allow some fresh clarity on the thesis that makes the reader think after finishing.

How to do it yourself

Avoid just adding in a bunch of (eek) SAT words to your writing. I mean, if a challenging word fits well, then go for it! But a more effective focus would be on how the words are used rather than the lexile score itself.

Sometimes we call this distinction ‘lexical- versus discourse-level processing.’ The former includes more than simply vocabulary. It also refers to the complexity of the sentence structure and length of the paragraphs. You might then be thinking: ‘Well, Hemingway used short sentences; why can’t I? A long Dickensian sentence isn’t always the best.’

Sentence variety

The short answer to the above question would be: ‘Yeah, short sentences are absolutely fine and often challenging.’ A longer answer might include a discussion about the awareness of different types of sentences on your reader in terms of meaning and even sound. It might also look at the nuances of sentence types and lengths that both Hemingway and Dickens really used. You might start by taking a look at the first two chapters of Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon and those of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. In each you’ll see a great variety of structural ways to entice the reader with their twists and turns. (See what I did there? Congratulations, you get to figure it out. I trust that you can find some great ideas yourself!)

Using sentence length and type for effect is one way to bring your work to another level, where readers can negotiate layers of meaning. If you’re not sure where to start, here’s an introduction in The Writing Cooperative that goes quite a bit deeper than length and second one that discusses sentence mood in an interesting way:

• Sentence Variety Cheat Sheet: Adding Spice to the narrative tempts the readers and brings them back for seconds

• The Ultimate Guide to Getting The Mood of Your Sentences Right: This might be your chance to decode your partner’s message correctly.

Figurative language

So how else can we add challenge to our writing? Of course, it depends on what kind of writing you’re doing. In fiction, we talk about ‘show vs. tell’ where you allow your readers to discover ideas through sensory details and figurative language rather than spelling it out.

To some degree, you can try this in nonfiction essays as well. But even when you have to deliver important content information, why not add extensions after you’ve delivered the key points to challenge the reader to engage on a deeper level? Anecdotes or imagery might enhance pure ‘content’ information.

Embed questions

Ask direct questions of your reader. Sometimes these rhetorical questions — those often used for effect in speeches — will have potential answers either explicitly or implicitly presented in your text. Other times, you might allow the reader to simply consider it on their own.

How might you include a question about a reader’s personal experiences? Or their fears? When might a question about an unknown future allow the reader to interact with your points?

Rich references

Any time you mention a reference to another article or a fact, you embed a layer of meaning in your text. This both makes your writing clearer through example and reliable through research; but it also opens up inclarities if the reader should choose to do some digging themself. In other words, by investigating your research as well, the reader might seek different conclusions than you do in your essay. It doesn’t mean their conclusion will be at odds with yours.

You might provide more information through hyperlinks or references included in the language of the text. You could in this way mention other texts that talk about a similar topic, even if they oppose your points, and allow readers to debate themselves by using critical thinking. Footnotes providing or expanding on references can also be an art, as the master of structural creativity David Foster Wallace taught us.

The above references might not be facts at all but references to other reading material, films, myths, or celebrities. What the hyperlink can do almost invisibly, allusions can do explicitly. Of course, a hyperlink can provide an entire written text or video for your reader. The allusion, however, is more sure to be seen, and may help your reader tap into previous knowledge (like the DFW reference above).

Liminal space

The spaces between — the transitory moments of your writing — are the places you can also focus on allowing readers to open up their minds.

The transition is where meaning is often made. While clear connections can help your reader follow your line of thought, you might want to use these places for deeper thought beyond your own explicit conclusions. If you don’t connect every single dot, you can allow space through transitions or quotes.

We naturally pause at the end of a paragraph or a break to the next heading. Even a sentence or pausing punctuation within it is a split second to cue reflection. In a book, this would be stronger at the end of a chapter or section. Our brain starts to put meaning together in these places.

Take Robert Frost’s poem “An Old Man’s Winter Night” as an example:

One aged man — one man — can’t fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.

Frost is a master of caesura as well as leaving the reader with questions; the purpose of his poems are rarely clear and often loved because of their ambiguities.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Which road are we supposed to take again?

What AI exposes about ‘good’ writing

Poetry to texts written by artificial intelligence feels like quite a leap. One would posit (er, hope!) that a computer could not write a master poem like Robert Frost.

Can we fight the bots in this way, through examples of creative language that leaves the reader thinking? AI writing appears to threaten who we are as writers. We thought we had uniqueness and ideas; instead a machine can apparently express similar thoughts. Is writing an art form anymore or have we understood it so deeply through AI that it has become a formula, albeit a complicated one, that simply lives within our neurons and leaks out on the screen?

The bots are focused on creating clarity for readers. This is an important skill, and one — at least for now — that humans are still better at achieving.

But what if we posit that the best writing outside of the important information discerned through medical pamphlets or immigration directions (often read in a person’s foreign language aka Google translate) is the kind that isn’t so obvious at first? The kind that isn’t quite clear until we think about it? And maybe the clarity we seek is slightly different for each reader.

I have to admit that the idea of AI writing makes me cringe not only as a writer but as a teacher and parent — isn’t the process of writing a space of discovery in itself? Will the next generation miss out on this brain development, personal discovery, and even joy? Will they all become cheats, only to have that cheating accepted or even endorsed? I used to fight for handwriting, proven to help brain development, but now I might just settle for writing at all.

However, maybe the answer isn’t so black and white. Swiss Cognitive discusses the pros and cons of AI writing, including research within an educational setting. The answers here aren’t clear, but what they do suggest is that AI might enhance our work as writers (more than a simple spelling and grammar check) to offer us more opportunities. This would require a human mind to make choices from those possibilities presented to us, offering potentially a faster way of achieving a great piece of writing.

If your goal is to appeal to — or even subversively create — careful readers and readers who think rather than passively ingest information presented to them, please try some of the above techniques. It may be a small way we can help the infowars and the lack of critical thinking available to many people today. It’s not their fault; it’s a shift in the way we expect to receive information.

How else do you challenge your readers? Do they love you or hate you for it?

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A couple weeks ago, I took a look at three Inspirational Creatives: Violette, Lizzo, and David Bowie. Now, I’m adding three more to the mix: a professional reader, a freelance writer (also on staff at The New Yorker), and a chef.

Let us know of others who get you thinking about how creativity fits into your life and how to make it a ‘success’…whatever that means to you.

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I’ll also share the beginnings of my next project: Yoga & Writing, a community and podcast. Writers reading this publication might be interested in areas like my approaches to creativity, mental strength, and posture (or writing related injury, yes I’ve had one!!) as well as more philosophical essays from cultural perspectives like a few I’ve published here (Writing Toward Immortality / Meditation for Writing).

If you’re curious, sign up here to join the community. I aim to make it a supportive and fun space, but with lots of deep thinking, of course!

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Yoga & Writing

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Yoga & Writing is a community and education platform for writers, yogis, and those curious in finding ways to access and cultivate their creativity, authenticity, and strength. If you’re a writer who wants to find focus or purpose in your work, this is the place for you. If you’re a yogi who wants to deepen your practice with written observations and com…

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3 years ago · Dr. Kathleen Waller

“Alex and Books”

Alex and Books is a newsletter, podcast, reading course with nearly a million followers…Alex Wieckowski has made a whole brand out of reading. One may think — how? doesn’t everyone learn that in school anyway? His success is especially surprising because he claims to have not been a reader at all just four years ago. His discovery of reading as an adult and goal oriented work toward learning the best ways to get something from his reading have turned into a business.

I think that in many ways, his project has succeeded because it is so personal and passionate. It’s also relatable to many readers or listeners who are interested in reading once school is over but don’t really know where to begin. Here, he discusses how a bike injury led him to read again. (He also talks about a slew of “bad English teachers”…yikes.)

I found this podcast that ‘Alex and Books’ did with Andrew Barry to be illuminating.

I think he’s got a great approach to reading now, but more than that, I’m inspired by the way he talks about his work as an entrepreneur and how being patient and doing work you truly believe in rather than ‘selling out’ can lead to success. In other words, if you’re creating content online, don’t just go for the most views or engagement, go for what you think is good or for what makes you feel more fulfilled as you produce it. It’s definitely worth a listen if you are growing any kind of audience online.

Takeaway: only do work you believe in and don’t be afraid to do something you’ve only just discovered.

Jia Tolentino

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker, freelance writer, and author of The Trick Mirror: reflections on self-delusion. Formerly, she was the deputy editor of Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. If you haven’t encountered her work, you can check out her writing on the topics of abortion, scrolling, Taylor Swift, or Shark Tank.

There have been some great interviews with Tolentino in the last few years due to the release of her book in 2019, such as for The Paris Review (“Please Fire Jia Tolentino”), The Creative Independent (“Creating for the Sake of Creating”), and Vogue (“Jia Tolentino on success, the perils of modern journalism, and writing whatever she wants”). The interviews expose fiery persona, not afraid of taking risks, but also someone deeply critical of her own work. She claims it’s what propels her to keep going: “it is the job of a writer to be dissatisfied with everything they do.”

Maybe this confident yet dissatisfied type of writing allows one to reinvent. If you think your work is “amazing,” well, you might just stop. How could it improve? Why keep moving forward? In a way, it’s also allowing yourself to be satisfied with the dissatisfaction—to publish something you know isn’t perfect.

The book of essays allowed Tolentino to move into different territories of expression. She tells The Paris Review why she wrote the book:

None of the things I wrote for the book were things I had considered trying to write for The New Yorker because these were things that I wanted to write exactly the way I wanted. I wanted the essays to be five to seven thousand words each—they ended up being around ten thousand—but I knew I wanted to write essays that were a little too long, that were coming at things from all these different angles. And none of them would make sense at all as New Yorker pieces, really.

Tolentino also goes on to explain that each essay allowed her to learn something new, in the act of writing it. I often feel this way: that writing is not a reflection of what I have discovered but is instead an act of discovery in itself.

As a writer, success can mean so many things. The definition might change if you make writing your full time profession. But at the heart of it, either way, one is likely trying to gain the freedom to write what they want. If you need money to have the space and time to write, then money is part of the success. Even if you don’t, ‘freedom’ might look like surrendering yourself to the creative process and moving your ego to the side.

Tolentino talks about her own success in this way:

I think I’ve had success beyond what I had hoped for. To me, that means having the freedom to not be on Twitter. Having the freedom to detach from the many mechanisms of personality capitalism that I wrote about in the first chapter of the book. Ideally, I want my work to get harder but I want to have more time to do it, and obviously being paid more means having more time. Success is freedom. And basically being able to write what you want.

In her success, she’s been pushing the boundaries of genre and pace. She decides if she wants more time with her family. She is working on a screenplay. I’m excited to see what directions this takes her in.

Takeaways: write to learn; never being completely satisfied with one’s work allows one to continue creating and publishing.

Marie Méon

I find that a lot of chefs inspire me for the way they blend culture, art, and simply good taste into one plate. You can philosophize food forever. I’ve just started reading another food book: Stanley Tucci’s Taste: My Life through Food.

Marie Méon is a fascinating young contemporary chef who not only plays with her own mixed cultures but also with the fashion industry.

The Japanese-French chef works with fashion greats like Hermès and Cartier, and previously for Dior and Chanel as a retail designer. Her company - Manger Manger - is a “multidisciplinary platform where food and ingredients are thought of as creative tools.”

Her start with fashion professionally and cooking on the side helped her design the new venture. Like many artists, her work was at first unpaid and just for friends, allowing her to experiment a little more freely. As she states on her website, while working in fashion:

In parallel, she never puts aside her appetite for cooking: from 2010 to 2012 she opens several times a month the doors of her Haussmannian apartment to offer « clandestine » dinners. The concept is simple: 30 guests, a unique menu inspired by the seasons, her travels and encounters. The project quickly meets success.

Eventually this turned into her “multidisciplinary” work rather than choosing one passion over the other. The collaborations seem to make her work fresher as she states in this interview with the FT:

“I used to think: space, colours and finishes in my previous work. Today, my tools are ingredients — that’s the only difference,” she says. “All these fashion decision makers see that food is maybe the greatest method of communication. Nothing is more powerful than putting people together and having them share a polysensorial moment.”

Méon seems to highlight both that food can be seen as fashion and that fashion can be tasted (& even smelled?) like food.

Takeaway: allow different parts of yourself to merge into your profession, even if nobody’s done it before.

These two weeks are just a sampling of people I find inspirational, connected to messages we can learn from.

Honorable mentions to Inua Ellams, Raphan Kebe, Taylor Swift, Julia Child, Jessica Olie, Chuck Palahniuk, Yayoi Kusama, and a bunch more, including several wonderful writers I’ve encountered on this platform. All for different reasons!

Finally, if channeling authenticity is what you’re after, check out this take on Rihanna’s Super Bowl performance from Yoga Journal.

Who else inspires you? Where are you looking for inspiration in your creative life?

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Setting out on a journey as a lone writer…and hoping to make a living from it…can be a strange and difficult undertaking. A lot of times we think of the purity of writing as a sort of sanctimonious act not to be meddled with. Words like marketing, self-promotion, office hours, freelance work, and growth at first may seem like disconnects from the journey of writing.

Some do keep writing as a completely separate space from these things and - somehow - find ‘success’ (whatever that may mean to that particular author). But writing as a living is, for most people, also freelance work. Even if your written work is ‘only’ in book form, there is a lot to do behind the scenes to publish and sell, whether one is publishing on one’s own or with the aid of an agent and/or publisher.

But many of us also make writing into a business. The books or articles themselves can be a business. However, many work beyond these boundaries, either for enjoyment or out of financial necessity and as a way to develop a writer-brand (which hopefully comes with an audience). For some, this means blogging and newsletters; for others, it’s content creation; for more still, it’s a business related to writing like workshops or editing services. In a different category, one might also consider freelance writers who complement something else (teaching painting classes, running an organic farm, tech coaching, etc.) with writing. The writing may promote the ‘something else’ or it may play with ideas and concepts related to the work.

In any case, it takes a lot of patience and determination to publish your work and to create with the hope of making something people will want (to read, to eat, to use…).

For this reason, I find looking to many types of creators for inspiration a way to stay motivated and focused with my work. Although reading about the stories of other writers is interesting and can be useful on my own journey, just looking at writers might be limiting. Here, I’ll share with you a few creative people who inspire me to continue…even if I’m still not exactly sure what I’m working toward (although things have evolved a ton since I wrote the article below).

The Matterhorn: intersections of literature & art

xi. Being ok with not knowing

The Saturday Brunch: a figurative flat white or fizzy to start your weekend I’ve always been a planner. I like to seek lofty goals or minute ones and calendar my progress. Journals are filled with mind maps of plans…for trips, work, novels…life. Some are color-coded. Others have related checklists. I had learned or taught m…

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3 years ago · 3 likes · 5 comments · Dr. Kathleen Waller

There are so many ways to be creative. I really loved the book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (2015) by Elizabeth Gilbert. I’m not a huge fan of Eat Pray Love, but City of Girls is also a fantastic novel. Gilbert doesn’t get enough credit as a literary writer. Although one might not consider the ideas to be deep in this creativity book, the way Gilbert shows us how almost anything we do in life can be creative or enhanced by creativity is a pretty cool way to think about living. The creativity in her book becomes a spiritual journey.

So, if you’re embarking on a ‘creative career’ (although Gilbert would argue any career can and should be creative!), I recommend checking out the book. It’s a pretty quick read. Some of it might feel trite or cheesy. Still, I think there are moments of wisdom or - at a minimum - springboards for self discovery like this one:

Relatedly, I recently read the novel Tell Me I’m an Artist, by Chelsea Martin, which fits into the whole ‘what’s creativity for’ discourse. Do you know of other related books or films that try to answer this question or at least grapple with it?

If you’re also on this path like me, especially as a freelancer, you might likewise find some of the following people inspirational. I’m going to highlight three today and three more in a couple weeks. Please let us know who else inspires you!

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Violette

Violette Serrat is a makeup artist who took a risk to grow into something big. She didn’t take the classic root into the world of makeup and fashion. Instead, she threw herself into creative spaces in New York (without even knowing much English) and Paris, and experienced a huge amount of rejection in the four years she gave herself to make something of it.

I love this advice of giving yourself a certain amount of time, often determined by finances but also willpower, to make a go of your creative endeavor. Probably, at least in my experience, the goals and work will change a lot over that time in ways you don’t anticipate. I’ve heard other freelancers also talk about taking away the pressure of making money right from the start in order to develop something better.

Violette demonstrates an intrigue and awareness of history and culture as she talks about makeup, from the origins of Guerlin and the first lipsticks to a discussion of red lipstick on Parisian women as “empowering.”

She describes the more recent launch of her own brand in 2021 as an “18 year dream.” Violette says her makeup company is “For the people who were more interested in celebrating individuality and differences rather than fixating on trends.” She goes further on the brand’s about page to say:

VIOLETTE_FR was created to encourage you to have fun with makeup, laugh at yourself, seduce yourself, and most importantly, believe with all of your heart in your own je ne sais quoi. Because that is what makes you unique, that is what makes you YOU and you all are my muses. 

VIOLETTE_FR was made for you... avec amour.

One could say this is simply good marketing. But if you follow Violette enough on her social media, interviews, and newsletters, the message truly comes across. She must believe it to have it make such an impact in this way.

Relatedly in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Violette speaks of her work as creative director at Guerlin:

My beauty philosophy is that beauty should be something you use to celebrate yourself. Your differences. Your uniqueness. Beauty should be something that helps you take care of yourself. I think beauty can be used as a mind and body wellness tool too. That’s why my three words would be uniqueness, celebration and wellness.

As any kind of creator, we can also embody this uniqueness. It’s the same individuality that can give us imposter syndrome, but when embraced becomes the substance of our work.

I subscribe to Violette’s newsletter for a weekly infusion of her ideas. Sure, it’s got some information about her products. But it’s also a very personal letter about balancing work with family, about believing in oneself, about helping other people feel good in their skin.

Takeaways: give yourself space and time to make something work; don’t worry about the normal path of getting somewhere; create something you feel proud of.

Lizzo

There’s something about the chutzpah of using a single first name to brand yourself. One could place Madonna or Bono on this list as well as these two women for different reasons.

Née Melissa Viviane Jefferson, Lizzo started her professional music career as a hip hop artist in Minneapolis, which is, among other things music-related, the home of Prince. I’m not particularly a fan of Lizzo’s music (I’m not against it either), but she first caught my eye as someone really unique during that ‘magic flute’ performance at the Library of Congress, playing James Madison’s crystal flute:

I’m sure a lot of people had discovered her remarkableness before! Maybe living outside the country had distracted me. In any case, it would have been hard to miss another recent big Lizzo moment at the Grammys.

Sure, the Grammys have a ton of issues about representation and diversity as well as sometimes simply not being in tune with the best music out there. But Lizzo has a cool message and makes people want to sing with her.

The acceptance speech she gave when “About Damn Time” won Record of the Year had a beautiful message and was well articulated; it was both charismatic and from the heart:

“When we lost Prince I decided to dedicate my life to making positive music…..Feel-good music wasn’t mainstream at that point and I felt very misunderstood.

“I stayed true to myself because I wanted to make the world a better place so I had to be that change to make the world a better place. And now I look around and there’s all these songs that are about loving our bodies and feeling comfortable in our skin and feeling f***ing good and I’m just so proud to be a part of it because in a world that is a lot of darkness and a lot of scary sh*t. I’d like to believe that not only can people do good, but we just are good, we are good inherently.

“And anybody at home who feels misunderstood or on the outside looking in like I did, just stay true to yourself because I promise you, you will find people, you will attract people in your life who believe in you and support you.”

Lizzo’s message is one that we can all use. We can try to do something good for the world, however small it might seem. We can be a part of a movement of others also reflecting and contributing to the good of humanity.

Takeaway: create something you think will make the world a better place.

David Bowie

Ok, so I’m putting a second singer on this list today, but really Bowie was much more than a singer. In 2018, I went to see a retrospective posthumous show about him and his work at The Brooklyn Museum (originally organized by London’s V&A): “David Bowie is.” I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I mean, I was anticipating music and maybe some stage costumes, which we definitely got.

But beyond this, the show explored Bowie as a multi-media creator and someone who was constantly pushing boundaries. I found the relationship he had with the Japanese fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto to be especially interesting as well as innovative ideas begun in childhood like the “cut-up technique.”

By listening to interviews with Bowie, we can learn a lot about creativity and human nature. He never seemed to be afraid to be himself, although perhaps he was simply propelled by that fear, knowing it was something that should be listened to and potentially crossed.

He also discusses the idea “not to feel safe” in the work that you’re doing. That if you are, then you’re not doing the right things, not pushing your boundaries enough. He talks about this in relation to haircuts to start. In the film, he also discusses his work as a painter.

There are many quotes we can take from Bowie to learn from; often, they also show his humility. I think my favorite quote from him must be the following for its reminder to be bold and courageous as we live, love, and create each day:

Seemingly everything in the way he lived his life was an artistic manifestation. Maybe this meant he never felt ‘safe’, but then that can mean he felt alive, constantly, through experimenting and creating.

*Here’s a beautiful photographic retrospective recently published in The Guardian.

Takeaway: creating is life…expand your world and others’ by making something new.

What can you learn as a creator from these three people? Who inspires you?

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Welcome! If you’re new here, I’m Kathleen Waller and this is my newsletter about cultural studies, the arts, and writing. Last week, I took a look at thriller books, which you might want to check out before reading this post.

Now, time for TV…

If you like detective shows or crime drama, and you haven’t been watching British television, you have been missing out! Calling this post a “study” might be a stretch. However, I wanted to highlight a few of the television series I enjoy in the UK.

I’m working on the final touches of my Vienna-based thriller manuscript. In addition to their whodunnit entertainment value, these shows are inspiration (and procrastination) for my current writing project due to their mise-en-scène (think cliff-lined beaches and little towns where everyone is connected) as well as their layered characters, often witty and always with some dark secrets. In fact, the detectives themselves are often connected to the crime or criminal. Fun.

Of course, they’re not the only ones who do it well. Scandinavian series like The Bridge and The Killing are phenomenal and have a lot of similar topographical features like the British shows. The Pennsylvania based show Mare of Easttown (although starring British actress Kate Winslet) had the kind of deep character dive that many in the UK excel at.

I also love the accents, idioms, and local slang! Don’t be afraid to turn on the subtitles, even if English is your mother tongue. I usually do.

I’ll highlight four of my favorites here, but please add to the list!

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Happy Valley (2014-2023)

Although detective fiction got its start in the 1800s due to the Industrial Revolution, urbanization, and crime (in the cities), smaller towns can echo the difficulty of the times in a more intimate setting. Happy Valley is set now and draws on Britain’s sharp economic decline since Brexit as well as issues relating more specifically to the current drug crisis.

We witness moments of violence and terror, often fearing the safety of the characters we have come to love. But as Stuart Heritage writes for The Guardian in “Graffiti, grammar and farts: how small moments make Happy Valley an all-time great,” there are many “warm human moments” such as this one:

The best example of this is the line about stew. A moment of television so perfect it should be cordoned off and independently handed as many awards as possible. Catherine spends the scene trying to explain to Ryan that Royce – his biological father – is a psychopath of limitless evil. “He has a kink in his brain,” she tells him. “A twist, a psychological deformity. It’s an absence of something.” Eventually, Ryan tells her his tea is getting cold. She asks what it is. “Stew,” replies Ryan. And Catherine, as she tries to stop the person she loves most in the world from sliding towards evil, stops to consider the reheatability of his tea. “That’ll be alright,” she sniffs.

Sarah Lancashire, who plays the main character — a detective whose daughter dies before the first episode due to addiction and the influence of her nemesis, a criminal named Tommy Lee Royce — is an amazingly nuanced character who keeps surprising us.

The show’s creator, Sally Wainwright, is also the writer for Gentleman Jack and Last Tango in Halifax. Following many accolades and awards, some have called the finale for this show a “perfect ending.”

Shetland (2013— )

DJ Jimmy Perez has starred in eight seasons of this crime drama set in the Shetland Islands. A place known for those hiding out and witness protection as well as small towns, ferries to Norway, rough coastlines, and eerie foggy mornings make it a wonderful place for this show. The Guardian writes: “Shetland shares a lot of the spare, bleak beauty of Scandinavian noir – even when the sun shines, the characters seek out shadows in which to hold conversations.” These stories are adapted from Ann Cleeves’ detective novels.

Our detective is again a complicated character, often with relatives and friends tied up in the crimes. The FT writes that his character is: “rumpled, weary, lakes of loneliness in his eyes — played by Douglas Henshall with infinite melancholia.” I’m not sure how this show will be without him, but his deputy always added a bit of humor and strength when he needed it. Hopefully she will be taking the reigns after his retirement.

Broadchurch (2013-2017)

Broadchurch stars David Tennant and Olivia Coleman in three captivating seasons. With two such brilliant actors, it seems impossible to mess up. When you add the setting of a fictional town in Dorset…with cliffs, small town creepiness, and the beautiful luminous sea, one can’t go wrong.

Broadchurch has also since been widely streamed in America and elsewhere, so probably many of you non-Brits have heard of it or seen it.

In an interview with The New York Times, Tennant discusses why he thinks the series was unique and successful:

Very often in television crime dramas, for very obvious and often quite legitimate reasons, you don’t really feel the genuine impact of what crime does to the victim and those around it. In “Broadchurch,” you can taste the grief and the horror and the extraordinariness of this random ghastly event happening to these people. It just felt electrifyingly real. And [Alec Hardy] is a great character — he’s noble, inscrutable and rather taciturn.

A few other shows that take place near the sea are also worth a try. Something about this setting makes for deep reflection, as if the characters are born of the wild ocean itself. The Bay (2019—) is set on the coast of Moracombe Bay, near the real life home of Tyson Fury and a beautiful place to visit at the edge of the Lake District. While at first the main detective has a ridiculous storyline, the second and third seasons get a lot better; I was rooting for her. And then a few good ones take place in Wales, such as Hinterland and Hidden.

Endeavour (2012-2023)

Endeavor is a prequel show to Inspector Morse (1987-2000, based on the novels by Colin Dexter) set in Oxford in the 1960s, currently in its ninth season on BBC. Oxford is not tiny by any means, but the nature of the ‘college town’ where people are interconnected and town/gown relations can be tense, especially during a decade of change, makes for a dynamic setting. In the current season, tension between a seemingly more protected Oxford and Big City (Thug) Life of London builds when an ongoing subplot creates questions about one of the shows main characters.

Young Endeavor (Shaun Evans) is smart, often annoyingly so, and has the typical detective burden of loneliness. He reaches some pretty low points, as does his partner, played by Roger Allam. But a kind of alternative family is likewise formed and even tragedy compels them to do good in the community.

I have yet to see the original series and am told by my British husband that it is rather ‘dated.’ But I shall give it a try! Anybody here?

Allam has recently gone on to play in a British detective show called Murder in Provence (2022—) set in France, where he plays a French person. I find it annoying that the show is in English! The stories are so-so so far. But maybe it will get better.

In any case, I like watching things set in France, ideally in French, simply because of my Francophilia. Recently, I watched the French detective show César Wagner (2020-2022), set in Strasbourg. As I’ve spent a bit of time there since moving to Basel, it was fun to check out some local places and the local accent in this way. Again, the plot-lines are not especially compelling, but they are entertaining enough with quite a bit of humor peppered along the way.

In more urban British settings, In the Line of Duty, Unforgotten, and (J.K. Rowling’s) C.B. Strike are also great shows.

Why do we (I) enjoy watching a murder mystery or detective drama anyway? Psychology Today explores this question; don’t worry, they conclude it’s totally normal to enjoy watching it! [Nervous laughter…] However, this article from the UK University of Law condenses my thoughts on the matter, even though they are talking about ‘true crime’ stories:

[Watching crime on television] feeds our natural desire to solve puzzles and mysteries. It also gives us an insight into why other people may act the way they do and allows us to examine the darker sides of humanity from a safe distance.

I think one can do this in any fiction. I have always enjoyed writing that takes us into labyrinths (Borges, Auster, Ali Smith…), and these UK series offer more than the question of the crime’s complexities itself; instead asking us to piece together why and how we react to place/trauma/ambiguity/evil in the manifestation of the layered detectives.

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I’ve met writers who go through ‘no-reading-periods’ whilst composing, afraid the prose will interfere with their own. Instead, I like to continue to read, perhaps even more voraciously, in areas related to my work in progress…or sometimes unrelated. Something between the words fires my synapses into action.

Ever since I could read chapter books on my own, I’ve enjoyed thrillers and mysteries. But this is the first time I’m writing one; it feels both a natural response to this part of my passion as a reader and a difficult challenge to the way I normally compose fiction. I’m channelling many great authors before me and have recently read a couple of wonderful, unique thrillers with fascination settings as part of my inspiration.

First, I’ll share a one of these recent books I’ve discovered and then I’ll republish an article I wrote last year on thrillers with ‘literary merit’ below. These include The Third Man, by Graham Greene, which is based in Vienna like the novel I’m currently writing. Before that, we can turn briefly to Scandinavia’s cold and beautiful world, also the setting of many great crime dramas on television. [Next week, I’ll be talking about UK set TV thrillers and detective shows.]

Briefly, I’ll add another to the ensuing list: Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat. Wow, this novella is so rich, strange, and creepy that I read it in one sitting after a day of skiing and then had to immediately go back to the beginning to read it with a new perspective. I first read about the book in this article on Sparks from Kate Jones.

I hope you find something here you like. Please also tell us about your favorites!

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Norwegian by Night

Derek B. Miller (2014)

This Scandinavian setting provides not only elements of noir (isolation and otherness) but also a setting of cultural intersections. New Yorkers, Norwegians, and Albanians come together in and around Oslo with flashbacks (blended with dreams) to Korea and Vietnam.

Derek B. Miller is an American who currently lives in Norway as director of the Policy Lab and a senior fellow with the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. He has lived in seven countries. This background of the author shows in the way he creates mystery and conflict between characters of different cultures as well as providing several layers to the text through historical national and racial or cultural conflicts.

Sheldon Horowitz is an old Jewish man from New York who comes to live with his granddaughter and her Norwegian husband. Quickly, the plot is propelled into action and Sheldon is on the run with a child he is trying to protect and the granddaughter goes into hiding. Sheldon’s flashbacks to the Korean war and the Vietnam war, where his son died, blur with the present.

The plot’s intricacies are a way for us to grapple with elements of the world’s tragedies but also how they become personal, and how we may throw ourselves into tragedy for a cause that perhaps doesn’t match our principals. On the surface, we have a ‘running-from-the-criminals-police-story’ but with these added layers, Miller gives us much more to think about and creates poignant personal moments. Because Sheldon’s reality is not always so clear, the reader is given more liberties with one’s own imagination.

6 Thrillers for Lovers of Literary Fiction

Who says scary can’t be sophisticated?

Originally published on Medium, February 10, 2022

When I read a book, I want the prose to draw me in and impress me. It doesn’t have to use big words or be especially poetic, but it does have to make me consider the power of the language the author has chosen. The play of words and ideas make us understand something through dissonance and layers.

A good thriller does more than scare you. It makes you think about the world in a different way or appreciate some truth or beauty within it (Keats would say these are the same).

If you also like to read in this way, try these thrillers for some genre-benders that coexist in the space of literary fiction.

All links to books are on bookshop.org where you can support local bookstores.

Death and the Penguin

by Andrey Kurkov (1996, translated from the Russian by George Bird)

Set in Ukraine, this mysterious novel features the obituary writer named Viktor and his pet penguin, given to him by the failed zoo. Through the terror of strange disappearances and appearances amidst thoughts that those who control the media control people’s lives, Kurkov tells a story of isolation, grief, and lack of self control.

The full story is what you get told only if and when your work, and with it your existence, are no longer required.

In the context of post-Soviet Ukraine with death all around him, Viktor concludes that an escape to Antartica might be better…

The New York Trilogy

by Paul Auster (1986)

All of Auster’s novels include intricate layers and puzzles of meaning, even if they may not reach a genre-bending thriller categorisation. He draws heavily on critical theorists such as Derrida, Foucault, and Baudrillard in his prose (as I write about in regards to Invisible).

The New York Trilogy is composed of three novellas that all make use of a city labyrinth, detective tales, and mise-en-abyme to tell their stories. City of Glass in particular is a puzzle of fascinating ideas about ontology, linguistics, and metafiction.

The detective is one who looks, who listens, who moves through this morass of objects and events in search of the thought, the idea that will pull all these things together and make sense of them. In effect, the writer and the detective are interchangeable.

Additionally, there is a beautiful graphic novel adaptation of this novella by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. Auster discusses this work with the artists at the Comic Arts Brooklyn Festival in 2013.

The Third Man

by Graham Greene (1950)

You may have seen the iconic film about spies and secrets in post-WWII Vienna that was divided into the Inter-Allied Zone by the Four Powers. Greene wrote The Third Man initially as a rough novella in anticipation of turning it into a screenplay for director Carol Reed. As Greene says in his preface that it was “never written to be read but only to be seen.” He goes on to claim it is “impossible to write a film play without first writing a story” and that the layers of character and theme must be developed more deeply through language that will only become visual symbolism in film.

Orson Welles, who also stars in the film, collaborated on the transformation which also made changes and left out some of the nuance especially about political discourse. However, both the novella and the film are intriguing works of art in their own way.

The atmospheric quality of the book has made it iconic. Haunting places tell the story as much as the characters:

A thaw set in that night, and all over Vienna the snow melted, and the ugly ruins came to light again; steel rods hanging like stalactites, and rusty girders thrusting like bones through the grey slush. Burials were much simpler than they had been a week before, when electric drills had been needed to break the frozen ground.

Once you read the book, you can take a trip to Vienna and view the film at Burgkino Cinema where it plays twice a week or do a related city tour.

Snowblind

by Ragnar Jonasson (2014, translated from the Icelandic by Quentin Bates)

Ok, so Snowblind by the Icelandic author Ragnar Jonasson is more of a classic crime thriller than the others on this list (as are Jonasson’s other books). It’s even part of a series. However, the atmospheric quality of northern Iceland and well rounded characters prompted me to place his books in this category. He plays with concepts of time, climate, isolation, trauma, and acting. There are some echos of Hamlet in this novel.

Jonasson began publishing as a translator, including a portfolio of 14 Agatha Christie novels, so we can understand where his roots in the attention to linguistic detail come from. He also co-founded the Iceland Noir international literature festival, which “celebrat[es] darkness in all its forms.”

Epitaph for a Spy

by Eric Ambler (1938)

This spy thriller that takes place in the South of France features a Hungarian refugee and language teacher as well as other hotel guests and patrons who each have fascinating back stories and secrets. While the novel keeps you guessing with a feeling of imminent danger until the end, the characters also delight in their well rounded and entertaining discourse. Ideas of statelessness and nationality in connection to identity create a clever subtext.

Monsieur Pain

by Roberto Bolaño (1999, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews)

Fans of Bolaño enjoy his sharp unsettling narratives for their dark mysteries and mazes of thought. Monsieur Pain is a shorter but just as layered work by the Chilean author of 2666 and The Savage Detectives.

If you enjoy the works of Poe (especially about mesmerism), surrealism, Freudian doubles, playing with time, and explorations of madness, you will devour this book.

These six books [and the two above] prove that thrillers have no boundaries. I would love to hear about more of your favorites in the comments.

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Kathleen Waller is a novelist in Basel where she is working on her next book: a Vienna-based psychological thriller. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature and is the author of The White Night and two books for literature teachers. For more information: kathleenwaller.com

*You can listen to today’s article on my podcast channel.*

“Who wants to live forever? / Forever is our today.” Brian May of Queen wrote these lines for the iconic song of 1986’s’ Highlander film, a strange story featuring immortals who can only be killed if their heads are cut off (just a spin on vampires and zombies, I guess).

Most films and books featuring immortals reach the conclusion that it’s a terrible state of existence. Yet, searching for immortality and fighting our own ephemerality has long been a desire or even obsession of some humans. Despite the lessons we learn from Frankenstein or Interview with the Vampire, some people continue to want to live forever.

Recently, futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted we are within a decade of some kind of immortality emerging at once with singularity, human-like intelligence in AI. Simultaneously, cloning and cryogenics are receiving funding from some of the richest people in the world. Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel are famously investing in immortality companies and Ted Williams lies frozen, awaiting an awakening.

Some might say that those seeking an immortal legacy are using a healthier or more natural way to remain on Earth “forever.” Those who make history, who create timeless art…who write books. The language from their minds can remain in libraries for centuries or even millennia. Shakespeare, Aristotle, Bashō…are they not immortal in some way?

But as people search for these answers to defy death, they are missing the experience that musician-turned astrophysicist May concluded: “Forever is our today. / Who waits forever anyway?” What if writing, instead of leaving a legacy, could help us expand time – or our perception of it – into a richer, fuller mortal life? Many now attempt to save precious time by using AI by writing for them, and sometimes that time-saving strategy is probably quite useful. But the act might sometimes circumvent one of the very things that opens our realities and gives life meaning.

Time is relative anyway. Sure, physical time exists, but if we understand our perception of time in the way Heidegger does, it is relative and reliant also on death. We all know that things can feel fast or slow, depending on a variety of factors. Just consider the days and years of the pandemic, and you’ll know what I mean. Today, I’d like to posit that the act of writing makes time expand in itself.

Structural survival

When writer-philosopher-professor Jacques Derrida knew he would die imminently of pancreatic cancer, he sprung forward an articulation of both fear and hope (at once) to describe the way we can move toward immortality. In Learning to Live Finally: The Last Interview, Derrida spoke with Le Monde journalist Jean Birnbaum about these ideas that one could say have been immortalized in a book.

Conjuring ideas from Walter Benjamin, Derrida talks about a concept of structural survival, decidedly not about leaving books or children behind, but one that focuses on “tracings” and “spectral” qualities of oneself that may remain after death:

This is not a striving for immortality; it's something structural. I leave a piece of paper behind, I go away, I die: it is impossible to escape this structure, it is the unchanging form of my life. Each time I let something go, each time some trace leaves me, "proceeds" from me, unable to be reappropriated, I live my death in writing.

The idea that writing is living (and therefore dying as well) is something one could decipher from his ideas about différance but is stated more concretely by someone aware that he is about to lose his own consciousness along with his body:

[D]econstruction is always on the side of the yes, on the side of the affirmation of life.…This surviving is life beyond life, life more than life, and my discourse is not a discourse of death, but, on the contrary, the affirmation of a living being who prefers living and thus surviving to death, because survival is not simply that which remains but the most intense life possible.

The “intensity” is living a life to its fullest. And what better way to do this than through writing?

Something to do

Why do we write? It’s a question every writer asks themselves and a common article topic. Conversations about why writers write are vast, probably because we continue to try to understand something that has become a fundamental part of ourselves. It is a fascinating question for writers and readers alike…why take up life’s precious time (usually without the promise of payment, fame, or even readership) in order to put one’s ideas on a page?

Zadie Smith tell us that it’s something to do, like cooking or motorbiking or watching television, in the essay “Something to Do” from the pandemic book of essays: Intimations. Well, it is, of course. But more than simply passing the time, writing can expand time. It doesn’t make you live longer or enter some warp zone or parallel universe where you reach a bizarre form of immortality. Instead, writing enriches your mortal experience.

Smith says writing is “no substitute for love” and that by contrast “love is something to be experienced.” She goes on to explain that writing is a “manic desire,” something we writers do to fill up time. Well, what if the act helps one to see? I don’t just mean the pretty flowers on your balcony or the way your son exposes all his teeth when he laughs with his head back or the sadness in your friend’s voice on the phone. If writing helps us to see these things, to live them and reflect on them, then isn’t it helping us to love?

The comparisons between books and babies in terms of commitment and legacy is a cliché that misses the idea of what actually happens in the act of writing or parenting, focusing instead on some nugget to be left behind after death. But when it comes to love, there is something gained in comparison. Loving people, including but not exclusive to our children, spreads one’s positive energy from one’s inner being. Similarly, loving an idea or having a passion to write spreads this same type of energy. And maybe if your goal is to connect to humanity, you can share love in this way: through your words. I think of it in a metaphysical sense. Call it Deleuzean Affect if you like. All the matter we are made of is held together by energy in such a fragile way. As we create or love or laugh, we give off this energy to the world. We share it with others.

Writing for connection

I was asked by my son’s preschool to share how my job was a part of the community. The first instinctual response of a writer might be, it’s not. It was mine, too, and for that reason, I felt compelled to find out how I am indeed a part of the community. Because this was during the pandemic, I made a video, so I can conveniently go back to reflect on what I actually said. Without script, I told these three-year-olds that as a writer, I was a part of the community of humans, of humanity. It just came to me at the time, but I think it’s true. I am part of this discourse that makes us human and not animals (though I love animals) and not a beautiful tree (though that sounds delightful in some ways as well). No, as a human, I can think and I can write.

What sometimes feels like an extremely isolating experience is perhaps one of the most connected: what we write comes from shared languages and daily experiences or responses to art, all part of a community without limits. Although my work may reach a particular audience and work within particular genres and language, I also like to think there is more that brings us together rather than separates us. If love and happiness are the meaning of life, then we can find these in the act of writing.

And so what do love and happiness have to do with immortality? Perhaps more than capturing ourselves as pieces of prose that can be shared when we are dead, the way we live (through seeking happiness and sharing love) spreads our mortal finitude outward toward immortality. As we write, we observe and reflect. We connect. We who write are writing even as we go about daily life. In considering how we may filter an experience, we bring mindfulness to it and paradoxically the filtering expands the experience.

Uselessness

Oscar Wilde’s famous quote from the preface of Dorian Gray reads: “All art is quite useless.” It tells us that the arts, including literature of course, are not practical or useful for everyday life. Instead of being trivial or selfish acts, they enhance our lives. They make us human. They reach beyond the limits of our bodies. Of course, this novel also teaches us that the narcissism of striving for “eternal youth” can rot our bodies and souls. Instead of seeking unnatural qualities, art’s impractical qualities can help us to live more fully. Even as we embrace sadness and difficulty or heartbreak and grief, we can investigate these feelings through writing to experience the full range of our natural, mortal worlds.

In another case of the rich fighting mortality, Bryan Johnson’s Project Blueprint is “trying to maximally slow the speed of [his] biological aging,” attempting to change his 45 year-old body into that of an 18 year old’s. I could easily be wrong, but in perusing his website, I can’t imagine he does much more with his time on earth than trying to stay young. Is this drive his life’s passion?

When you have a passion for something, or perhaps it’s a compulsion, you don’t always question why that is. In other cases, the answer may be obvious, whether or not the reason is healthy. I run to feel strong. I drink to escape. I knit to share something with my friends. You get the idea. But with writing (and other art forms), sometimes the writer struggles to explain why they do it. It’s something we have to do, we were born to do. We know in most cases it won’t make us much money.

Writing is an affirmation of life. It reminds me that I am human; I can view the world through a perspective that I have the power to change. I can document its beauty, creating new truths through language.

Each time we write: we think, we observe, we challenge.

It’s hard to make sense of the injustices and horrifying violence in the world. If each of us engages in tiny acts of love and kindness, this will help. It may not solve anything immediately, but the power of truth (in the Keatsian sense of the word, as observations of life’s beauty) can spread. A few months ago, I read an article on Medium by a Ukrainian abroad who felt helpless, that all they could do was ‘pray’. But at the same time, they were sharing a story of their cultural identity and their pain – this act of writing was doing something. It was political; it was love; it was moving toward immortality even though the article would likely soon be lost. It made humanity something that much deeper than what it felt when I read the news that morning.

As we write in the metaphorical darkness, that is – in isolation and with our own mortal limitations or perhaps literally in the black of night, we also exhume our deepest fears, desires, passions, anger, and anything else that’s deeply lodged within our souls. Often, we don’t even know it’s there until it’s staring back at us on the page. In these moments, as our bodies seem to dissipate into the darkness, we paradoxically feel more alive than ever.

Some call Derrida’s writing perplexing or even nonsensical. Instead, one could say that what he has left us in his oeuvre is something filled with puzzles, often without any answer. They are also filled at once with ideas about love and kindness and the joy of creation. Essentially, he tells us to lead a mindful life, to dance rather than trudge through our days. He plays with language (“tourner les mots”) to try to help us see this way of the world. But he also plays and creates these labyrinths to make his writing speak. It speaks across generations, both before and ahead of him. He does not think he will be aware of these conversations after his death, but he has left some kind of energy there, and, perhaps more to my point here, it was in the realm of the infinite in its act of creation, as if time had collapsed in on itself to understand him.

If some kind of AI-aided immortality is in fact imminently reached, what will that do to our perception of time? With an overwhelming sense of foreverness, will we instead seek experiences that bring awareness to death? Perhaps writing gives us infinite lives within the structure of mortality. Perhaps each time we sit to write, we experience the present at its fullest only because we also embrace the end.

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How’s your 2023 reading goal going? I’m keeping track, as usual, on Goodreads. I’m not seeking a huge number for the year but mindfully moving along with some fantastic titles. I love to see the record of these books here to remind myself of my journey and share reading ideas with others.

I also tend to post photos of what I’m reading on Instagram. Who doesn’t love a good book cover?!

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Today, I’ll look at:

• The Sentence, Louise Erdrich

• The Luminous Novel, Mario Levrero

• The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, Nathaniel Ian Miller

And if it’s film or paintings your after, I was experimenting a little on the new podcast with my very short takes on Everything Everywhere All at Once and two museum shows in Basel (links to Podbean with further links to Apple, iHeart Radio, Spotify, and more). Let me know what you think!

The Sentence

Louise Erdrich (2021)

Minnesota is a dear place to me. So are bookshops!

Erdrich is a multi-genre indigenous author with a bookshop in Minnesota, who uses both for the setting of her latest novel — The Sentence. This book was written just following Erdrich’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with The Night Watchman in 2020. The novel that focuses on indigenous identities from different perspectives is a ghost story and a story of redemption that takes place during the pandemic and George Floyd’s murder. Most of the plot is set in a bookshop where the protagonist works, and the tale is followed by a large further reading list from the fictional character that would keep one busy for a couple of years.

My mother grew up in Minnesota with eight siblings, five of whom still reside there. We used to visit via a long scenic drive from Massachusetts. My brother has since moved to the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul) when his wife started a medical residency there, although he still works as a journalist and editor in Boston (proud big sis here).

They happened to move first just around the corner from Cup Foods, the shop where Floyd used a counterfeit bill. I was there with my then baby son at Christmas of that year and wandered into the shop several times for the odd grocery.

Having been there just weeks before Floyd was murdered outside that shop — it means absolutely nothing — but you always wonder, could I have done something? Would trying to intervene with a baby strapped to my chest have made the cops listen? Probably not. It’s hubris to think so.

It transformed my brother’s neighborhood though - at least temporarily - from a friendly hang-out-in-the-front-yard place with progressive political signs on most lawns to one where you could regularly hear gunshots and many of the shops shut down. An unfortunate side effect to a place of mourning and pilgrimage and action. Perhaps the anger and the fires have since cooled in Minneapolis, but the fight thankfully goes on.

One of the characters in the novel who happens to be a Native American police officer also used to stop at Cup Foods “to pick up a thing or two on his way back from working on the universe.” He wonders if “I was just there. Maybe I could’ve…” (p. 235). So I realized it’s a common feeling, one that many of us may ask in the face of tragedy. It’s good to ask; maybe we will be there someday. This scene also demonstrates the power of literature in connecting us; although our encounters with this space of mourning came from entirely different perspectives, our thoughts were the same. We are more connected to strangers (and fictional characters) than we sometimes realize.

Erdrich describes the murder as a “signal event,” one that should “engender[] multiple ripple effects of legislation and landmark legal cases” (p. 235) and goes on to describe the “haunted city” that ensues (p. 238). It’s both a backdrop and invisibly weaved into the fabric of the personal story of imprisonment that the book explores. Erdrich exposes acts of injustice in many ways but ultimately offers hope through “repatriations” (p. 371) and “peace” (p. 366) and “surviv[al]” (p. 364).

The Luminous Novel

Mario Levrero (2021, English translation by Annie McDermott)

I love the meta-artist / metafiction sub-genre á la Kundera, Auster, Murakami, Woolf…the list goes on. This time, however, it’s also in the form of both non-fiction and novel paired together as a complete text, which also blurs the genre lines along with making us more aware both of the act of creation and the presence of the real author during the fiction. This book is long, but one could argue that the length is part of the story.

First, we have 421 pages of journals about the creation of a novel as well as the procrastination of completing it. Then, the next 109 pages are a novel, The Luminous Novel, for which Levrero received a grant from the Guggenheim foundation to complete. However, nothing is a completed manuscript for he died in 2004 from a heart attack before completion and is often compared to Roberto Bolańo’s posthumous “genre-defying magnum opus 2666” (translator’s note - Annie McDermott, p. 533, And Other Stories edition"). McDermott also quotes Argentinian author Mauro Libertella:

‘If [Chilean] Roberto Bolańo showed us it was still possible to write the great Latin American novel, [Uruguayan] Levrero told us it wasn’t necessary.’ 2666 is a book about everything, but The Luminous Novel is a book about everything else: about how writing, imagination and the human soul behave in the downtime, in the never-ending small hours’ when most people are asleep.

In the first part, Levrero talks about his dreams, his lover, sleeping too much, visiting a psychologist, walking…everyday life. These things are the seeds of his creation as well as the stuff that gets in the way.

While I was often enticed to simply skip a few hundred pages to get to the novel already, there was something captivating in the raw nature of the artist’s rambles. There was a melancholia mixed with imagination. There was a clarity about life mixed with an ambivalence about time and society.

When we finally get there on page 425, we are really ready for it. And the beauty bounces off the page…you can imagine Levrero finding solace in these words:

Fairly often, for some time now, an image has been occurring to me spontaneously in which I’m writing calmly with a pen and India ink on a sheet of very high-quality white paper. And now I’m doing just that, giving in to what seems to be a deep-seated desire, even though all my life I’ve tended to use a typewriter.

But just when we think we’re getting to the masterly crafted fiction that Levrero has been slaving over for years, he tells us farther down the same page:

The luminous novel, however, will never be a novel; I have no way of reshaping the real events in such a way that they become ‘literature’, any more than I can free them from a line of thinking — not necessarily a philosophy — that inevitably connects them to one another.

So we as the writer-reader have to embrace these uncertainties and consider our own lives and writing lives and fiction lives we create. It will either make you run or dive deeply. We witness love and sadness, joy and ambivalence alongside the author as he explores his own spirituality instead of the “earthly” and “political” Church.

The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven (2021)

Nathaniel Ian Miller (2021)

I am a snow and solitude lover but this is extreme. In Nathaniel Ian Miller’s The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, the title character leaves his home for the arctic in search of a more interesting life and ends up staying isolated in the cold climate for most of his.

Sven is at odds with many of the Finnish workers and is disfigured early on in an avalanche in the mine. Both factors make him even more isolated than the other characters. But Sven still finds companionship in a Scottish geologist, his books, and his niece who comes to stay with him for a while.

This story is one of internationalism but also an individual’s fight of survival and acceptance. As The New York Times says:

Amid the quietness and seclusion of Svalbard, the novel finds various ways of reminding the reader of the big events happening elsewhere in Europe. Through Tapio, who is a committed socialist, and Illya, a later acquaintance who is a Ukrainian anarchist, we learn about the Russian Revolution and the Finnish civil war. But although Miller allows us to glimpse a larger world of national conflict and upheaval, his true interests lie in the realm of the personal.

Besides politics, there’s a beloved dog, murder, arctic hunters, discoveries of selfhood, forgiveness, and more. It’s truly a wonderful and memorable novel.

The story has echoes of Frankenstein, Crime and Punishment, Call of the Wild, and Walden. The author was a resident in the Arctic Circle Expeditionary Program, giving the story a natural quality though the story may be extraordinary.

Have you read any of these books? What do you think? What have you read so far this year?

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Some - even English teachers - are calling for the end of essay assessment in schools due to the rise of AI writing capabilities. As impressive as these computer generated essays are, often better than student writing, it doesn’t mean we should stop teaching the art of the essay.

Nor should we ignore that teaching how to use AI, though it will continue to change greatly over time. Pre-November-2022, an approach may have been applied to spelling and grammar: learn how to spell and learn about grammar; learn how to apply the computer aids effectively. Now, we’re just upping the game.

I guess an essential question of teaching is: how do we get from point a to b? Shortcuts are likely to eschew deeper understanding and perhaps limit the possibilities for the future…for writing, for thinking.

It’s not only students who seek the shortcuts. Some of these practices can feel tedious to teachers, especially when they’re faced with more and more responsibilities regarding online presence and data analysis, for example. It’s reasonable to not want to take the time to make creative and engaging lessons on something so mundane. I get it! So…the answer to this issue is perhaps much more complex and rooted in funding for education. With more money, teachers could have fewer classes or students and have more access to professional development or collaboration time. [They’ll also need to learn how to use and teach AI writing technology.] I digress…but it all comes back to the idea of creativity in constraint. The (five paragraph) essay need not be banal!

Learning the basics of essay writing is essential in helping a young person to not only write more creatively and persuasively but also to think differently and to understand the texts that come before them over the rest of the years of their life in more nuanced ways.

All students use calculators for at least some of their exams, but we still teach them to add, subtract, multiply, divide…and do the really difficult calculus that a computer can easily do for us. Why? So we understand. So we can push our brains in new directions. It’s not only for mathematicians just as essay writing in the age of ChatGPT is not only for professional writers.

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I do agree that more creative forms of assessment can be used on exams. Of course, some are already. And when it comes to essays written outside of exam conditions, it may be impossible to know if a computer or student (or tutor or parent…) has written the essay. Just as we can’t easily send a math exam home, we can’t guarantee the authenticity of an essay exam done at home. But this issue in ensuring assessment practices is different from the need for certain skills within the curriculum.

Sorry kids — my stance remains — Long live the five paragraph essay! Read on to understand why I think it’s a lot more than a boring tradition.

Creativity in Constraint

Originally published in The Writing Cooperative, April 21, 2022 (Editor: Justin Cox)

How many of you learned the iconic (or infamous) 5 paragraph essay in school? Maybe you learned it as a hamburger model, or by using boxy rectangles to sort out the information in your paragraphs. Did you hate it? Love it? Did your teachers skip over it because they hated it?

The 5 paragraph essay is an anchor you can always go back to. It’s also a springboard or a skeleton from which you can greatly expand. As an author, academic, and former high school English teacher of 20 years, I would like to tell you why I love it and how you can go beyond it.

The key components

Building a stone wall is an art and a skill. You need to understand the way stones can fit together in order to serve their purpose. However, you can also create beauty in the way you select your stones and choose the way they will balance one another until reaching completion. The language and essential components of your essay are like these stones.

A strict 5 paragraph essay has an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The introduction should have a hook, thesis, short discussion, and preview. Each body paragraph should have ‘Point — Evidence — Explanation’ (PEE paragraphs) or (after, say, 6th grade) ‘Point — Evidence — Explanation — Link — Evidence — Explanation — Link — Evidence — Explanation — Transition’ to upgrade the amount of evidence in your paper. And the conclusion should wrap things up by summarizing your main points, going back to the thesis, and adding something fresh (but connected) at the end. You can see a decent basic overview here.

*You can read an interesting discussion of the thesis by Walter Bowne in The Writing Cooperative.

Start expanding

Once you know the basic components and feel comfortable with them, it’s easy to add on extra paragraphs or evidence to your paper. If you haven’t written in this style, I recommend trying it out, so that you really understand the basics. It’s sort of like learning the five basic foot positions of ballet before dancing or sun salutations before other yoga asanas. I use physical examples here because the goal is to make this writing structure become muscle memory, something you don’t have to explicitly think about as you write.

The structure doesn’t have to be followed while you write good persuasive essays or articles. But it can help you remember the way to make your writing clear and well documented. You can also look at structured ways to expand this coat hanger of an essay. Purdue Owl has a fantastic writing lab with many resources, including basic structures of various essays.

One way you can understand a great expansion of this model is through the work of David Foster Wallace. His essays, while greatly anecdotal and fiercely creative, are aware of and play with the rigid elements of our school-days essay. Even while playing around, he makes his points exceptionally clear and always comes back to evidence in discussion of purpose.

Purposeful editing

When you read back over your own work, it can be useful to keep this structure in mind. For example, I either like to highlight the main points I’m making after freely structuring a piece or begin with the main points and expand from there. It’s a simple task but can help you to see if they are placed effectively and clearly backed up with evidence. They don’t have to be placed in the spots that a 5 paragraph essay structure asks for, but knowing this device of clarity should help you understand when and how it’s effective to break the rules.

I also like to highlight my opening, thesis, and closing ideas. The idea of sandwiching your writing where the ending syncs back to the opening is a way to make it feel complete. Something fresh at the end should bring the work beyond the page or screen, so that the reader keeps thinking about your work and hopefully makes it relevant to themselves. The opening line or paragraph usually has a deep connection to the ending. Often, we write the beginning when we are completely finished to make it as clear and effective as possible. After all, we go through a thinking journey as we write a paper or story.

How can this method possibly be creative?

Creativity in constraint is the idea that our creativity can be pushed through structures and by using structures that exist. Something as basic as a word count can force us to think about the effectiveness of the concise language that we choose. Other structures, such as conventions of genre, are ones that can either be used in formulation or subverted for effect.

Kurt Vonnegut famously discusses plot structure in Cinderella in ‘The Shape of Stories.’ Screenwriters usually adhere to one of several strict structure guidelines to make their films successful.

Essentially, we use structure to help our audience understand our message. The American Press Institute says of journalistic pieces:

If the purpose of journalism is to tell people what they need to know to navigate their way through their world, it follows then that journalists need to keep our audience in the forefront when making decisions about coverage.

Any type of writing attempts to convey a message to the reader. By using conventions for effect, we can better reach people and have a greater impact as writers.

It’s not too late

If you realize now that you haven’t learned this essay model or you’ve completely forgotten it since your SAT test, it’s not too late. Try writing something really basic in this structure, like why it’s good to drink coffee in the morning or the reason XYZ is the best novel you’ve ever read. Highlight the components in different colors. Then, take a longer or more unusually structured article you’ve recently written and try to apply these highlights to it as well. What do you notice? What would you change? When could you use these components during your writing process (during outlining, drafting, or editing)?

Each person writes differently. But we also want our ideas to come across clearly to our readers. Using convention, whether adhering to it strictly or subverting it completely or something in between, can help us to make our writing part of the greater dialogue of literature. We can think about this idea of creativity in constraint for any type of writing convention and genre in more philosophical as well as practical ways.

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As we move toward the end of ski season in the Northern Hemisphere, I reflect on the joy and peace I get from skiing.

Some might say I’m obsessed with it, but I know people with far greater ski obsessions than my own. Is it a passion? Yes. One perhaps even more coveted since it is dependent on weather and time off and actually taking the trip to do it.

I get that skiing is a privilege that not everyone has access to, either due to geography or finances or physical abilities. In Switzerland, the mountains, at least, are accessible to all. Not only are costs relatively lower despite the country’s high cost of living but also the accessibility is remarkable. Hiking, snowshoeing, and sledging all take place from mountaintops. The cable car network allows many areas to be accessed also by the very young or very old, or people with mobility issues. Here, I often see baby buggies and crutches on mountain peaks. Restaurants in remote areas encircled by many peaks can be reached by nearly anyone, even if the aim is only to enjoy a coffee.

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I started skiing very young at the age of four with my father in New England and, this year, have had the joy of helping my four year old son learn. The journey has taken me to many places…as well as to deep places in my mind.

Bachelard & intimate immensity

The vastness of a mountaintop might seem the oppositve of an intimate experience. Intimate if one experiences it alone, sure, but also intimate in the way that the immensity collapses into the mind of the one experiencing its beauty.

French philosopher of space Gaston Bachelard starts his chapter “Intimate Immensity” in The Poetics of Space as such (p. 183):

One might say that immensity is a; philosophical category of daydream. Daydream undoubtedly feeds on all kinds of sights, but through a sort of natural inclination, it contemplates grandeur. And this' contemplation produces an attitude that is so special, an inner state that is so unlike any other, that the daydream transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity.

Bachelard is speaking mainly of interiors in this book - largely symbolically of the domestic space, but here the space becomes one’s own inner being. In this chapter, he speaks largely of daydreams as “pure imagination” of the “motionless man” (p. 184), that is, a consciousness based purely on an interior state rather than one’s surroundings.

Much of the chapter discusses types of conscious meditation. Bachelard considers the way we may experience this ‘immensity’ of depth in understanding our phenomenological world in the way poets do.

Vast mountain peaks make us feel small physically, but this also means we can experience a contained near-infinite sense of contemplation, appreciation of beauty, and awe. Of course, one need not be a skier to experience mountains in this way. But skiing brings us to physical challenges and rhythmic bodily harmonies that perhaps perpetuate these feelings. The sometimes long and lonely ride on a chairlift of gondola brings us into an even stranger perspective toward the earth and a motionless consideration of what greatness lies before us.

Perhaps it is the solitude — I do a lot of skiing alone. Perhaps it is the Buddhist feeling of smallness that I love. The near erasure of self in the universe allows us to feel free.

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This famous Caspar David Friedrich painting is often used as a symbol of the Romantic ways of the depths of one soul represented by poetic means:

[Some argue this type of philosophy (phenomenological) is at odds with post-structuralists like Jacques Derrida. On the contrary, I would argue that Derrida’s work - especially on différance - is ultimately about this same appreciation of conscious imagination and one’s (small) place in the (natural) world. But I shall save that for some later discussion on différance and its place in the ‘real world’ or everyday life.]

Awe

I was thinking about what this kind of awe has to do with the joy I get from skiing. There is something special, for example, about a new ski experience. While it’s great to go to the pistes you love (and easier to ski them) and return to enjoyable lodges or mountaintop restaurants, something in the newness of an unknown landscape to view or ride through.

I then encountered this podcast episode from Dr. Ranagn Chatterjee about the eight types of awe that Dr Dacher Keltner has researched and identified —

It’s a great conversation with many of Dr. Chatterjee’s own related observations about things like Oasis (& a lack of phone distraction at concerts), the death of his father, and Zoom yoga classes. You can also read about the research in his book or discussed in this NYT article. His work at Greater Good Sciene Center at UC Berkeley on the topic is summarized here.

One of the ways to experience awe is through nature, perhaps an obvious observation and easily related to the effect of a ski mountain on an individual.

But another is through collective movement - when one skis with friends, one can have a solitary experience as well as a communal one, shared through the language of skiing on the chairlift. Even skiing down a piste with strangers has this effect: people are moving to their own rhythms (hopefully) in harmony with each other. We nod to others to hit a steep line first or yelp out from the lift when we witness a pretty jump. Or, we stop to make sure someone is ok when they take a fall.

Listening to or creating music might also be part of your ski experience. If your body moves to a beat as you ski or you have headphones in your helmet…or, even better, there’s a concert playing on the side of the piste…you can experience awe through music while skiing.

Witnessing life and death is yet another of the eight types of awe. While one might not fear death explicitly on a ski day, the height, the cold, the potential isolation…these might all compel us to reflect on our mortality.

Ski photos

Maybe you can’t go skiing or even go up in a gondola. I’ll leave you with a few images to use your imagination! Even better to watch some of the extreme ski videos from peaks I don’t dare drop down to from a helicopter but love to imagine from the safety of a comfy chair by a fireplace.

4 Vallées (Verbier, Veysonnaz, Nendaz, Thyon, Bruson, La Tzoumaz; Switzerland)

These photos are from a recent trip with my good friend Cara whom I met in Hong Kong. She’s now back in her native Geneva home after a lot of adventures including a year of working as a ski and snowboard instructor. You can read a fantastic FT Opinion piece she wrote about female leadership and climate change last year.

The terrain was widely varied and although it would have been better to explore with more off-piste snow, we got a good overview of the four main areas over the weekend…and are ready to go back for more.

Jungfrau (Grindelwald, Wengen, Mürren; Switzerland)

Skiing at Wengen is a great joy due to the possibility to flirt all day long with the North Face of the Eiger. Here she is:

But on the same ski ticket, one can ride the mountain train around to Mürren (another quaint Swiss ski village) where you can find some fun pistes. If you go all the way to the top, you will find yourself at Piz Gloria, famous from James Bond. There are cardboard cutouts from the film along with a cafe, restaurant, shop, cinema, ‘Spy World,’ and viewing platform of the endless peaks. Either ski down the expert trail on the Shilthorn or head back on the cable car after a walk over the observation deck.

Crans Montana (Switzerland)

Schladming (Austria)

Obertauern (Austria)

This ski resort is also famous for its setting in the film Help! with The Beatles:

Other things:

• “Skiing for life: A miracle sport for generative happiness,” by Bryan Reynolds in Freeskier

• Ski lingo [A ‘cool’ skier told my son he had done a ‘switch’ when he accidentally skied backwards. He now wants to switch all the time!! Or does he just like saying it? There’s something about cool words that help you enjoy the sport even more…]

• “I’m an Avid Skier” by Jill Magi explores work stress. She talks about it here.

• Mikaela Shiffrin’s youtube.com channel — I feel full of awe witnessing her ski successes. And she has a lot of depth, from discussing her period in relation to sport performance to her relationship with Aleksander Kilde.

• I recently shared the origin of the name for this publication while skiing at The Matterhorn:

The Matterhorn: intersections of literature & art

xxiv. Cultural Differences at the (Permeable) Border

The Saturday Brunch: a figurative flat white or fizzy to start your weekend Originally drafted a year ago and then published April 5, 2022. One year on from the start of the war in Ukraine, I go back to this moment of reflection that was also the seed for this publication…

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3 years ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Dr. Kathleen Waller

Thanks for reading! If you enjoy the snowy mountains, I hope you’ve been able to have some time on the slopes this year! If you want to see more of my ski pics, including some at St. Moritz this week, connect with me on Instagram. We’re expecting a big dump tomorrow!

Languages are parts of our identities as much as functional methods of communication. While it may be practical to write in a particular language (or have something translated into one), there are cultural, political, and enjoyable reasons to include other languages within the your work. Even tiny inclusions can add levels of authenticity as well as intrigue, so it’s not as difficult as it sounds.

Writing that includes other languages in the body of the text is multilingual, just like a person who speaks many languages. Multilingual is a more generic term than bilingual (two languages), implying there is a wider matrix of languages at work. However, we might see this style with the inclusion of one other language in a bilingual text because of the context of the story or the nature of a translated work.

The inclusion of foreign languages is usually only a few particular key words rather than full dialogue or paragraphs. Practically speaking, the text appeals to speakers of the dominant language and too much interference breaks the flow. Films can push this opportunity further both due to visual cues to help the viewer understand and subtitles that simultaneously keep everyone on the same page. However, an untranslated text with too many footnotes or explanations might throw off your flow and simply sound like showing off.

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Even if an author is fluent in another language, many texts that move between places and cultures remain monolingual, perhaps for simplicity of either the writing or the reading of the text or for the flow of the prose itself. For example, a spy thriller set in Berlin is unlikely to move among German, English, and Chinese or Russian in conversations. Not only would it be hard to follow but it would also disrupt the flow of the fast-paced story.

Still in an example like this, a few key words in foreign languages may add authenticity just as the inclusion of cultural sartorial choices do. And to go a step further, I could imagine plays on language in a text like this holding the key to a mystery or playing a part in a conversation of dramatic irony when a character does not understand what is happening in front of him/her. Let’s take a closer look at how this might work.

How to use multilingualism in your writing

You can use methods of multilingualism effectively even if you don’t spend your days between several languages like many of my Swiss friends (of whom I am very jealous!). Below, I trace several ways to use different languages in your fiction, drawing on literary examples, before discussing the benefits for both you and your readers.

Consider your audience

Firstly, you should have an audience in mind. Your text will likely be written for particular language speakers. If Anglophone, which we will use as the basis here only since this article is in English, then anything not in English needs to somehow be available to the reader.

Some communities of readers may be able to easily switch: a Welsh audience will understand English; a Moroccan text could be written between Arabic and French; a Hong Kong audience would be fine with a Cantonese and English novel; and a South African one might be able to move among its eleven official languages.

However, if authors also want the audience to be global, at least reaching others of the dominant language of the text, then even these examples may need to be careful how the ‘minor’ language is used. There are political reasons to use less spoken languages, but if you want to reach a larger audience, you might use a dominant one. Franz Kafka wrote and lived primarily in German though he lived in Prague his whole life. German was seen as a more intellectual language in the Czech dominant place and was also connected to his identity with the local Jewish population. His writing therefore was also political in the choice he made, which Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari discuss in “Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature: The Components of Expression” (translated by Marie Maclean).

So which language will be dominant in your text and which other(s) might you include for various reasons? Once you’ve made your decision, you need to think of the alphabet or characters used. If the language uses a different way of writing, do you want to phoneticize the words you use? Alternatively, some languages already have a way of writing them with the Roman alphabet, such as Chinese pinyin, and other methods have been researched, such as these many variations for Arabic. If you are using quotes from original sources, you may want to understand the particular sourcing style; for example, MLA calls for original script.

Include translations

For the vast majority of these multilingual writing projects, you will assume a common language of your readers and therefore need to somehow translate the words you include for them. This can be done explicitly or implicitly.

If you translate explicitly, you may use footnotes or endnotes, a translation following in brackets, or a direct translation from another character or the narrator. War and Peace includes full dialogues in French with footnotes. Even in the translations I have seen from Russian to English, the French remains to show Tolstoy’s original intention. French was the language of the aristocracy and also may show when the characters have “lost touch with authentic Russian values.”

In Our Country Friends, Gary Shteyngart weaves Russian and Korean words into his English novel to show the cultural identity of several characters, although all Americans. Typically, the translations follow in narration:

• Ny vsyo, he thought in Russian. Well, I’m done for.

• “Dorogoi,” Masha said (“My dear”)…

However, Shteyngart also manages to use words with implicit translations by weaving them into the fabric of his narration, perhaps to show just how normal a part of their lives these words are:

• “Come on, Ed,” Karen said, “make naengmyeon for Nat. She’s dying to try it. Take a break from the Mediterranean shit. All that chee-juh is giving me gas…”

• …he had already seemed like a fifty-year-old ajeoshi as far back as college, exhaling smoke of of the corner of his mouth…

Implicit translation in the text is easier with common words. In English, we also have loanwords that we borrow regularly from foreign languages ant that may even appear in an English dictionary. Many French words related to cuisine are in this category (bon appétit, hors d’oeuvre). Other examples include: kamikazi (Japanese), kitsch (Yiddish), and doppelgänger (German). Some of your characters may lace these borrowed words in their dialogue either because they share part of the culture or are trying to demonstrate something beyond themselves (perhaps they are annoyingly playing a role!).

But you might also be able to move beyond loanwords with implicit translation if the reader can determine the flow of thought without direct translation. Alternatively, many other languages now use English words as their own loanwords. You could include a short dialogue with embedded English loanword that would allow the reader enough information.

Make the reader work for it

Generally, this method is unadvisable. Readers should have the tools they need right in front of them to figure out what they are trying to say. Hoping your reader will just translate other languages you include on their own may be seen as snobby. However, depending on the type of text you are writing and the audience, asking your reader to do this could be a joy for them as well.

Practically speaking, if you are writing something to be produced solely online or as an e-text, readers could easily activate TransOver or similar apps to translate easily as they go. More experimental works might make use of this possibility or have creative ways to cue readers, such as integrated turn on / turn off translations.

Another reason you might leave the translation a mystery is that your narrator or protagonist doesn’t understand something themselves. By leaving the interpretation open, we are unsure what the protagonist takes from the scene as well. Perhaps you come back to the language later on. James Joyce did this in one of his Dubliners short stories called “Eveline.” Here, the inclusion of “Deravaun Seraun!” in Gaelic at the protagonist’s mother’s deathbed is unexplained and confusing even after attempting to translate the text. We generally come up with “the end of pleasure is pain,” but it can be interpreted several ways and has been the subject of several academic papers. Perhaps the mystery allows us to consider our own ideas about Eveline and her mother.

Check your understanding

Make sure you actually know the other language(s) you use enough to write with them or check carefully with somebody who does. Even some who are completely fluent in a foreign language (or three) might not know the details of grammar or usage in a different cultural context.

People will notice! Even a word to word translation can be wonky. Sometimes different cultures use different words for something even when they speak the same language. Of course, this is true in dialects but also in unofficial localized language. In England, when an American talks about dirty pants, the British get tight lipped and red faced. In a German grocery store, you ask for a Tüte to bring your food home while Austrians ask for a Sackerl. We know there are many examples of these, even between regions of the US (pop, coke, or soda?); it makes it more important to get your cultural context right and shows even more how the language choices can add to cultural identity within the text.

So if it’s not your native/fluent language, make sure you either read full articles on the foreign word you choose or check it with native speakers.

What’s the point?

The main reasons to use other languages in your writing are that it can be fun for both you and the reader and that it adds to the cultural layers of your text. Cultural identity can be explored more thoroughly through the use of other languages, whether the language is a mother tongue of the character or something they are interested in. We also place more value on other cultures in this way, rather than simply using them as plot device or setting. With greater authenticity (such as the inclusion of original characters and alphabets) we can place even more value on the language, especially if it may be considered ‘minor’ in some way.

Here are a few other reasons to consider this method:

• Humor — mistranslations and the unsaid as well as dramatic irony can be lifted through multilingualism. In this clip from Life is Beautiful, the protagonist makes his audience laugh by pretending to translate German into Italian. Although the scene is also quite poignant and filled with characterization of our lovable protagonist, he uses false translation to help his community and make us laugh. As viewers with subtitles, we are privy to more information than any of the characters within the film.

• Less limiting — sometimes we struggle to express an idea in another language. Perhaps you are writing in a foreign language to you. Using your mother tongue at times can help you to express yourself. There may be reasons to borrow other words to add to the nearly 200,000 English words we already have…where just the right one might not exist.

• Polyphonic — the sounds of the words on your page are also a part of your story. This is especially true in poetry, but any kind of writing can consider the sound words create when read aloud or in one’s mind. By including foreign sounds, we again find authenticity as well as perhaps added layers of beauty. We have another harmony or chord to the melody of the dominant language.

• Help readers learn something new — we can teach readers (and sometimes ourselves) new words in foreign languages. We can encourage readers to learn a foreign language. We can learn more about a culture through particular foreign words.

Consider why you even write in the language you do? Is it your first language, or one of them? Who else occupies your text? Could other languages help their impact on the reader or create a subtext of cultural or political ideas? Could it just be a bit of fun?

Try experimenting with this technique just to see how far you can go. Even using just one foreign word can pop from the text and make us move beyond the page, like allusion does. Gifting your reader with more language helps them to grow.

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Originally published on May 12, 2022 in The Writing Cooperative. Thanks to Justin Cox.

Originally drafted a year ago and then published April 5, 2022. One year on from the start of the war in Ukraine, I go back to this moment of reflection that was also the seed for this publication.

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I am writing to you from a mountaintop restaurant with Italian and Swiss flags flying under the iconic sun-glistened outline of the Matterhorn, or as the Italians call it: Monte Cervino. Just moments ago, I followed signs with the Italian flag to ski from Zermatt at the highest station in Europe down a fast and sharp ride over an arbitrary peak — one of many — that dropped me into a different country. I continued on; there was no reason to stop. The undulations were new for my legs. Unexpected drops and twists and ice patches greeted me like plates of a chef’s tasting menu or fresh pages of a novel.

Wanting to understand them a little better, I took the chairlift over the relatively short piste. On my lonely little chair, I tootled along, investigating what was below my dangling feet and thinking about what it meant to be on the other side. As soon as ideas of nationhood entered my brain, all the horrific news from breakfast flashed off the glittering ice crystals.

Is this the way a conscripted Russian soldier feels in the forests of Ukraine? What does a Ukrainian refugee think of the snow beneath their feet in Poland?

I had every intention of flying down the same trail again, taking the chair back, and continuing on my way. But something drew me to the little lodge with the flags I had passed. It was within reach; only a few pole pushes were necessary for me to arrive.

Maybe I needed more of a rest because of the horrific images of children dying that swirled in my head. Not to escape, but to be with these thoughts, to grieve even, and try to unload some of their burden, as irrational as it sounds. Money and time and political acts (including art and writing the truth) are what will help, but we also need to reflect on what we see. Reflection helps us grow, and a world of growing individuals will make a better future.

As I went into the little lodge, people greeted me: buon giornio! The Italian spoken amongst the waiters mimics the movement of the mountain tops. My latent Italian came back to me; well, enough to order an espresso. Un caffé per favore? Grazie mille! The coffee is excellent. Much better than the other side. And, it’s a third of the price. I paid in Euros that I keep in a separate compartment from the Francs in my wallet. Because it was 1.50, I gave the waiter 2 and he rang a massive cow bell to thank me for the tip.

Now I sit at the window, drinking a coffee and thinking about the world. Here, I am considering this threshold. The arbitrary spot of border, invented by humans. Too often places of sadness and exclusion. Should we obliterate them? The cosmopolitan open-bordered world seems vacuous, globalised and robotic. Instead, I am thinking about how we can re-signify our borders as spaces of transition and play. How we can use these lines to empower our humanity rather than divide it.

The Border Ellipsis

In Europe, many of us take open borders for granted, or we did before the pandemic. The Schengen Agreement allows us to easily live between spaces or travel without any more than an ID card. It’s not so different from the US where state borders are usually no more tangible than a sign (and a toll to pay on the highway). Any American can tell you there’s a big difference between New Hampshire and Massachusetts or California and Nevada despite their shared permeable borders.

But culture and dialects blur more in the US. In Europe, we may cross an open border and change language and currency immediately. I live on the edge of three nations, in a city that is completely Swiss but also plays with the culture of its neighbours. It has made me acutely aware of the cultural exchanges that go on here, and the culture that is kept intact by the maintenance of a permeable border. In Basel, we are only ever a few kilometres from France or Germany. I have been awed by riding a tram to get cheaper groceries (as well as better bakery products) in France. One stop, people get on speaking mainly Swiss German. The next, a few hundred meters away, the doors open to the completely different tone and cadence of French.

We play in the ellipsis of the border to live freely, the way we want. Jacques Derrida most poignantly analyses this space of play in “Before the Law,” a reading of Franz Kafka’s parable. Physical thresholds and titles to written texts, just like national lines, give us a form of entry into a space where we can bring ideas together in meaningful ways. The sign — Benvenuto in Italia or simply green, white, and red stripes — allows us to take on a different persona as we enter. It tells us we can try out this way of living. This way of seeing the world.

All borders should be this way. We are lucky in the Schengen Area. Other borders are menacing and keep families apart. We have seen it in Mexico/USA and China/Hong Kong, in East/West Germany, in Israel/Palestine…. How many people will die trying to get to another land? How many world leaders will continue to either fortify or, worse, push the extension of the border against the will of people who inhabit those spaces? It’s not only Putin. It’s not only the ‘non-West.’ In America, Trump was spending billions on a wall. Brexit’s insistence on separatism not only keeps many people out but also stagnates the British who are trapped in. How strange for a country that has colonised the most places in the world. Have they not experienced the beauty of other cultures?

But we know it’s not the people, the masses, who want this. Even those who voted for Brexit were often uninformed. In America, most people who want to build an expensive wall wrongly think that Mexicans are taking their jobs. And many Russians who support the current invasion are only seeing fake news. Even with the extreme suppression of free speech and press currently shaping the Russian narrative, only an estimated 58% support the war and more than 13,000 to date have been arrested for protesting.

Straddling the Alps

Back on my little perch on the mountaintop, I look out at the skiers before me. They come from all over, speak many languages, and often wear a piece of their nationhood on their jackets or hats. Often when I ski, I feel gratitude for being one with nature. But unless you are heli-skiing from an unoccupied mountain, you will also see humanity’s marks. You will also experience culture.

Skiing between Zermatt in Switzerland and Cervinia in Italy, sometimes back and forth within minutes, I can see and hear the differences clearly. I’ve lived in both countries, so maybe it makes me more aware of these changes. They are visceral and immediate.

Italy at first appears as a disappointment. In Zermatt, all the lifts are new and high-functioning, usually with leather seats and often a closed gondola to fight the cold temperatures at altitude. A mountain train and flashy cable car (the highest in Europe) round out the speedy system. In Italy, the first lift I take is slow. It’s on orange plastic with no padding. As I look down, the seat next to me has been repaired with a makeshift screw. It stops several times on the way up. Nearby are relatively cheap J-bars and tow-ropes. Eventually I find a gondola with plastic windows so worn that photos are impossible.

And then, I arrive suddenly at a newish fancy cable car to the top. The operator cranks up some club music: ‘Here we f*cking go!’. Helmets and hips are moving all over; nobody seems worried about that swaying they always warn you about. I recall one ride with music on the Swiss side. It was a similar looking large cable car, but with elevator-volume croons from the 1960s.

The trail signs are also different. The Italian ones are tiny and yellow with little information. The Swiss signs are filled with symbols of clarity: numbers and titles, lift designations and directions home.

There’s also less snow on this side. It’s been a warm February. Is it just unlucky? The way the sun hits? Or is it snowmaking capabilities? Or the way the trails were designed? A quick Google tells me yes, Italy is on the sunny side. This has perks, of course, too. And how much of culture is linked with luck of the place a people inhabit? Is it the weather that makes San Diego so relaxed and Boston so grumpy, so resilient?

But you can’t tell too much from the open trails. I liked the feel of lodge, so I come back for lunch, my little Italy. I imagine myself living again in Milano as I did 15 years ago. The polenta and pitcher of wine remind me of trips to Bergamo (now infamous for hideous scenes during the pandemic). I pack my own snacks on the Swiss side. Lunch costs as much as a lift ticket and reservations are a must, at noon or two o’clock. How do I know when I will stop to eat, where I will be? Do I have to stay for two hours to make it worth it rather than hit the slopes when I’m done?

I go to the toilet after I eat and open the door to a squatter. Memories of these toilets in nice restaurants and at monuments flood back to me. Mindfully, I step onto the metal footprints with my ski boots and pray that my stream will miss my pants. The ubiquitous toilets in Switzerland are always clean and white, well stocked with paper. Oh, looks like I’m shaking dry as well, but at least I got to work out my quads a little more.

Do you get what you pay for? Is it all just economics?

The Pandemic and collective trauma

Something else that’s different at this border is the visibility of masks. While Switzerland has declared the end of the(ir) pandemic, Italy is acting more cautiously and still requires FFP2 masks indoors. Just prior to the altitude party in the Italian cable car, uniformed police were checking skiers for vaccine passports and correct face coverings. But it wasn’t only a legal thing; the same party-going operator said permesso to move past me and berate a man hiding in the corner for not wearing his mask.

It’s likely that there is a collective trauma from the pandemic in Northern Italy, where it was the epicentre of the virus in February 2020. These types of communal memories also create culture. Groups of people experience moments together and then respond, hopefully, through art as well as through science and technology. Although the whole world is experiencing the pandemic in some way, our individual and grouped experiences shape who we are.

The Swiss have been luckier. Here, in Zermatt, they show empathy and understanding of their neighbours. The ski area asks you to wear masks on lifts, although not necessarily FFP2. I guess they are trying to make the Italians feel more comfortable. Or maybe living near the Italians has given them some of their trauma or some of their perspective of the world.

The price of a meal or style of toilets are not really a big deal. But what I love about this space some nearly 4000 meters up in the sky, is that the laid back Italians and the punctual Swiss can coexist. That two languages can articulate the beauty of the snow. That we can all enjoy the coffee.

I’m back outside, looking around. People are eating, smoking, skiing. I don’t see helicopters bringing couples to mountain peaks with fondue and roses. I don’t hear large groups of British bankers. Who inhabits this space?

Maybe I need to keep looking.

A mountain by any other name would look as beautiful

I stop looking at people and signs, instead returning to majestic natural beauty. I’ve had a love affair with the Matterhorn this week. I took too many photos, finding different angles of light and positions from which to view it.

The Italians and Swiss have different names for this mountain; they see it from different angles. We’re all sort of the same, but with cultural identity we can be human. We can find joy and meaning in different perspectives and artistic responses to places and experiences.

Culture and turf war is as irrational as the gang fighting of the Montagues and Capulets. This invasion is not really about culture or land; it is about power. Foucault tells us power is everywhere. Its ubiquitous nature also means it is an illusion — to some extent. It is something that can be mined and used by those who persuade others of their power. Who is going to call Putin’s bluff? Who is going to crush this fake power from fake narrative he has created?

If the mountain had no name, it would still exist, but humanity would not. Can’t we all live in this beautiful world and create identities that we can share at their meeting points? Not only at national borders but also at the threshold of one’s apartment or the entry to a classroom?

Be Italian. Be Swiss. Be European. Be Ukrainian. Be Russian. Be a little of each. Go on holiday in Crimea. Visit your relatives in Moscow. Eat each other’s food. Learn each other’s languages. This is what most people want.

The invasion is not about reclaiming a culture as Putin claims; it is about erasing culture. Ukraine, he says, should be ‘freed from the Nazis’, whose fascist head is supposedly President Zelenski, Jewish descendent of Holocaust survivors.

What does it all mean? I am no expert in warfare or economics or politics or Ukraine. But I can tell you that the idea of wiping away a culture is as good as death (and is usually accompanied by death, even genocide). If the idea is to destroy people’s identities, then Putin has failed. Because the idea of being a Ukrainian is now boldly visible. And the idea of being an informed 21st Century Russian (protesters and outspoken expatriates as well as those protesting in the space of their minds only with fear for their children) is just as visible.

Somebody wrote ‘FK PUTIN’ in the snow near the border, big enough for a plane to see. No groomer has erased it for a week despite the supposedly reserved nature of the Swiss.

Switzerland is suddenly no longer neutral, nor is it in NATO. What will Italy do for us if Putin (not Russia) invades? Will they replace their masks with weapons? Or make huge bowls of polenta al gorgonzola and share all their wine? Will they let us ski over this same border to safety?

During the pandemic, we re-closed borders that had been made permeable. We restricted cultural exchange. And we did it all for good reason. But if we have learned anything, it should be that cultural identity is something to celebrate. Borders are places of meaning. And death is something that can hit us all, at any time, with just as much sadness whether we are a poor soldier or a world leader (as opined by Brandy L Schillace).

While we are the ones alive, let us keep looking, both at the many types of people around us and at the natural world in which we are so lucky to inhabit.

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Kathleen Waller is a novelist with a PhD in Comparative Literature. Her doctoral dissertation on the Apartment Ellipsis investigates the way immigrants’ domestic borders assert or deny identity based on the host culture and law. For more information: kathleenwaller.com

The Matterhorn: intersections of literature & art

14. Borders

Part of the ongoing series on Place and Ethics. “Build the wall! Build the wall! Build the wall!” So goes the chant of the fear-mongering politicians keen to use billions of dollars for a dangerous wall instead for, say, healthcare or schools. For a bit of (terrifying) fun, you can read …

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3 years ago · Dr. Kathleen Waller

I had a great time sharing ideas about writing, the creative process, and critical theory with students at Pratt Institute a couple weeks ago. I am sharing the talk here with you so that you can also add to our discussion in the comments.

Why do we study critical theory? Why do we research culture through the arts?

We seek to find ideas about the world, humanity, or individuals through this type of study. The end result may be personal knowledge, sharing through academic papers and conferences, or working with organizations toward deeper understanding or toward, for example, policy change and art exhibitions.

The way I make sense of these ideas is through fiction. Writing novels allows me a space to play with theory and implicitly or explicitly create intertextual discoveries. It further helps me to continue my learning journey without limit.

In this talk and discussion, we will consider the purpose of learning critical theory and historical understandings of the arts as creators. We shall also consider the way knowledge can lead to various forms of creativity.

And, here’s a link to the slides I used with references and extras in the notes on each slide. (The format’s a little funky in the conversion from .ppt to Google Slides, but it’s all there.)

I’d love to hear your thoughts about critical theory, the creative process, and the importance of writing in your life. There are also some discussion question prompts in the lecture / slides. Thanks so much for checking this out!

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