Today’s podcast is part of a series to accompany my current serialized novel, An Interpreter in Vienna, as we investigate the truth in fiction. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. As always, feel free to share any of your work related to the conversation. Thank you!
A full AI-created transcript can be ased on the desktop version.
Keywords:
Doppelgängers / Doubles
psychoanalysis —> literature (& psychoanalytical critical theory)
The Uncanny / Unheimlich
literary examples
film adaptation / “a copy of a copy of a copy…”
twins
(architectural uncanny)
your fiction
Considerations for your work:
How might the concept of a double or doppelganger enhance your message? Even if you don’t include a character or ghostly double, could elements of reflection and shadows, for example, push questions about one’s mind or society’s perspective further?
Is there a duality to any of your characters? Do they grapple with different parts of themselves and perhaps try to suppress one or the other?
How might allusions or intertextual connections to some of the famous double characters enhance a message in your fiction? (Below, Blunt uses Dorian Gray to such implicit effect.)
**We’ll look at the space and setting of the uncanny in a few weeks when we come back to The Architectural Uncanny (Anthony Vidler) in relation to our discussion of Vienna.
Feel free to share your related work or recommendations in the comments.
Texts:
Otto Rank: Der Doppelgänger / The Double, 1914 (translation 1979)
Sigmund Freud: The Uncanny (Unheimlich), 1919
Doppelganger: A trip into the mirror world, Naomi Klein
Language A: Concept-Based Learning (my book, pp. 124-131)
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Fight Club — book, Chuck Palahniuk ⬩film, David Fincher
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson (full text)
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
Passing, Nell Larson
“Brit Bennett Reimagines the Literature of Passing” (The New Yorker")
Twelfth Night, Shakespeare
Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell
Singh SM, Chakrabarti S. A study in dualism: The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Indian J Psychiatry. 2008 Jul;50(3):221-3. doi: 10.4103/0019-5545.43624. PMID: 19742237; PMCID: PMC2738358.
Kinder, Elizabeth, and Patricia Pender. “‘A Copy of a Copy of a Copy’: Framing the Double in ‘Fight Club.’” Literature/Film Quarterly 42, no. 3 (2014): 541–56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43798990.
Doppelgängers in Fiction | Episode 50