Vienna in Fiction | Episode 52

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!

P.S. Apologies for a few funky pronunciations or stumbles today as I was getting over strep whilst recording. I can only sit in bed for so long!

Vienna’s Prater fairground and iconic Ferris Wheel, Photo by Marie Rouilly on Unsplash

A full AI-created transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

Keywords:

• City as text

• Layers of the city

• The urban everyday

• Vienna, complicated history

• Vienna, iconic places

• Vienna, utopia and reality

• Architectural Uncanny and the Ghostly City

• Cities as reflections of their literature and culture

Considerations for your work:

• Reflect on choices to include pastoral or urban settings in your fiction. What unique elements does the city environment offer?

• How can you develop and play with the layers of the city in your fiction? Whether a real or imagined urban place, how do the literary, cultural, and historic layers shape the experience of your characters?

• What further understanding of a city does the concept of the Architectural Uncanny and Ghostly City develop in your fiction? How might literary responses that are modern or postmodern emphasize these aspects?

• Feel free to share your related work or recommendations in the comments.

10. The City as Text

The Culture of Everyday Life

Texts:

• The City as Text (on The Matterhorn)

• The Culture of Everyday Life (on The Matterhorn)

• To Walk Alone in the Crowd – Antonio Muñoz Molina

• The Layers of the City – Antoni Jach

• The Arcades Project — Walter Benjamin

• Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

• Vienna’s Haunting Third Man Theme (NYT)

• Vienna History Timeline

• A View on Cities: Vienna’s Ring Road

• Vienna - world’s most livable city (Euronews / Smithsonian)

• Vienna’s ‘gay pedestrian lights’

• Wien.info on the Ferris Wheel

• Vienna and the Viennese

• Vienna: How the city of ideas created the modern world, Richard Cockett

• Danubia: A Personal History of Hapsburg Europe, Simon Winder

• Empress Sisi

• Social Justice and the City - David Harvey

• The Architectural Uncanny - Anthony Vidler

• Vidler, Anthony. “The Architecture of the Uncanny: The Unhomely Houses of the Romantic Sublime.” Assemblage, no. 3 (1987): 7–29. https://doi.org/10.2307/3171062.

• Cheung, Esther M. K., Gina Marchetti, and Tan See-Kam, eds. Hong Kong Screenscapes: From the New Wave to the Digital Frontier. Hong Kong University Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1xwcs9.

• Urban Mediations conference in Hong Kong this December (also interesting overview on the link)