How can letters misrepresent the sender or receiver?

To what extent should letters remain private?

Why are letters often at the middle of mysteries and detective stories?

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

Over these eight weeks, I’ve brought you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays coming very soon.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

Excerpt from Atonement, by Ian McEwan (2001, UK, pp. 78-9):

‘How dare you! How dare you all!’

Leon stood too and made a calming gesture with his palms. ‘Cee…’

When she made a lunge to snatch the letter from her mother, she found not only her brother but the two policemen in her way. Marshall was standing too, but not interfering.

‘It belongs to me,’ she shouted. ‘You have absolutely no right!’

Emily did not even look up from her reading, and she gave herself time to read the letter several times over. when she was done she met her daughter’s fury with her own colder version.

‘If you had done the right thing, young lady, with all your education, and come to me with this, then something could have been done in time and your cousin would have been spared her nightmare.’

For a moment Cecilia stood alone in the centre of the room, fluttering the fingers of her right hand, staring at them each in turn, unable to believe her association with such people, unable to begin to tell them what she knew.

Intertextual reading with “The Purloined Letter” (Edgar Allan Poe) — “Purloined Letters in Ian McEwan’s Atonement”:

Critics have noticed that Atonement refers to a specific intertext, namely, E.A. Poe's "The Purloined Letter."1 They also perceive its use of motifs familiar from classical detective stories. The Tallis estate is the scene of a crime in which the detective looks for the criminal among a closed circle of suspects. In the first part of the novel there are suggestions that a crime will be committed, placing readers in the position of armchair detectives by inviting them to wonder what crime will be committed and by whom. Briony assumes the role of detective, although she concedes that she is among the transgressors (156). Readers learn early on of Briony's wrongdoing but the epilogue has a surprise in store, just as does the ending of a detective story. The thirteen-year-old Briony, who is an aspiring writer, understands the detective's role as dealing with the secrets of the human heart (40). She pictures herself as a detective of humanity. She is piqued about the problem of other minds: what can one know about another person's consciousness? How can one imagine someone else's mind given the limitations of one's own mind (36-37)? Briony's understanding of the detective's method reinforces the links Atonement shares with "The Purloined Letter," for the ability to imagine the workings of another mind is essential for Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, and this theme forms a focal point of his story.

Keywords:

* Letters and intended audience

* Typing letters

* Letters as evidence (of character)

* Mystery & deception / detective stories & letters

* Oscar Wilde - Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess

* “Purloined Letter,” Poe

* The many letters of Atonement

* Metafiction

Texts:

* Atonement

* Purloined Letter

* Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess

* The Go-Between

* “Purloined Letters in Ian McEwan’s Atonement”

What is the purpose of love letters? What is the language of love?

What does being political have to do with emotions?

What is the power of metaphor? The danger?

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

For these eight weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays in 2025.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

The imperative of reading is metaphorically embodied and promoted by the postman himself. Mario, who, upon Neruda’s request, reads one of the letters addressed to the poet that he delivers, secured his proximity to Neruda and his mail by claiming he could read, that he was literate. However, as the narrative progresses, the postman reveals his illiteracy and the misreading of his world which leads to his untimely death. Mario’s metaphoric illiteracy is illuminated by his cinematically textualized consciousness which compels him to plagiarize Neruda’s poetry in order to seduce and procreate with Beatriz. Neruda’s advice correlates with his poem “Ode to the Sea.” Becoming a poet requires one not simply to see, but to read or interpret the “movement of the sea,” or of the seen/scene, and to read it as insisting that metaphor is all pervasive in everyday life, that it is not simply a matter of words or language, but of conceptual thinking and human action as well. In order to become a poet, a writer, one must first become a reader of the world and looking at language one must perceive, as Darwin, Neruda, Shelley, Nietzsche, and Heidegger did, that our conceptual system is full of inescapable figurality, that the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is, ineluctably, to a considerably ambiguous degree, a matter of figurality.

Biopoetics and Hermeneutics: The Postal Metaphor in Il Postino (David S. Randall)

Keywords:

* Neruda

* blending fact and fiction

* metaphor

* politics

* love

* art as life’s work

Texts:

* film - 1994

* novel - Ardiente paciencia

* film from 1983

* A Postman, a Poet, an Actor’s Farewell (NYT)

* Massimo Troisi: the postman who always delivered (Guardian)

* Randall, David S. “Biopoetics and Hermeneutics: The Postal Metaphor in Il Postino.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 19, no. 3 (2017): 345–71. https://doi.org/10.5325/intelitestud.19.3.0345.

In what ways do letters help advance a friendship, even when one hasn’t met in person?

How do you know if you can trust the receiver of a letter? Should you worry about it falling into the wrong hands?

In the art of letter writing, how should one structure one’s composition? How should one flow from topic to topic?

Happy New Year! I’ve just arrived back in London after a wonderful trip to see my family in Boston. I wish all of you the best for the new year.

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

For these eight weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays in 2025.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

Keywords:

* friendship

* McCarthyism

* publishing world: editors, collaborators, etc.

* art of cooking / language of cooking

* the form of letters

Texts:

* Mastering the Art of French Cooking

* As Always, Julia: the letters of Julia Child & Avis Devoto

* Julie and Julia

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

For these eight weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays in 2025.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

What can a personal letter reveal about someone’s intentions? How might it deceive us?

Can letter writing be enough human connection for an isolated person?

What are the pros and cons of the wait time in letter sending and receiving, and what might it affect?

Keywords:

* Encountering the text - French crime TV!

* Pronunciation

* Van Gogh, the letter writer

* Human connection

* “Remedy against suicide”

Texts:

* Van Gogh’s letters

* Painting at the Kröller-Müller Museum

* Pronouncing Vincent Van Gogh

* L’art du crime - Le testament de Van Gogh

* Letter to Theo about his neighbor

* Life in the Yellow House

* Dickens’ remedy against suicide

What is the purpose of writing letters to people whom we see all the time, in intimate spaces?

How can a personal letter also be political?

Why might a letter allow us to include more emotional knowledge and personal feelings than an essay or article?

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

For these eight weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays in 2025.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

Excerpt from Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015, USA, pp. 91-2):

One afternoon your mother and I took you to visit a preschool. Our host took us down to a large gym filled with a bubbling ethnic stew of New York children. The children were running, jumping, and tumbling. You took one look at them, tore away from us, and ran right into the scrum. You have never been afraid of people, of rejection, and I have always admired you for this and always been afraid for you because of this. I watched you leap and laugh with these children you barely knew, and the wall rose in me and I felt I should grab you by the arm, pull you back and say, "We don't know these folks! Be cool!" I did not do this. I was growing, and if I could not name my anguish precisely I still knew that there was nothing noble in it, that a four-year-old child be watchful, prudent, and shrewd, that I curtail your happiness, that you submit to a loss of time. And now when I measure this fear against the boldness that the masters of the galaxy imparted to their own children, I am ashamed.

Keywords:

* Black American literary dialogue

* Bodies

* “Race is the child of racism, not the father.” (7)

* Bildungsroman

* Freedom and shame

* Prince Jones

* Dreamers

Texts:

* Prince Jones (1975-2000)

* Book / Coates’ website

* American media and the Dream (Boston University)

To what extent can a letter capture the attention of someone more powerful than ourselves?

How can one use a letter to show one’s mastery of language (and other things)?

When and why do we appeal to people in letters whom we’ve never met? Why might we think some will listen to our stories more than others?

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

For these eight weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays in 2025.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

Excerpt from The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga (2008, India):

For the Desk of:

His Excellency Wen JiabaoThe Premier's OfficeBeijingCapital of the Freedom-loving Nation of China

From the Desk of:

"The White Tiger"A Thinking ManAnd an EntrepreneurLiving in the world's center of Technology and OutsourcingElectronics City Phase 1 (just off Hosur Main Road)Bangalore, India

Mr. Premier,

Sir.

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

My ex-employer the late Mr. Ashok's ex-wife, Pinky Madam, taught me one of these things; and at 11:32 p.m. today, which was about ten minutes ago, when the lady on All India Radio announced, "Premier Jiabao is coming to Bangalore next week," I said that thing at once.

In fact, each time when great men like you visit our country I say it. Not that I have anything against great men. In my way, sir, I consider myself one of your kind. But whenever I see our prime minister and his distinguished sidekicks drive to the airport in black cars and get out and do namastes before you in front of a TV camera and tell you about how moral and saintly India is, I have to say that thing in English.

Now, you are visiting us this week, Your Excellency, aren't you? All India Radio is usually reliable in these matters.

That was a joke, sir.

Ha!

That's why I want to ask you directly if you really are coming to Bangalore. Because if you are, I have something important to tell you. See, the lady on the radio said, "Mr. Jiabao is on a mission: he wants to know the truth about Bangalore."

My blood froze. If anyone knows the truth about Bangalore, it's me.

Next, the lady announcer said, "Mr. Jiabao wants to meet some Indian entrepreneurs and hear the story of their success from their own lips."

She explained a little. Apparently, sir, you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don't have entrepreneurs.

Keywords:

* Allusion / writing to ‘real’ people in fiction

* English(es)

* Class and power; caste system

* BRICS and post-colonialism

* Truth (and politics and media)

Texts:

* The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

* Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

* Redefinitions of Individuality and India in Adiga’s The White Tiger (my article for Purdue)

* Wen Jiabao (Chinese premier 2003-2013)

* What Indians who have known poverty think of the Netflix adaptation (NPR)

How can a frame narration provide both further truths and spark unreliability?

What is the effect of only reading one side to a story?

How do people change stories once they retell the narrative in their own words?

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

During these seven weeks, I bring you texts related to the topic. I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

Why do we write letters? How do they differ from email and other forms of communication across space?

What do we lose if we stop the ability to send letters by post?

How much of the letters you write are fictions, fact? Contain some kind of truth?

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

For the next six weeks, I’ll bring you texts related to this topic. I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

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!

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

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

Keywords:

* The Apartment Ellipsis

* Apartments in Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock

* Apartments in An Interpreter in Vienna

* Chronotope, everyday life, city culture, layers of the city, identity creation…

* Hope

Considerations for your work:

* How do your characters interact with their domestic spaces? Are they spaces of their creation or are they at odds with them? Are they safe or dangerous places?

* To what extent do the interior domestic spaces in your fiction reflect culture? Consider the culture of the setting as well as other cultures the characters may bring into that space.

* How does the apartment living space offer a way to understand at once your character(s) within it and the city in which it resides? How does the rest of the building affect the individual?

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

Texts:

* Graham Greene - Brighton Rock

* The rest of the references are listed in my work which I read from; free download here from HKU Scholars Hub

* Kafka - Before the Law

* My lecture at Pratt: From Theory to Fiction

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!

https://thematterhorn.substack.com/

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.

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)