One of my favorite Substack writers is Kate Waller. I’m delighted she agreed to be interviewed.
MGW: Kate, you’ve been writing on Substack since August 2022. What’s your view of the benefits of Substack for readers and writers?
KW: Thanks for having me on your newsletter, Mike! Well, one thing I love about Substack is the community feel. You and I have been able to interact in multiple spaces, for example. The writing feels more alive to me in this way. It’s a place where even if you don’t write, you might be interested in engaging as a reader more deeply.
I first went to Substack because I was looking for more of a platform as an author, in other words, a place to find an audience for my books. What I discovered instead was a place to really explore a lot of ideas without inhibition and a place where occasionally the publishing here replaces the desire for book form.
MGW: I agree, Kate. So your Matterhorn community loves multiple genres of art. Of all the areas you’ve explored so far, what’s gotten the biggest response in views, likes, and community comments?
KW: Interestingly, my Summer Travel series has had the best response, specifically my article about Maine. In this series, I was still investigating the arts at times as well as the experience of my world as a writer. A few discussions notably had some wonderful comment dialogues about cancel culture, third culture, and culture around parenting and childlessness. It feels good to create a space where people can talk about these areas in more depth.
Lately with my new season, I’ve found a lot of community engagement with readers’ own creations of fictions. It’s really amplified the ideas!
MGW: For sure. One of your more interesting posts was We Need Art Now! The arts and humanities are a very broad subject matter, but could you sum up your view of their value in a nutshell?
KW: Sure, I think that basically a liberal arts education at some level is really essential to helping everyone have a certain interdisciplinary baseline of understanding the world. So if you’re a scientist, mathematician, engineer, shopkeeper, or anything else, you can still benefit from the arts. Likewise, artists and writers of all kinds benefit from learning about other subject areas.
I think that the arts are too often sidelined when we think about decisions on AI, climate change, pandemic responses, etc. and that actually looking at fiction, painting, film, and the ethical or philosophical considerations that are more generally considered as part of the arts can help to solve these problems. They should be at the decision tables.
MGW: A good way to look at things. Culture is another huge subject. How do you define culture?
KW: It’s not easy to define, is it? I see it as the customs, traditions, and daily practices (including language, clothing, etc.) of a group of people and the ways these are represented artistically. I think most people are a part of at least two if not many multiple cultures at once, and that’s something I celebrate. It doesn’t mean I think concepts of culture should be mushed together, instead each articulation can tell us more about both on individual and groups of people or society as a whole.
MGW: Yes, all the ways we convey meaning to each other is very interwoven. And how do you get to the essence of the value of studying culture?
KW: I think studying culture is empowering to groups that might feel invisible or invalidated as well as useful in understanding both why things are the way they are and how they might change. It is also a way of discovering ourselves and ways to enjoy the world around us or to learn more about our position in it and how that might change.
MGW: Well said, Kate. My admiration for Louis Armstrong is evident, and you’ve written a great deal about contemporary jazz music. How do you get to the heart of jazz’s meaning and value?
KW: It was really fun exploring jazz through the arts for a few weeks and talking with my high school band conductor (who was later a colleague). I think the concept of jazz applied to literature can best be understood through Ralph Ellison. A lot of life can be understood through Ellison! So maybe, jazz is at the heart of life?
To me, it’s a celebration of identity, culture, and the creative drive of humans in spite of constrictions or pain. Jazz’s roots from Black Americans in New Orleans and New York make it at once a part of this culture as well as that of all humanity, as some jazz artists I investigated concluded. It’s also just fun. I like to play with language the way jazz musicians play with the language of music.
MGW: Definitely. You wrote three fine pieces in May and June about parenting. How would you get to the heart of your view of parenting?
KW: Thank you. Perhaps my answer is that I don’t have a view. I try to stay away from parenting blogs! I mean, the less prescriptive the better, as long as parenting (or not) comes from a place of love. I think the impulse to define and quantify parenting and types of parenting can really restrict us from living in meaningful ways as families. I’ve been guilty of it for myself as well. There are so many kinds of families (sometimes I say, “alternative families”) and I think it’s important that this is valued.
At the same time, understanding parenting within different cultures and as a narrative of ways of passing down knowledge of all kinds through generations is worthy of study and reflection. One way we can do this is by exploring the idea of parenting through the arts.
MGW: I agree with you. I’m very interested in consciousness and transformation. What do you consider the most essential benefits of yoga?
KW: This is another big question but a good one. I think that understanding the interconnected nature of mind, body, nature, and universe is at the heart of this. Physical asana practice (as well as pranayama and meditation) can keep us strong mentally and physically. Yoga is for everyone, and I think most things should be accessible for everyone. Yoga is a metaphor in this way. We can adapt to allow all bodies to practice yoga. We can include scaffolding to help others learn to write.
Yoga has helped me to find peace, balance, and strength in my life. However, that doesn’t mean it’s always there. When I feel off-kilter as we all do sometimes, I go back to it. I also look at yoga as a way of approaching writing, running, relationships . . . I could go on. I’m still exploring more about it all the time and am doing an online extension of my teacher training course.
MGW: Fascinating. You also have a keen understanding of creativity and the creative process. What do you think is most important in your view of creativity?
KW: I think everyone is creative and as we learn more, we become more creative. I think sometimes there’s the misconception that knowledge gets in the way of creativity. Learning new things allows us to play with ideas in new ways and form new ways of viewing the world or interpreting it (through art, for example).
MGW: That’s right. I think that any time any of us is thinking in an open, fluid, flexible way, we are being creative. The rest of my questions are about literature. Would you say you favor novels, plays, poetry, or short stories – or do you appreciate all four about equally? And which do you spend the most time reading?
KW: Very interesting! Well, I spend most free reading time with novels. I love getting into a novel and really diving into the perspective and ideas. However, if I’m going to take more time – for example, with students – to unpack literature, poetry is fantastic. One’s mind can dance with the words.
MGW: True! Who are your two favorite playwrights, and why?
KW: Plays allow us to think about interpretation and adaptation, even without viewing them in person or on screen. I really love this additional imaginative layer. I really do adore Shakespeare and I want to soon return to some of his less-read/performed works I studied in grad school. I have the huge Norton book of Shakespeare from this course I took at the time and love sitting with the tome on a table and a pencil, imagining the scenes.
I’m going to say two in addition to Shakespeare. Hope you don’t mind!
MGW: Let’s hear them!
I discovered Tom Stoppard through Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, which I occasionally teach as a paired text with Hamlet. I was lucky to see it on stage with Danielle Radcliffe! It just makes you think so much. I read his biography by Hermione Lee recently and then was inspired to read several more plays after.
I also love Arthur Miller. He’s got some fantastic stage directions that change the whole scene. His ideas are simple and huge at the same time.
MGW: Excellent. So who are your two favorite poets, and why?
KW: It’s so hard to choose just two, Mike! But that’s ok, I’ll try.
Gwendolyn Brooks paints such beautiful pictures with her words. She creates stories and makes human discoveries.
Robert Frost is from New England like me, and his poetry has always spoken to me. I love the intertextual connections he creates as well as the vivid natural descriptions and clever ambiguous conclusions. I could sit with him on a couch all day long, any day, and play mental gymnastics.
MGW: I’ve read Frost over the years. So who are your two favorite short story writers, and why?
KW: Jorge Luis Borges – just phenomenal! The labyrinths of the mind . . . I find a lot of incredible South American short story writers. There is an interesting mix of culture as well as changes of regimes in these countries, which might have something to do with it.
James Joyce is the other. Dubliners is one of my favorite books. I read it almost every year, since I often teach it, and find something new all the time. It’s so rich, so beautiful.
MGW: Borges is intriguing! Paul Auster is one of your favorite novelists. Is he your favorite novelist? How would you briefly introduce Auster to potential readers of his novels?
KW: I certainly can’t pick just one! But Auster is up there. I love the way he weaves fascinating philosophical ideas subtly into compelling narratives that are often humorous and always poignant.
MGW: I recently read five Auster novels because you recommended him so highly. You’ve seen my list of my 11 favorite novelists. Do we have any in common?
KW: Austen, Eliot, Balzac, and Dickens also hold special places in my heart and on my shelves.
There are these magical passages in Dickens that emerge – these hidden gems, such as the way the steam from the horses in Dover blend with the fog on a secret, layered crossing to Paris in A Tale of Two Cities.
Austen might have the best wit – her work still feels so relevant today (as The Austen Connection on Substack frequently explores).
MGW: All very true! Besides Paul Auster, who are your six or seven favorite novelists?
KW: Herman Melville (whom I also could have said for short stories). Moby Dick especially – although I’m not sure I would call it a novel; it’s more of a book in a very abstract, exploratory sense. I read all of his published novels as part of a course, and it helped me understand MD better.
Haruki Murakami – he’ll make your mind bend.
Edith Wharton – interesting to read of the period in American history as well as the relationships between people that she gets so spot-on.
Henry James for the same reason. Ralph Ellison. Milan Kundera. Arundhati Roy. Orhan Pamuk. I’ll stop there, but it might be a different list on a different day!
MGW: I’ve read a lot of Murakami. One of the great writers of “the global novel”. Which of these is your favorite and why?
KW: Melville. I like to explore the world in unusual ways. His work never fits a mold. Instead, he propels us into the unknown.
MGW: Which novelist do you think has the most psychological acuity – the most insight into human nature?
KW: Wharton and James, perhaps considered together, intertextually. Or Auster as the contemporary equivalent. I realize the three of these are American, and I’m interested in what it means to be American and the questions it raises. I’ve become more interested in that since moving abroad in 2007. I guess it is an exploration of the self in some ways.
MGW: Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street is one of my favorites, for the same reason – insight into being an American. I wrote about Wharton, James, and Lewis in the Spring. Which novelist do you think has contributed the most to social progress – or had the most insight into society?
KW: Ralph Ellison. I could also name several other Black American writers – Baldwin, Hurston, and the contemporary Ta Nehisi Coates. They contribute to progress not only for Black Americans which was and is greatly needed, but at once also on a much wider, deeper level for all humanity. I was lucky to have a wonderful visiting professor for a seminar with just six students at university who helped me see this on a new level. His name was Michael Harper – a well established poet. I had both read and studied several of these authors before, but he made the work and ideas dance among one another. And his writing was a part of the discourse as well. It was incredible.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-s-harper
MGW: James Baldwin is a special writer to me – very moving. So I’m writing novels of ideas. Any thoughts about novels of ideas?
KW: I think they’re fantastic. You clearly put a lot of thought into the concept of your work. Also: novels should be experimental. I hate that certain types ‘sell’ or don’t. It’s great to have conventions and structures that help both writer and reader; sometimes they are useful to stay within, other times to subvert. Good luck! And thanks again for having me here.
Thanks so much for inviting me on your newsletter! I love the way you explore so many details of the literary world. A pleasure to be here.
Great interview, so many literary tips. I never read Moby Dick and I wonder why it wasn’t part of the curriculum at school. I had a comparative world literature class in high school. In fact, I don’t remember any American writer on that list…