Atmospheres are both insubstantial and yet very palpable – for example, think about tension that feels so thick you could cut it with a knife. Whether you’re decorating a room or throwing a party, creating the right atmosphere can mean the difference between success and failure. But Dora Zhang argues that no one person is ever in full control of an atmosphere, it’s always something collective, not just a projection of one person’s mood. When it comes to literature, too, atmospheres emerge collectively from the readers, the characters, and the language of the text.
Bonus clip
Dora discusses the movie Gaslight, and how marginalized groups get unfairly dismissed as hyper-sensitive.
Works mentioned
– Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
– Emile Zola, The Belly of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris)
– George Cukor, Gaslight
Further reading
Dora Zhang at The Point – Small Talk
Anka Muhlstein at Literary Hub – How Paul Cézanne Taught Émile Zola to Look with a Painter’s Eye
The Stanford Literary Lab at n+1 – Style at the Scale of the Sentence
Sarah Anjum Bari at Electric Literature – Visiting Sephora with Walter Benjamin
David Korins at TED – 3 ways to create a space that moves you, from a Broadway set designer
Michelle Higgins at New York Times – Interior Design Risks Worth Taking