Magic realism is having its cake and eating it too. I've always thought of it as half-assed surrealism. I love it because you know a narrator has you in his clutches when he can make you think that two protagonists DID fall out of the sky and live after an aerial accident.
One example that stuck with me was Thomas Pynchon's 50-foot-tall talking duck in his historical novel Mason & Dixon.
Thanks for this Chen. Magical Realism, as a genre, annoys me to no end, even as I like some of the actual works. Mostly because of my day job in the library catalog. We get lots of books that would have been "this world" fantasy novels in previous decades, but are now marketed as Magical Realism just because that's a fashionable term. Urban fantasy was another name for fantasy books set in this world. And is not Stephen King a master of it? But he is too common and well liked to be considered as "magical realism" even though his stories are otherwise realistic and also feature magic or the so-called supernatural. Tolkien, while a genius, and not his fault at all, did pigeon hole fantasy into this mold featuring quasi medieval tropes and epic lengths. (I'm bored with epics by the way, especially ones by authors like Robert Jordan, George R. R. Martin, and Patrick Rothfuss who don't bother finishing their epics -and I really wanted Rothfuss to finish his books!) Writers who don't care as much about being deemed sufficiently literary also don't care as much if there books are just called fantasy. Anyway, I'll step off the hobby horse now : )
I wish we could think of other ways to market books. Because we do want to read other books like the ones we loved, but does it have to be this pigeon holed as you say? That is why I like the idea of finding other writers you favorite author loved to read.
I love that too… reading up stream. Or listening up stream. Listening to the music your favorite musicians liked. Both have always been a great way to make discoveries.
Great article, and a very interesting take indeed. I’d have to disagree – I’ve read both Márquez (in Spanish) and Tolkien (English), and there are HUGE differences. I’d probably consider Murakami much closer to Márquez in this sense. And the two are nothing like Tolkien. There might be certain similar themes (like the curse of the Buendía family – Children of Húrin), but I’d never put them together in the same “genre”/magical realism. Also, fun fact: Tolkien would never use the plural “dwarfs” – he used dwarves, and believed the correct form should be dwarrows. PS: I’d see the yellow flowers more like imagery, not something fantastical that “actually happened”, almost poetic. But it gave me certainly something to think about!
Thanks Adam for your thoughts. I don't think the themes are what makes a genre, but some recurring elements like magic. The best fantasy books (I feel) use magic in different ways to enhance the story themes which are different fromone work to another. Orlando by Virginia Woolf in that way is closer to Marquez theme wise, though still not 100%. My point is that Magical Realism is a subgenre of fantasy, and so is Tolkienian fantasy. I would include even Homer in there and other epic poems like Milton's...
Yes there is more twix heaven and earth Horace, and we need fantasy and magical realism lest we forget.
Magic realism is having its cake and eating it too. I've always thought of it as half-assed surrealism. I love it because you know a narrator has you in his clutches when he can make you think that two protagonists DID fall out of the sky and live after an aerial accident.
One example that stuck with me was Thomas Pynchon's 50-foot-tall talking duck in his historical novel Mason & Dixon.
Ha! I think also, its partly just so literary critics don't have to think of themselves as being soiled by reading the genre literature of the plebes.
Thanks for this Chen. Magical Realism, as a genre, annoys me to no end, even as I like some of the actual works. Mostly because of my day job in the library catalog. We get lots of books that would have been "this world" fantasy novels in previous decades, but are now marketed as Magical Realism just because that's a fashionable term. Urban fantasy was another name for fantasy books set in this world. And is not Stephen King a master of it? But he is too common and well liked to be considered as "magical realism" even though his stories are otherwise realistic and also feature magic or the so-called supernatural. Tolkien, while a genius, and not his fault at all, did pigeon hole fantasy into this mold featuring quasi medieval tropes and epic lengths. (I'm bored with epics by the way, especially ones by authors like Robert Jordan, George R. R. Martin, and Patrick Rothfuss who don't bother finishing their epics -and I really wanted Rothfuss to finish his books!) Writers who don't care as much about being deemed sufficiently literary also don't care as much if there books are just called fantasy. Anyway, I'll step off the hobby horse now : )
I wish we could think of other ways to market books. Because we do want to read other books like the ones we loved, but does it have to be this pigeon holed as you say? That is why I like the idea of finding other writers you favorite author loved to read.
I love that too… reading up stream. Or listening up stream. Listening to the music your favorite musicians liked. Both have always been a great way to make discoveries.
Great article, and a very interesting take indeed. I’d have to disagree – I’ve read both Márquez (in Spanish) and Tolkien (English), and there are HUGE differences. I’d probably consider Murakami much closer to Márquez in this sense. And the two are nothing like Tolkien. There might be certain similar themes (like the curse of the Buendía family – Children of Húrin), but I’d never put them together in the same “genre”/magical realism. Also, fun fact: Tolkien would never use the plural “dwarfs” – he used dwarves, and believed the correct form should be dwarrows. PS: I’d see the yellow flowers more like imagery, not something fantastical that “actually happened”, almost poetic. But it gave me certainly something to think about!
Thanks Adam for your thoughts. I don't think the themes are what makes a genre, but some recurring elements like magic. The best fantasy books (I feel) use magic in different ways to enhance the story themes which are different fromone work to another. Orlando by Virginia Woolf in that way is closer to Marquez theme wise, though still not 100%. My point is that Magical Realism is a subgenre of fantasy, and so is Tolkienian fantasy. I would include even Homer in there and other epic poems like Milton's...
Excellent! You have an interesting mind.
Interesting reading for sure