Magical Realism

*steals Mac's pedant hat and puts it on the squid*

That post just screams out for a photoshopped response, Shweta.

Thought:

Most definitions of magic realism I like incorporate both the "needs no explanation" and "nightbrain" definitions. I like to think of it as incorporating magic into the worldbuilding in such a way that it doesn't become magic to the people within the story -- it's "magic" to us but "realism" to them. Yes?

Also, I think that MR lends itself well to political themes and that's why the two coincide so frequently. Because it's a great way to get people to think about their own situations, and a nice metaphor for real life. Like, you get readers who go, "No one could live like this! This is ridic -- oh wait a second..."

I want a pedant hat.

Esopha said:

I want a pedant hat.

Click to expand...

You'll have to fight the squid for it.

Also, I like your post

But but but but but. The squid will beat me up!

Actually I did know about the political side Mac, but that wasn't really what we were debating initially. There is also a whole side about country vs city, holding up a simple rural life as the desired existence. In fact there is so much more to Magical Realism than just this small debate about where the line is drawn between it and Urban Fantasy. But at the same time, I think a fair bit of Magical Realism now is also a lot more about that fine line, than the politics. Much like how Steampunk used to be incredibly political and topical, and has now turned into Gaslight Romance.

Shweta - again, I understood that the faeries just existed without perceived explanation, but the fact that their existence is seen as surprising to the MC, and the fact that the story is focused on their tale, suggested to me that this therefore was an alternate reality being established by the author, and that was the reason. But of course I could be wrong as I haven't read it. And I'm sorry I didn't know the book, from the way you talked about it I assumed it was a big deal, I wasn't trying to dismiss it. Should I have pretended to know it? In all honesty I'm not that well read, and I could have ignored it altogether, but I wanted to do some research and do your argument justice and not just pretend you hadn't made it.

I'm sorry too if somehow my posts are offending, I'm sensing a small level of defensiveness to what I've been saying and that can only come from the tone of my posts, and I apologise. Truly I thought I was just entering a discussion, I did not feel any animosity towards anyone. Still I know that my enthusiasm can sometimes come off badly, and I actually am sorry about that.

I think I get it. Thanks for the thread.



~Sam

Actually, Mac -- I think you nailed down an important element in the origins of MR re political reality.

And Toothpaste? For my two cents worth, you're saying many of the things about MR that I've been firming up in my head since my first book, which was an MR piece (although I didn't realize it until AFTER the first draft). So, thanks!

I think of magical realism as the fantastical without whimsy. That's a Treatment (see my post on Treatments vs Subjects) and the question is then: what might one usefully do with it?

Clearly, any subject where subjective vs objective are at tension is a candidate for MR treatment, because unwhimsical fantasy is already creating that tension in the reader. So: stories about politics (political narrative vs real actions), psychology (objective vs subjective experience), social outsiderness (personal narrative vs dominant social narrative) are all promising candidates.

And guess what? We find MR treatments for all of these subjects in fiction.

Strictly speaking, I think of MR as distinct from Fantasy (which I think of as being whimsy-driven). The treatments are different and the effective uses are too. Whimsy is great for playing with idealism for instance. MR is much better for sowing seeds of cognitive dissonance and doubt.

I'm enjoying everyone's comments very much!

Yes, yes, yes! Exactly -- that inherent opposition, the simultaneous connection and tension between elements so disparate as to be opposites, or nearly so -- and in some measure, examining the mundane through an illustration of the fantastic, illuminating the profane with the sacred, and vice versa.

Click to expand...

The old-man-angel falling to earth and being taken advantage of by the unsurprised, downtrodden, bitter townsfolk. Very much to do with this great quote (and politics), and very little to do with speculation.

In my mind, the political is essential, or the societal is at least. But I'm not as familiar with very new works considered MR. I tend to think along the lines of GGMarquez, then Rushdie...actually Beloved was a wonderful example.

I would have placed Beloved in a different category if the story hadn't been about slavery, btw. If her daughter had died in a carwreck she caused, for example, it becomes something else, I think.

It seems to have a lot to do with butterflies.

Seriously, the big clue is in the term itself (whoever coined it). Generally, personally unreal elements manifesting in the "real world".

It wouldn't be at all weird for a girl to suddenly ascend to heaven because of her beauty if she lived at Hogwarts. Or if she lived in New York, but had run into supernatural elements there that created a new shuffle of what the consensual world is all about.

But to do so in our communal, consensual world is magical.

To an extent, the same event would take on different ramifications if presented in certain genres. If it happened in a Heinlein novel it wouldn't be magical realism, would it? It would be science fiction...even if no scientific explanation was given.
(Ray Bradbury, by the way, is a master class magical realist, though he's not discussed as such and considered, for some, reason, to be a scifi writer)
If it happened in something with castles and warlocks on the cover, it would be fantasy.
If there is a shirtless man and bodice-busting girl on the cover it would become romantic and supernatural.

So what is magic realism depends to an extent on the setting and the "lens" we train on it. Which is both magical and realistic.

When I'm being especially cynical, I don't see "magical realism" as anything other than a marketing technique. I'm instantly reminded of attempts to categorise John Crowley and Samuel Delaney as "magical realist" as if to salvage them from the spurious association with straight fantasy.

I've always considered this a technique, not a movement.

Another sister techinque/movement I haven't seen mentioned is "surrealism".

The difficult line to draw is not between SF/F and magical real, but between surrealism and magical realism.

As a political literature, I think it is important to note that the term is utterly American. Garcia-Marquez rejects it, as do many practicioners of the "form". Magical realism is a fancy way for Western literary critics to apologize for elements of myth and whimsy in otherwise "serious" realistic literature, because in "Western" academia we over-emphasize - perhaps even fetishize - realist, everyday, occasionally turgidly self-important prose best represented by Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Chekov, and Tolstoy and others like them.

As the term was invented to separate "serious" literature of the fantastic from fairy tales and adventurist fiction, I find the term hollow and meaningless. Fairy tales and adventurist fictions are quite capable of astonishing literary depth, after all.

I prefer to think of numerous MR scribblers as mere surrealists, including Carpentier and the guy who ran for president of Peru... what was his name... Blah. Mindblank.... I prefer to think of Borges as a Speculative Fictionist. Garcia-Marquez and Gunter Grass are more like Faulkner than any of the other magical realists that supposedly share their artistic medium.

Simply defining a work of art by one writing technique is so limiting as to be laughable. to me, it has far more to do with our academic obsession with exactly one kind of "Great... American... Novel..." than with any actual categorical truth.

See, these sorts of things make me wish I could call my WIP something else. Fantasy? It'll let down most fantasy readers, I'd think; it doesn't have enough to do fantasy justice. It's not straight satire, for sure.

In any case, my only reason for the distinction is to try to connect readers with the work they like. I do read what is considered MR and expect the sorts of things discussed above.

Surrealist work usually doesn't include all of the elements that I enjoy in MR. Fantasy usually doesn't either. It's probably very true that MR could 'really' be something else, but I like knowing I'll find so many of the same elements in one work.

Well, this thread was spun off from the general definitions thread because I was asking annoying questions a few months ago. In the interim I have been pondering the heck out of the subject, and have come to figure out my own opinion on it. I have decided that it is an interstitial subgenre, defined by content and style and theme. A book about angels in NYC, for instance, might be urban fantasy, or MR, or horror, depending on the style and the theme. MR fits into a very superficial definition of fantasy, but digging deeper it doesn't really fit in. Containing a fantasy element doesn't really make something fantasy (like, every episode Desperate Housewives is narrated by the ghost of a dead woman. But it's not at all a fantasy work, it's entirely mainstream drama.) MR also fits into a broad definition of literary, but then it kind of sticks out with all its magical whatnots.

I recently read a book that was a science fiction magical realism novel. It wasn't a science fantasy, it wasn't SF With Magic In It (TM), it was a science fiction novel and a magical realism novel. The most interesting thing about it was the way the author integrated the SF worldview (objective, based in scientific laws and probability) with the MR worldview (subjective, spiritual, reality based on intention, the literal power of metaphor). There is a pair of twins in the story that embody this dichotomy, which he uses in a really cool way. For every event that could be explained by either the power of magic or the power of science, the author (or characters) explain it as both. So the dissonance between those two ideals is a major theme. So is rural life versus evil corporations, and mankind versus nature, and individual passions versus group needs.

To me, MR isn't anything like urban fantasy. Except that it is a subgenre with its own style and conventions, just as UF is a subgenre with its own style and conventions. And that's what I think.

PS The book is 'Desolation Road' by Ian McDonald, and you should read it.

The reason, by the way, that MR is nothing like Urban Fantasy, has more to do with the dilineation between Adventure Fiction and Literary Fiction.

I hate using the term "Literary", but at the moment, it's the only term I know to use to distiinguish the two, though the unintended implication of quality granted by the term "literary" is incorrect and certainly not intended.

Jerry Cornelius said:

When I'm being especially cynical, I don't see "magical realism" as anything other than a marketing technique. I'm instantly reminded of attempts to categorise John Crowley and Samuel Delaney as "magical realist" as if to salvage them from the spurious association with straight fantasy.

Click to expand...

Many things are nabbed by marketing departments in this way, but that doesn't make them only that. Yes, sure, there's a marketing technique of using magical realism. That doesn't restrict magical realism itself, however, and the side that isn't marketing is a lot more relevant to us



Toothpaste -- my only issue with your definition was that it risks restricting Urban Fantasy to The Genre That Is No Longer Called Paranormal-Romance, which is a limitation I object to hugely on principle. So if my annoyance was coming through, apologies -- it was not with anything you're actually saying about MR, but with the crowds of people who seem not to know that Urban Fantasy existed before Paranormal Romance got renamed, and it was a label for different and interesting work

I really like this conversation, overall, I just think we need to be careful anytime we say "Well it's not just X, because X is limited in these ways", not to undersell X.

On the same topic, badducky, I think you're underselling fantasy and science fiction by placing restrictions on them that don't always apply
I'd agree your definitions work -- most of the time. But - for example - I'd have a lot of trouble seeing Butler's Kindred as adventurist, though it's clearly fantasy. I'd have a lot of trouble seeing Delaney as adventurist, too, or Karen Joy Fowler, or many of the Tiptree winners. Both SF and fantasy do cross the pulp/lit line, (IMO especially at the short fiction level, but also in long form).

Ah, Shweta, but the application of the technique of fantasy or science fiction does not require adventurist prose.

Marketing distinctions in bookstores and academic distinctions for useful debate are not equal entities.

Sharon Mock said:

I've split off the discussion of fantasy as technique into its own thread, as it deserves. (Which is not meant to be an Insult Concealed.) Copied some posts, moved others... there may be more shuffling later.

Click to expand...

Because, after all, why should the Interstices forum be limited to linear ordering?

I don't have a whole lot of time for much more than a post-and-run, unfortunately. But I will say that I think magical realism is a subgenre of surrealism, much like, say, Mundane SF is a subtype of science fiction. So I think trying to figure out what makes magical realism different from surrealism isn't going to get very far. What sets it apart from other forms of surrealism is a better question to ask.

Does that make any sense at all?

Click to expand...

Makes sense to me! I don't know the surrealism category (in anything other than visual arts) enough to know if I agree, but it sounds good.

Since my response to this got moved, I want to do one quick repeat/rehash:

badducky said:

Ah, Shweta, but the application of the technique of fantasy or science fiction does not require adventurist prose.

Marketing distinctions in bookstores and academic distinctions for useful debate are not equal entities.

Click to expand...

I'd say the adventurist/literary distinction is actually closer to a marketing category and further from a useful writer category for me than the fantasy/sf categories I was talking about.

What I was trying to say is that fantasy/sf, as writing categories/genres/conversations distinct from interstitial arts/slipstream/squidpunk, can use the same techniques/rhetoric/tropes in adventurist or literary prose, and that readers can still consider it sf/f.

It also does not necessarily affect marketing so much. I'd say you could draw a strong literary/adventurist line to demarkate the marketing genre... oh, back when Le Guin wrote The Left Hand of Darkness. That's what's going on with this rejection letter.

Since then, she and others have blown that boundary wiiide open, to readers and editors alike. At this point "literary" fiction might be less central to the wriitng category, but is still there.

I think of magical realism as literary because of the lyricism and character-focus of the stories. I never considered politics in the mix. My favorite magical realism author is Alice Hoffman. Her Practical Magic is stunning, as is Fortune's Daughter and Turtle Moon. Margaret Atwood's amazing Robber Bride is also filled with magical realism that's dark and mysterious. Another favorite of mine is Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.

My goodness I have needed you people. And you've been right here this whole time.