I’m another of those whose writing started out with elements of magical realism before I actually had heard of the term. It’s just the way my thought processes worked. I remember way, way, way, back in college in freshman English, we read The Metamorphosis. The professor, in a voice that suggested she had asked this question many times before, asked the class if anyone believed Gregor had actually turned into a bug. I was one of the few that raised my hand in the affirmative.
Now even though I wasn’t very well-read or well-educated at the time, I did understand that the story could be read, and would be read by most, as a metaphor of a man who loses, or gives up, what differentiates humans from lower life forms. But to me, it read as a man who physically transforms, or was transformed, into a bug.
As the debate raged, I pretty much stayed out of it, except to say a few times, “I really don’t think it matters. Isn’t that really the point?” But no one paid attention.
And I still think that’s really the point of magical realism. It really doesn’t matter. Both interpretations are valid. One just as valid as the other. They are yes or no, black or white, on or off, yin or yang, positive or negative. Two distinct states of being, but one not better or even preferable to the other.
A long time ago, it was probably taken for granted that some women could make men fall in love with them through the power, or magic, of their cooking. Later, this was pooh-poohed as superstitious nonsense. A man conceivably could fall in love with a woman after a great meal, but there was no causal relationship there. And now? Is such a thing possible? Could it be that love is such a complex state of being and we are so ignorant of its real origins, or more accurately it is so complex that we can never understand its origins, that such a thing could very well happen?
And that to me is magical realism. The acknowledgement of the limits of our ability to understand how the world works, leading to the acknowledgement of the validity of alternative relationships and unproven, and probably unprovable, connections. None of which are more valid than any other.