Magical Realism

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wrinkles

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Toothpaste - It was the last comment about surrealism that wasn't directed to you. The rest was.
 

wrinkles

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Children are way less dumb than you seem to think they are! The average kid knows what's real and what's not. The average real kid age 10-12 knows with a lot of certainty that vampires aren't real. Why can't an average kid in a MR setting know that vampires are an everyday boring part of life?

Nowhere in my post did I say children were dumb, and unless you're a 10-12 year old kid yourself, I don't think you can know with certainty what they believe. And no, you don't know more about children than I do.
 

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It seems to me that Magical Realism uses fantastical tropes with no substance; that is, it links to the symbology of fantasy tropes without connecting them to the tropes' actual meaning.

This statement wounds me <.< But I think it's in reaction to someone else's definition of magical realism using a vampire metaphor, which also wounds me, so I'm not blaming you >.>
But... Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jeanette Winterson, Laura Esquivel, oh my god, I dare you to find anything vaguely resembling a "trope" in their work. *flails*
... Sorry, I had to butt in <.<
 

wrinkles

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I agree with backslashbaby, if I understand what she is saying. The differing opinions of various characters in an MR story regarding magical, or strange, or unexplained events, and the way their opinions or perceptions change over time, can add significantly to the story.

And as for explanations, authorial explanation or justification would be problematic, but characters can explain, or accept, or ignore as they please without affecting the underlying magical reality of the story. And, for me, the uncertainty created in the mind of the reader by the different reactions and explanations of the characters at various times, is what gives MR its power. Especially if those perceptions and explanations are all equally valid in a realistic world.

Toothpaste - Am I right in assuming that you disagree, and by your definition not even the characters should question the reality of the magical in an MR story?
 

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Toothpaste - Am I right in assuming that you disagree, and by your definition not even the characters should question the reality of the magical in an MR story?

I think that the idea behind magical realism is that in questioning the reason behind the magical element (whether it is a character or narrator), you are bringing attention to the fact that it is the "other". And from everything I have read, that then takes away the natural acceptance of the other.

However I think there is still room for characters to make observations about the supernatural, to draw conclusions, but these conclusions are not meant to speak to a universal truth of the situation. There is no absolute knowledge of what the magical is. Nor do they question, as you put it, the "reality of the magical". Rather the situation is accepted as real, and some theories might be postulated as to how they wound up in the situation. To question the reality, removes the authority of the supernatural.

Unlike Urban Fantasy which will explain why, say, angels are in New York, how it is the time of the apocalypse or whatever, and the entire story is about how crazy it is that there are angels in the first place, a story like the one backslashbaby posted uses the appearance of an angel as a catalyst to reveal the individual personalities in the community, to reflect back on society. It isn't a story about an angel, but about a catalyst for the other people in the story. Nor, you will notice, is there any explanation of why there is an angel at all, just simply that now the community must deal with the presence of one. He is treated almost as if he is an injured bird. There is no shock and awe that he is with them, but a general sense of fear of otherness, in the same way one might react to a criminal living in the shed.

It's all very matter of fact, the magic of the moment never dwelt on. And more importantly it isn't the magic that matters.

So yes, I can agree that characters can make a degree of explanation, but dwelling on the magic makes it less so. And, is also simply beside the point.

I further want to add that of course I believe that there are degrees to everything, that there will definitely be some elements in one author's magical realism tale that won't be in another's. I am not a fan of absolutes, so things like "always" and "never" don't sit well with me. My plan all along with this thread was try to shed some light on a genre that is often miscategorised and also misrepresented. Because the ideas behind it are a bit tricky, I think some people wish to say that it therefore makes it impossible to define (or as some seem to think, subject to whatever definition they feel like giving to it). But that isn't the case. It's just a little more difficult to understand than some genres, it doesn't mean there isn't understanding eventually to be had. That's all.
 
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wrinkles

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I appreciate your enthusiasm for the subject. I share it. When I sit down to write, Magical Realism (at least as I define it) is what results. It would be very difficult for me not to write that way. I suspect, though, that you and other MR purists (no offense intended) would not grant me the use of that term. I think the term Fabulist might also apply, but MR is the way I think of it, and I'm stubborn that way.

So here is the situation from my last manuscript. My protaganist breaks up a crime that should have made him a hero, but to do it he performed a feat that could not be rationally explained. By real-world standards it was impossible, yet he did it. So the police do not believe him, and end up concluding he was a part of the crime, and all his family and friends end up believing it too, so his life is ruined.

So this questioning, disbelief, and subsequent negative consequences I'm assuming take this out of the MR category, or genre, for you.
 

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It seems to me that Magical Realism uses fantastical tropes with no substance; that is, it links to the symbology of fantasy tropes without connecting them to the tropes' actual meaning.

This statement wounds me <.< But I think it's in reaction to someone else's definition of magical realism using a vampire metaphor, which also wounds me, so I'm not blaming you >.>
But... Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jeanette Winterson, Laura Esquivel, oh my god, I dare you to find anything vaguely resembling a "trope" in their work. *flails*
... Sorry, I had to butt in <.<

I was away for the weekend. Still not involving myself in the main argument in the thread, but I wanted to console your wounded ego. :)

By 'substance' of a trope I mean its root nature. Cut out the essential bits of a trope and you're left with symbology that can be reconnected to new things. I am not saying there are tropes there. I'm saying that symbology of existing tropes is being repurposed for new, exciting things.

So when Marquez lifts a girl into the sky -- the symbology of ascendance -- it's not because she has suddenly become a saint, it's because she hit the peak of innocence while folding laundry. When Winterson has a girl accused of demonic possession, using the symbology of willfullness, disobedience, and sexual liberation, it's not because she's evil, it's only because she has made a clear-eyed decision to be a lesbian. When Esquivel has a character affect everyone around her with her cooking, it's not because she's a witch flinging around love potions, it's only because she's an excellent cook who is driven to seduce the young man she's cooking for.

But let me stress, again, that this is only a theory of mine. I'm just curious about how human psychology interacts with tropes, and speculating that there's a link there to the genre of magical realism. I could be wrong about all of it. And I don't mean to offend you or anyone else; I dearly hope this explanation hasn't wounded you any more. :)
 

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Children are way less dumb than you seem to think they are! The average kid knows what's real and what's not. The average real kid age 10-12 knows with a lot of certainty that vampires aren't real. Why can't an average kid in a MR setting know that vampires are an everyday boring part of life?

*ponders* The example actually struck a chord with me, and made me think of another description I'd heard somewhere--of how if an adult in modern generic North America insists in a panic that they've seen a vampire then we call for medical assistance, but if there's a six-year-old in the same situation, we don't think they're crazy. We will try to calm them down, and possibly explain they are wrong, but we don't think they're crazy.

Maybe it's not what a ten- or twelve-year-old knows, but what a six-year-old is allowed to know; the blending of the fantastic with the real, and both accepted as the truth of the world--the framework in which events are to be dealt with?

L&c,
F
 

Kitty Pryde

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I have a question for all you smart folks. Given: an author who creates a detailed world somewhat like our own world but populated with assorted fantasy creatures of her choice fighting crime or making mayhem or working at Starbucks or whatever, and a plot set in said world.

If, in the writing of the actual story, she explains all the details of vampire self-governance, and the fifteen magical rituals that made all badgers sentient and talkative, and the particulars of the ancient pact between the werebunnies and the ghostfoxes, and exactly what a Wendigo is and is not capable of, and explain once and for all the mystery of where mermaids keep their naughty bits...is that urban fantasy?

And if she writes the exact same story but explains none of this, and assumes it is all normal goings-on, only revealing the stuffs that pertain to the action as it happens...is that magical realism?

I've just been pondering and I would love to get your opinions! :)
 

wrinkles

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I have a question for all you smart folks. Given: an author who creates a detailed world somewhat like our own world but populated with assorted fantasy creatures of her choice fighting crime or making mayhem or working at Starbucks or whatever, and a plot set in said world.

If, in the writing of the actual story, she explains all the details of vampire self-governance, and the fifteen magical rituals that made all badgers sentient and talkative, and the particulars of the ancient pact between the werebunnies and the ghostfoxes, and exactly what a Wendigo is and is not capable of, and explain once and for all the mystery of where mermaids keep their naughty bits...is that urban fantasy?

And if she writes the exact same story but explains none of this, and assumes it is all normal goings-on, only revealing the stuffs that pertain to the action as it happens...is that magical realism?

I've just been pondering and I would love to get your opinions! :)

I got your ponderings right here.
 

Mr Flibble

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I say keep it simple: Literary fiction featuring magic.


The inclusion of magic makes it fantasy

Unless you have a thing about genre....

Quote from Terry Prachett: magic realism "is like a polite way of saying you write fantasy" (Gene Wolf said they call it magical realism if it's written in Spanish" IIRC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism#cite_note-59
Magical realism is fantasy - it just gets called by a silly name so people don;t have to admit they are reading fantasy. It may hve a different flavour - but it is still fantasy. It has fantastical elements. Simples
 

astrodragon

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The inclusion of magic makes it fantasy

Unless you have a thing about genre....

Quote from Terry Prachett: magic realism "is like a polite way of saying you write fantasy" (Gene Wolf said they call it magical realism if it's written in Spanish" IIRC)
Magical realism is fantasy - it just gets called by a silly name so people don;t have to admit they are reading fantasy. It may hve a different flavour - but it is still fantasy. It has fantastical elements. Simples

Of course by that definition anything that involves FTL travel, time travel, or indeed anything else we dont know how to build is also writing fantasy....:)
 

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My university offers a class on Fantasy separate from a class on Magical Realism.

Near as I can tell, the difference is that a large hunk of the faculty considers MR awesome and Fantasy to be "genre shit."

IMO, MR is a subgenre of fantasy that focuses specifically on the subversion of language rather than the subversion of tropes.
 

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I've always considered MR to be lazy-man's fantasy; it's magic with none of the worldbuilding. I've also seen the "magical" part used as metaphor to make the mundania a little less mundane. For example, Ken Liu's "Paper Menagerie" uses living origami to emphasize the magicalness of tradition. But the story would've worked just fine without the origami being alive.
 

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the term fantasy in literature doesn't seem to allow for the lightside of the spectrum, and produces a knee-jerk assumption of the pulps...for my part, i tend to think of magic realism as a light bending of reality to incorporate uncanny elements...though the gene wolf definition mentioned above has a certain truth to it...
 

Iustefan

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Magical realism is fantasy - it just gets called by a silly name so people don;t have to admit they are reading fantasy. It may hve a different flavour - but it is still fantasy. It has fantastical elements. Simples

This is too much of a reduction. Fantastic elements don't make something fantasy in genre. Sure, they are fantastical, and fantasy, as per the words. But the genre isn't necessarily fantasy.

Much like the Romance genre isn't everything with romance. Sure a story can have romance in it, and be romantic, but that doesn't mean it falls into the romance genre.

These words were chosen for categorization, not definition. Notice how simple they are? Do you think anything can be so easily defined in one word?

Genres are like large pools of common tropes and styles and cliches and ideas and 'things'(I'll leave this loosely defined as a catch-all); and the problem is these pools are growing, or splitting all the time, as people have to keep writing new stories, and boundaries are bending and stretching constantly. They don't have simple definitions, because there are always exceptions, and because very few stories truly stick to one genre, and because they are always being redefined and tested.

It is best to look at any work of art on a case-by-case basis I believe. Try to define the writing, or book, as oppose to defining the abstract concept of genre--which without any novels is an empty pool. Who cares what the fantasy genre is, what matters is Lord of the Rings is Fantasy. I think arguments like this look at the matter from the wrong direction.
 

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Heh - I was just having a bit of grump, having been bitten too much by the lit (and sometimes mainstream) crowd claiming something that is fairly clearly fantasy, isn't, because if it was fantasy it'd be 'genre crap' and then they wouldn't read/write it.
They don't have simple definitions, because there are always exceptions, and because very few stories truly stick to one genre, and because they are always being redefined and tested.

As you say, many stories don't fit in one genre, but to me, all these little sub-sub-genres seem a bit silly. I mean, all you really need to do is signpost to the reader what sort of book it is - that's the purpose of the genre label, so readers can find the sort of book they are after. When people start getting cute about it (yes I know it has dragons/time travel/death as a character/immortals in it, but it's not fantasy, honest!) it gets on my pecs. I'd rather have a bit of honesty about it all. *sighs theatrically* :D
 

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I had this argument with a prof about Tom Robbins' book JITTERBUG PERFUME', which features many fantasy tropes (ancient Greek gods come to life, immortal protagonists, magic perfume, a journey to the land of the dead, etc.) but was advertised as contemporary fiction or magic realism when it came out. Same with some of Umberto Eco's work.

I don't have a bias against labeling anything 'fantasy'. I'd prefer that, in fact. Many 'magic realism' novels have stung me with their utter pretension and foolishness - but others still quietly sing in my memory. For the latter, I'd offer David James Duncan's THE RIVER WHY, which transcends angling to become an enchanted journey and a love letter to Oregon waterways.
 

Iustefan

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I had this argument with a prof about Tom Robbins' book JITTERBUG PERFUME', which features many fantasy tropes (ancient Greek gods come to life, immortal protagonists, magic perfume, a journey to the land of the dead, etc.) but was advertised as contemporary fiction or magic realism when it came out. Same with some of Umberto Eco's work.

I guess we could further get into the classification, by saying tropes are signs of a genre, but how the tropes are used is more important. From what I know of Tom Robbins, having not read Jitterbug Perfume, I would say he probably wasn't writing fantasy. Sure he used some common fantasy tropes, but he could have also used some common mystery tropes(which don't stand out as much), or some common romance tropes, but how he decided to use them is much more important.

I would say, one has to read a book to know what it is. Sure some things stick out like signposts: I don't have to do much more than read the wikipedia article to see exactly what you are saying about immortals and gods in the Tom Robbins novel. But how those tropes are presented is much more important, and that is difficult to figure out without actually reading the book.

Heh - I was just having a bit of grump, having been bitten too much by the lit (and sometimes mainstream) crowd claiming something that is fairly clearly fantasy, isn't, because if it was fantasy it'd be 'genre crap' and then they wouldn't read/write it.

Hey no, I hear you. I probably come from the opposite position to be honest. I've seen too many people looking for fantasy in 100-Years of Solitude, and finishing the book with disappointment. It's a great novel, but not everyone will like it just because of the fantastical elements. While someone coming from Fuentes or Calvino or Gunter Grass will probably love it.

As you say, many stories don't fit in one genre, but to me, all these little sub-sub-genres seem a bit silly. I mean, all you really need to do is signpost to the reader what sort of book it is - that's the purpose of the genre label, so readers can find the sort of book they are after. When people start getting cute about it (yes I know it has dragons/time travel/death as a character/immortals in it, but it's not fantasy, honest!) it gets on my pecs. I'd rather have a bit of honesty about it all. *sighs theatrically*

Yes, but I think many people who are coming from, for instance, American Gods, and looking for something similar, would be be unhappy with Tom Robbins or Franz Kafka. Or if they did like it, they would like it for different reasons. And at the end of the day, that is why we separate them. Sure they share some characteristics, but the style is so clearly different that they shouldn't be lumped together. Readers are often dumb. They think the reason why they like Lord of the Rings is elves and magic, but really they liked it for the pacing, plotting, characters, voice, and feeling, the other stuff too, but less so.
 

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Robbins is great, but there is no realism to his work whether it features magic or not, so I wouldn't list him as an author of magical realism. Neither would I list Kafka as a magical realist, because his work is so surreal.
 

Iustefan

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Robbins is great, but there is no realism to his work whether it features magic or not, so I wouldn't list him as an author of magical realism. Neither would I list Kafka as a magical realist, because his work is so surreal.

This is like what I was saying earlier about fantasy: It's just the name of the genre, not the definition. Almost all Magical Realist stories deal with highly distorted realities, and very little 'magic'.
 

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Hey no, I hear you. I probably come from the opposite position to be honest. I've seen too many people looking for fantasy in 100-Years of Solitude, and finishing the book with disappointment. It's a great novel, but not everyone will like it just because of the fantastical elements. While someone coming from Fuentes or Calvino or Gunter Grass will probably love it.



Yes, but I think many people who are coming from, for instance, American Gods, and looking for something similar, would be be unhappy with Tom Robbins or Franz Kafka. Or if they did like it, they would like it for different reasons. And at the end of the day, that is why we separate them. Sure they share some characteristics, but the style is so clearly different that they shouldn't be lumped together. Readers are often dumb. They think the reason why they like Lord of the Rings is elves and magic, but really they liked it for the pacing, plotting, characters, voice, and feeling, the other stuff too, but less so.

Hmm. Yeees, but when you get into the minutae of sub genre, it gives you another problem. Pigeonholing. People who won't read a book because of the very label that's stuck on it because they think they won't like it, when actually they might. Like with Lord of the Rings - you can't tell, from a label (even as one as broad as fantasy, or as narrow as magic realism) what the the plot/pacing/feel is going to be like, or whether you'll like it. Even if you do narrow down the label, that's still no guarantee it's going to be the sort of book you like. I like some magical realism myself, but couldn't get on with 100 Years for instance.

I'm not a fan of pigeonholing - it divides and excludes when we should be including, and it may stop people from finding books they'll like (though that'd be their own fault I suppose for not trying a book that has a different label on it. But still) And of course, as noted above, many books fall into more than one sub genre. So if you label your book magical realism, when it's really that, plus lots of UF, plus a bit of S&S, well someone who doesn't like magical realism won't even try it, even though they'd love it if you called it UF.
 
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