magic realism

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

how do you perceive this concept? is it to your liking? what is the your favourite instance of it? the worst?

― gareth, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

when it rains flowers in "100 years o solitude" i threw the book several yards away from me to escape the feeling of nausea.

― Alan Trewartha, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm with Alan. Can't be doing with magic realism. It's neither magical, nor realistic. Its like having bubble & squeek which is mad of rubbish bubble and lousy squeek.

Its also the 20C phrase for deus ex machina when used particularly badly.

― Pete, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was anti-magic realism depsite not having read any, until I read '100 Years of Solitude'. I suppose our old pal Haruki Murakami counts too. He's magic.

― N., Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

anyone care to talk about Kazuo Ishiguro instead? I've never really discussed The Unconsoled with anyone other than one ex-g'friend, and it's such an interesting book. Or are there loads of books that use narrative like this?

― Alan Trewartha, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

'Magic realism' is an unhelpful marketing term which covers a multitude of sins and graces. One might turn up one's nose at the cosmetic excesses of the South Americans (but if you're missing out Julio Cortazar, you should think twice), but is this an intolerance of the fantastic, or the sentimental way it is handled? The fantastic interminged with the mundane is at the heart of our greatest literature. You might see it as the persistence of the mythic - from Zeus's swansuit to Gargantua's lunches through to Kafka's beetles: objective correlatives for tricksy states of being. Or you might say that literary language is founded upon metaphor (as opposed to the metonymy of common parlance), and that metaphor is very precisely magical language, the substitution of one term for another, the blood for the wine.

But anyway: if we must use the term, the best magic realist is Bruno Schulz (The Street of Crocodiles etc). He wrote these beautiful reminiscences of Polish childhoods which veer off into strange domestic cosmologies - like a wonderful union of Proust, Kafka and Chagall.

The worst is probably Isabel Allende.

― Edna Welthorpe, Mrs, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Its the South Americans I can't be doing with generally. What you say re-metaphor interests me since I was thinking about this. Does MAgic realism debase metaphor by trying to uundermine it. Why use metaphor to poetically describe said rainfall - when it turns out that said rainfall actually (and counter-intuatively) was of flowers? Any other metaphors used in the book are therefore untrustworthy.

Of course many atuthors have warred against metaphor - but I think this tactic is excessively sneaky.

― Pete, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I haven't read The Unconsoled, Alan, but of all the reputedly 'unreadable' books of recent times I think it's the one that sounds most interesting. I remember John Carey talking about it on Late Review and my getting put off by his leather jacket.

― N., Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I thought magic realists were fuckbunnies? that's what I heard anyway.

― chris, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Chris is on OTM. Except for Murakami who is just a magic bunny.

― Jonnie, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i'm (nearly) always surprised when people describe books as unreadable. (Nearly, cos I seem to recall scanning through chap 1 of Finnegan's Wake and found that inpenetrable). Does unreadable ~= long in most cases? Unconsoled is easy to read cos the sentences are straight-forward -- there is no acrobatic linguistic or bloated vocabulary -- but it's hard work corralling the meaning, as the psychology of the narrator and the people generally is "unusual".

― Alan Trewartha, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

is cowardly hippy shit writ by peopl too gutless to say wot they mean in case dictator come and electrocute there kneecaps or too shit scared to go and try overthro dictator so wallo in codes and shit when relly should learn to use guns and tanks as much more useful getting rid of fasists.

― XStatic Peace, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What a coincidence! That's exactly what my tutor said when I was doing magical realism at university!

― Emma, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I remember that I used to love Delvaux's paintings. Does that count?

― Tim, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

How is it realistic? I don't understand.

― Maria, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I absolutely loathe the term "magic realism". It strikes me as being about as useful as saying "pragmatic whimsy" or "rational insanity".

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

cortazar isn't what I'd call magic realism, but that's just a case of open-windows on the street of corrientes i guess...

mind you what's her fuck face, esquivel, like water for chocolate - now there's someone who deserves a painful death.

― goeff, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It's like one of those 'crazy' oxymoronic indie band names such as Razorblade Smile and Daisy Chainsaw.

― N., Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Not if you'd seen them South American chainsaws. Man they are as tall as trees. Hence the type of chainsaw required to cut them down. (Band name came to drummer when on a gap year in Brazil watching said cutting).

― Pete, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Chainsaws to cut down chainsaws?

― RickyT, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

he meant South American daisies. OK, so I'm guessing....

― MarkH, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I too am much confused by Pete's tall tale.

― N., Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ishall refrain from posting for the rest of the afternoon. This is what becomes for trying to run a multimational, organise a sports tour, write mid-length pieces for NYLPM and post clever lies to ILx (though everyone saw through my Madness madness).

Goodnight.

― Pete, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

sp: "Finnegans".

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

grrr, i knew that! all those fake oirish pubs are wrong too, th'bastards.

― Alan Trewartha, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Edna, surely *subjective* correlative?

― Tim, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

trying to run a multimational

You make it sound so good.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hopkins' makes best joke of day, but kills thread.

Buffy = magic realism hence two thumbs ub. Also early Toni Morrison, who I like even tho it has encomium from BUBERON WAAUGH on the covah.

― mark s, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Labels cram people into too-small boxes. Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" is brilliant, though. Historical, magical, funny, tragic, real. And no one starts ascending to heaven while hanging out the washing.

― Fiery, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think 'magic realism' is better when it deals with consciousness and with human-scale decisions rather than with supernatural events that are supposed to be natural. There have been lots of film like this lately, e.g., Le battement d'ailes du papillon (aka... Happenstance!). They come off as cute and whimsical, but insubstantial.

When I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I thought of a short story by Kenzaburo Oe called The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, which is also about post-war Japan. But it's immediately after, so the senselessness of war carries over into peacetime. In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I think you need 'magic realism' to convey the horror of the war, which seems so far removed from everyday life in modern Japan. I thought the passages about the mission in Manchuria and the killing of the animals in the zoo were extremely moving and well-written, but some of the other stuff seemed poorly motivated.

One of the reasons I prefer New York Trilogy to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is that the source of mystery in the former is in the character's consciousness, whereas in the latter, it's in actual events. With the former, alternate realities seem more plausible. With the latter, it's easy to get carried away and use it as a deus ex machina, as Pete pointed out.

― Kara Fig, Wednesday, 23 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I read "100 years of Solitude", & thoroughly enjoyed it, so there. I also really like Borges, tho' I'm not sure if this counts. Pelevin's "Omon Ra" was reviewed as if it were magick realism IIRC, but I doubt it fits, really. I liked that too, anyway, as well as "The Manuscript Found in Saragossa", which was also reviewed as if it were some kind of proto-MR tract. I thought that was fantastic, & I think I'll get it out & read it again.....

― Norman Phay, Wednesday, 23 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.