S/D: magic realism

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I have fallen in love with Italo Calvino very recently, and quite enjoyed the Murakami I have read as well. I ordered some more Calvino and Borges' "Collected Fictions", but what else should I be reading?

― jordache, Wednesday, 12 May 2004 03:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Marquez obviously and de Bernieres. Read Buzzati's 'The Tartar Steppe'. Read Borges for the rest of your life. You'll never fail to enjoy that. Hell, read every and any thing you can by Borges. Repeat. Michel Tournier, if you can find it. Fuentes. I have to go to bed now.

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 04:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Mmmm...Borges.

You might also check out The Stone Raft, by Jose Saramago.

― Su (BoredInsomniac), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 09:30 (twenty-one years ago)

A reiteration for Borges. And for de Bernieres. The South American trilogy is more tasty than a Veggie Max at Subway.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 11:42 (twenty-one years ago)

cortazar

― slow learner (slow learner), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 12:28 (twenty-one years ago)

s: cortazar, marquez, borges, master & margarita, the street of crocodiles (bruno schulz). i'm not sure if i served the king of england belongs in this genre, but i'm going to include it because everyone needs to read it.

― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 13:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Gonna second the Marquez and Borges. Also a bunch of great children's lit: Robert Cormier, first and foremost.

― x Jeremy (Atila the Honeybun), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 14:52 (twenty-one years ago)

'Blow up and other stories' by Julio Cortazar is great. 'Perfume' by Patrick Suskind is one of my all time favorites. And 'Tales of Hoffman' by ETA Hoffman is also great.

― bookdwarf (bookdwarf), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 15:24 (twenty-one years ago)

"Lanark" by Alasdair Gray
"Little, Big" by John Crowley
Kafka, Franz
Maybe D. Barthelme?

― st. downes (sdownes), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 16:15 (twenty-one years ago)

lauren OTM re: Hrabal and Bulgakov.

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 18:35 (twenty-one years ago)

'The New Life' by Orhan Pamuk
'The Third Policeman' by Flann O Brien

― Joe Kay (feethurt), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 19:28 (twenty-one years ago)

Give "Green Grass, Running Water" by Thomas King a try. I loved it.

― Elan Morgan, Wednesday, 12 May 2004 20:13 (twenty-one years ago)

"The Passion" by Jeanette Winterson

― holojames (holojames), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 20:58 (twenty-one years ago)

House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende (my introduction to the wonderful world of magical realism).

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Thursday, 13 May 2004 05:12 (twenty-one years ago)

In Praise of the Stepmother by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
And does Tom Robbins count?

― Fred, Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:05 (twenty-one years ago)

"Things Invisible To See" by Nancy Willard.

― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Argh! Paulo Coelho!

*Bangs head against wall. Picks fight with random passer by.*

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:04 (twenty-one years ago)

i don't get it Mikey. you love him? can't stand him? forever forgetting to honor him? which book is the best to begin with?

― slow learner (slow learner), Thursday, 13 May 2004 23:16 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know if The Wrestler's Cruel Study by Stephen Dobyns is magic realism, but I don't know what else to call it. It's not really a fantasy novel. It's about philosophy and it has wrestlers and gods and gorillas in it. Definitely worth reading. It's also very funny. I am also a fan of his poetry and his short stories and his mystery novels. The one suspense/horror book I read of his, The Church Of Dead Girls, wasn't as good.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 14 May 2004 00:05 (twenty-one years ago)

I vote with Fred, to have Tom Robbins count on this thread - how else could one classify his collected works? (Er, besides haluciogenic dreams, of course.)

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 14 May 2004 00:17 (twenty-one years ago)

of course it's possible that "magical realism" is a vile and useless term that is only needed because some people think "fantasy" is only for the plebes and to read such a thing would sully their refined minds.

― man, Friday, 14 May 2004 00:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, it originally just referred to the latin american writers, no? wasn't there a book or essay or article about Marquez et al that used that term to describe their writing? Someone else probably knows more about it than I do. In fact, I know someone does, cuz i hardly know anything about it. But, anyway, later, it was used for people like Alice Hoffman and the rest.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 14 May 2004 00:42 (twenty-one years ago)

If Tom Robbins gets in then Vonnegut - his lord and master - gets in as well.

― aimurchie, Friday, 14 May 2004 08:23 (twenty-one years ago)

"Genre of meticulously realistic painting of imaginary scenes and fantastic images. Paulo Coelo is a dick."

That's 'Definition Magic Realism' from Google. With added bits by Mikey G.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Friday, 14 May 2004 09:00 (twenty-one years ago)

oh. got it.

― slow learner (slow learner), Friday, 14 May 2004 11:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Richard Bach, Paulo Coelho are both dicks but Illusions and The Alchemist are both popular books and it doesn't hurt to recommend these books to people not yet ready for Mikhail Bulgakov, Ernst Jünger, etc. You are forgetting that some people do actually like Britney Spears' music (my ex gf for instance).

― Fred (Fred), Friday, 14 May 2004 17:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, speaking of Vonnegut, "Slaughterhouse Five!"

― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 14 May 2004 21:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Cold Turkey By Kurt Vonnegut

― Fred (Fred), Saturday, 15 May 2004 11:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Gotta be Amos Tutuola, esp. The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
Also gotta be some of the early fucked-up Margaret Atwood, esp. Surfacing if memory serves me right.
And can we get a shout-out for the inventor of the modern magical realism novel, Mr. Ralph Ellison, and his Invisible Man?

― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Sunday, 16 May 2004 13:31 (twenty-one years ago)

"Aunt Julia & The Scriptwriter" by Mario Vargas Llosa, magic realism meets popular culture (more or less). And Borges' collected non-ficiton from a few years back was startling, really great, but I don't know if n/f qualifies as M.R.

― lovebug starski, Sunday, 16 May 2004 16:03 (twenty-one years ago)

who was the first person to use this term?

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 13:52 (twenty-one years ago)

The term magic realism was first used by the German art critic Frank Roh, initially to describe a group of painters in the 1920s who were in the process of recreating traditional depictions of reality.
-Wikipedia

― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 15:23 (twenty-one years ago)

II. The magic of being and the magic of causality: Roh reconsidered

It isn't difficult to trace the entomology of this change as the term made its way from
1920s Germany to Latin America in the 1960s. After Roh coined the term, it slowly
took on a life of its own. Translated into Spanish by the phenomenologist José Ortega
y Gasset in the 1920s, Roh's essay and the philosophy behind it were quickly
forgotten. But the term continued to pop up here and there in various Spanish-language
journals over the ensuing decades, until it was finally applied to One Hundred Years
of Solitude by critics looking for a term to describe a new literary movement in the
immediate aftermath of that seminal work.(

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 15:36 (twenty-one years ago)

My quote is from here: http://home.sprynet.com/~awhit/review4c.htm

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 15:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Thanks for the recommendations, I'm slowly weeding my way through to determine what to order next. There's also a very informative article in this month's "Flaunt" magazine about Spanish and Latin American authors for those interested.

― jordache, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 03:56 (twenty-one years ago)

two weeks pass...

Amy Bender's short stories are highly surreal, but not in an oh-so-reassuring magical way.

― eleni (eleni), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 05:09 (twenty-one years ago)

six years pass...

Argh! Paulo Coelho!
*Bangs head against wall. Picks fight with random passer by.*
― Mikey G (Mikey G), Thursday, May 13, 2004 11:04 AM

Don't ask permission. Do it now and regret later
8:53 AM Dec 17th via web
Retweeted by 100+ people

paulocoelho
Paulo Coelho

To @justinbieber : haters are confused admirers who don't understand why people love you
5:49 PM Dec 16th via web
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paulocoelho
Paulo Coelho

― markers, Wednesday, 22 December 2010 21:36 (fourteen years ago)

I am one of the few ppl in this planet that did not like "Inception" / Sou uma das poucas pessoas no planeta q não gostou de "A Origem"
7:36 PM Dec 7th via web
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paulocoelho
Paulo Coelho

― markers, Wednesday, 22 December 2010 21:38 (fourteen years ago)

Raising my glass to @Pink "Raise your Glass" #1 Billboard Singles Chart
3:39 PM Dec 1st via web
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paulocoelho
Paulo Coelho

― markers, Wednesday, 22 December 2010 21:44 (fourteen years ago)

As soon as I over 1 million friends here, I will post a question (around this time) and will send 3 signed books to the 3 best answers
6:10 PM Nov 22nd via web
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paulocoelho
Paulo Coelho

― markers, Wednesday, 22 December 2010 21:47 (fourteen years ago)

Fucksake!!!

― buildings with goats on the roof (James Morrison), Wednesday, 22 December 2010 23:43 (fourteen years ago)

I really wanna read some Borges... I'm intrigued by Flatlanders; a good place to start?

― Bernard V. O'Hare (dog latin), Thursday, 23 December 2010 16:00 (fourteen years ago)

the penguin 'collected fictions' would be most of the place to start.

― j., Friday, 24 December 2010 04:47 (fourteen years ago)

"Selected Non-fictions" - maybe even better.

― R Baez, Friday, 24 December 2010 04:53 (fourteen years ago)

also key, and urgent—but not fictional. more or less. i think.

― j., Friday, 24 December 2010 05:38 (fourteen years ago)

THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE is probably the best magic realist novel I've ever read

― the pinefox, Friday, 24 December 2010 10:39 (fourteen years ago)

seven months pass...

"He who does not read Cortazar is doomed" -Pablo Neruda

― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 8 August 2011 16:05 (fourteen years ago)

The rest of that quote is brilliant: "Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder...and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair."

― not bulimic, just a cat (James Morrison), Monday, 8 August 2011 23:57 (fourteen years ago)

one year passes...

Just struck me that Rushdie's JOSEPH ANTON has rather curiously sunk back into a degree of obscurity compared to what one would at one point have expected from the revealing memoir by this particular writer.

I mean no one seems to talk about it or be excited or impressed by it now.

The biggest Rushdie fan I know was unimpressed by it.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 20 March 2013 09:58 (twelve years ago)

that no one gives a shit about that book is literally the least surprising thing that has ever happened, including events like sun continues to rise, gravity continues to operate, pope continues to be in rome, etc.

― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Wednesday, 20 March 2013 23:58 (twelve years ago)

Richard Bach, Paulo Coelho are both dicks but Illusions and The Alchemist are both popular books and it doesn't hurt to recommend these books to people not yet ready for Mikhail Bulgakov, Ernst Jünger, etc. You are forgetting that some people do actually like Britney Spears' music (my ex gf for instance).
― Fred (Fred), Friday, 14 May 2004 18:17 (8 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not too late, guys

― beau 'daedaly (wins), Sunday, 24 March 2013 22:47 (twelve years ago)

ten years pass...

people get mean and condescending on here if you don't talk about marx their way and ofc i don't know how to talk about it but i've never read a 'magical realist' book which comes anywhere *close* to the vivid magic which capital peels out, layer by startling layer, from reality
— illegal fox infrastructure (@HINIONGE) June 19, 2023

― xyzzzz__, Monday, 19 June 2023 10:43 (two years ago)

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