MAGIC REALISM
IAN MITCHELL
Everyone wants it but no one can tell me what it is.
Anyone got a good, working definition of 'Magic Realism'.
Ian
Ejucaided Redneck
Let me get back to you on that.
I'm still trying to figure out what in the merry hell is meant by
"metafiction."
IAN MITCHELL
Ejucaided Redneck wrote:
'Metafiction' - yep, that's a hard one too
Ian
Corwin
IAN MITCHELL wrote:
> Everyone wants it but no one can tell me what it is.
>
> Anyone got a good, working definition of 'Magic Realism'.
>
> Ian
A good oxymoron, for one.
If I remember right, it is magic described in a 'realistic' manner. In
other words, it is made to sound as if it is an everyday law of nature
like chemistry or physics properties.
I think.
Later,
Mike
cor...@ix.netcom.com
http://www.netcom.com/~corwin/index.htm
Kemnitzer,Trollman
On Thu, 19 Feb 1998 21:41:49 +0000, Corwin <cor...@ix.netcom.com>
wrote:
>IAN MITCHELL wrote:
>
>> Everyone wants it but no one can tell me what it is.
>>
>> Anyone got a good, working definition of 'Magic Realism'.
>>
>> Ian
>
> A good oxymoron, for one.
>
>If I remember right, it is magic described in a 'realistic' manner. In
>other words, it is made to sound as if it is an everyday law of nature
>like chemistry or physics properties.
Nope, not at all. It's fiction written in the realist manner, in the
realist tradition, with flights of fancy growing out of the everyday
without any break. Think "100 years of solitude" "Like Water for
Chocolate," "Animal Dreams," "House of the spirits," etc.
The "realist tradition" goes back to Hugo, Zola, Gorky, Dreiser, etc:
having a base in everyday realities, and usually a class
consciousness. Most of these writers describe mundane things with
great vividness, and there is a continuum from personal and emotional
things to political and social things.
The "magic" in some cases is barely there, is dream images or
dreamlike thinking, and other times is barely different from metaphors
or heightened description, and other times is the backbone of the
story.
I haven't, by the way, noticed that publishers are clamoring for it
these days -- as a publishing fad, that's at least ten years ago: as a
way to write, I think it has been subsumed into the toolkit, and you
can write that way if that's your way to write and it will neither
harm nor help you if you do. But if that's how you write, be sure
you don't use it for an excuse to have no story logic, because that's
not what it's about.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Writer List