Fantasy / Magic realism
Michael Caldwell
this computer has been having a fit, and I've only just managed
to convince it that it isn't April 2000. Could someone just drop
a quick reply on group if they see this and it looks like no-one
else has replied? Just to see if it's getting through. I will be
*very* glad when my sister brings me down my own laptop again.
Anyway, pursuant to my pledge in the "signal to noise" thread,
which message I'm also unsure if it got through, here's the
first of the daily 3 new threads.
I've been re-reading both Bradbury collections and "The Years
best Fantasy and Horror" collection (1999), and this got me
thinking. In her editorial, Terri Windling talked about the
inability to distinguish fantasy and magical realism, where
the last can in fact contain no overtly magical proceses.
I was thinking about this in relation to Bradubury's stories
"The Wonderful Ice-cream Suit" and "The Town Where Noone
Got Off". Neither story has anything in it which is in any
way supernatural, or fantastical, and yet both stories are,
to my mind, definate candidates for inclusions into the
magical realist genre. The suit which is the focus of the
first story is clearly shown to be a spiritually transforming
object, viewed with awe by it's owners. The coincidence
and psychology of the second story likewise, IMHO bumps
it into this category, though coincidence is not usually,
in itself, enough to bump a story from the normal mystery
pigeonhole.
Anyway, what do people here think? Is there any useful
divide between fantasy and magic realism? Do you need
any actual magic to be involved for it to meet the
criteria of these categories? Do you think that the 2
stories I listed do indeed fit into this broader category?
If not, why not?
--
Andrew Wells
>Well, I'm entirely unsure whether this message will get through,
>this computer has been having a fit, and I've only just managed
>to convince it that it isn't April 2000. Could someone just drop
>a quick reply on group if they see this and it looks like no-one
>else has replied? Just to see if it's getting through. I will be
>*very* glad when my sister brings me down my own laptop again.
Got it.
Andrew
--
Andrew Wells
Replace nospam with my first name to reach me
Eric Walker
[...]
>Anyway, what do people here think? Is there any useful divide between
>fantasy and magic realism? Do you need any actual magic to be
>involved for it to meet the criteria of these categories? Do you
>think that the 2 stories I listed
[Bradubury's "The Wonderful Ice-cream Suit" and "The Town Where Noone
>Got Off"]
> do indeed fit into this broader
>category? If not, why not?
I think that "magic realism" is a sorely overused buzzphrase that has,
by dint of that overuse, lost any consensus meaning or value. (Recall
that it was coined to apply to painting, and only acquired literary
application by transfer.)
The loss is a shame, because there are a couple of categories of tale
that could each use a simple, commonly understood designator, and MR
has been used for each, plus other things, muddying the waters.
The first class--for which the need for a class designation is, I
think, lesser--is genuine fantasy--meaning tales in which what we take
to be the natural laws of the universe are breached--but set in
conventional, familiar contemporary milieus (milieux?). That sort is,
as best I understand it (which may not be well), what the term was
first used for in literature.
The other class is tales like the Bradburys adduced above, which have
the feel, the flavor, of fantastic or magical happenings, but which
are simply portraying real things in magical or poetic terms, *as if*
they were true magic. That class really needs a name. It is a class
a great deal older than the term MR, as witness, for example,
Chesterton's 1905 _Club of Queer Trades_. (Chesterton did many tales
of that sort.)
Today, I think the term "magical realism" is best avoided like the
plague as being too confusing and ill-defined.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
http://owlcroft.com/sfandf
Richard Horton
>Anyway, what do people here think? Is there any useful
>divide between fantasy and magic realism? Do you need
>any actual magic to be involved for it to meet the
>criteria of these categories? Do you think that the 2
>stories I listed do indeed fit into this broader category?
>If not, why not?
Oddly, I think actual "magic" (as in clearly unexplainable by natural
means events) is necessary for MR but not for Fantasy. I say this
because I put the canonical "non-magic Fantasy" novel, _Swordspoint_,
firmly in the Fantasy category.
I do think that there are useful distinctions between Fantasy and
Magic Realism. (Certainly the latter can be called a subset of the
former, though.) The simplest expression of my views is that in
Fantasy the magic (if present) should be internally consistent -- or,
that is, it should be in a basic sense part of the world in which the
book is set -- and usable by characters. In MR the magic will more
typically be unrepeatable, not usable in any reliable sense, and
fundamentally symbolic (by which I don't mean that it is only
symbolic, nor that it doesn't really happen within the world of that
novel).
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>The first class--for which the need for a class designation is, I
>think, lesser--is genuine fantasy--meaning tales in which what we take
>to be the natural laws of the universe are breached--but set in
>conventional, familiar contemporary milieus (milieux?).
(both can be used.)
Isn't this what's generally called "urban fantasy?"
vlatko
--
_Neither Fish Nor Fowl_
http://www.webart.hr/nrnm/eng/index.htm
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr
Michael Caldwell
> Michael Caldwell wrote:
>>Anyway, what do people here think? Is there any useful
>>divide between fantasy and magic realism? Do you need
>>any actual magic to be involved for it to meet the
>>criteria of these categories? Do you think that the 2
>>stories I listed do indeed fit into this broader category?
>>If not, why not?
> Oddly, I think actual "magic" (as in clearly unexplainable by
> natural means events) is necessary for MR but not for Fantasy.
> I say this because I put the canonical "non-magic Fantasy" novel,
> _Swordspoint_, firmly in the Fantasy category.
As indeed do I. For me though it's more because "Swordspoint"
has both the right sort of setting (Invented "fantasylike"
world), and genre features that it doesn't *need* magic. For
me, Magic is a near-sufficient, but not a neccessary property
of fantasy. Things like setting and genre features are likewise
near-sufficient, but non-neccessary. Something becomes fantasy
when enough of the near-sufficent properties coagulate.
> I do think that there are useful distinctions between Fantasy
> and Magic Realism. (Certainly the latter can be called a
> subset of the former, though.) The simplest expression of my
> views is that in Fantasy the magic (if present) should be
> internally consistent -- or, that is, it should be in a basic
> sense part of the world in which the book is set -- and usable by
> characters. In MR the magic will more typically be unrepeatable,
> not usable in any reliable sense, and fundamentally symbolic
> (by which I don't mean that it is only symbolic, nor that it
> doesn't really happen within the world of that novel).
Interesting definition. Of course you might get into difficulty
with that last one, as magic is used in a "fundamentally symbolic"
manner in an awful lot of older "fantasy" books, including, for
example "Frankinstein", "Dracula", and just about all the rest
of the nice gothic horro pieces. Actually, depending on how you
look at the definition of "symbolism", "The Silmarillion" might
just go in there too.
Anyway, do you think the two Bradbury stories I listed would fit
into this "magic realist" definition of yours, or would they fall
back out into "Mainstream fiction"?
--
Michael Caldwell
> Michael Caldwell wrote:
>>Anyway, what do people here think? Is there any useful divide
>>between fantasy and magic realism? Do you need any actual magic
>>to be involved for it to meet the criteria of these categories?
>>Do you think that the 2 stories I listed
> [Bradubury's "The Wonderful Ice-cream Suit" and "The Town Where Noone
> >Got Off"]
>>do indeed fit into this broader category? If not, why not?
> I think that "magic realism" is a sorely overused buzzphrase
Like "Science fiction" you mean? When does a phrase which is
used a lot become "sorely overused"?
> that has,
> by dint of that overuse, lost any consensus meaning or value.
I'll take your word for it on the matter of "consensus meaning",
since I don't really follow magical realism, or at least haven't.
The serindipitous find of 4 or 5 of the books, reccomended in
the years best collection I started reading yesterday, in the
remainder bins might just change that. However, I'll note again
in passing the lack of *any* sort of consensus meaning to the
terms "Science fiction" or "Fantasy", as demonstrated on a
semi-regular basis on this very group when a newby trips over
that can of worms again.
However, just because something lacks "consensus value", it
does not mean that it lacks "value". If nothing else, the way
in which a person uses it, or defines it, tells you a lot about
how they think, and makes you think about how you yourself
think about the divide.
>(Recall
> that it was coined to apply to painting, and only acquired literary
> application by transfer.)
Note that language shift doesn't debase either the original
or new meanings of that word. Note "gay" etc.
> The loss is a shame, because there are a couple of categories
> of tale that could each use a simple, commonly understood
> designator, and MR has been used for each, plus other things,
> muddying the waters.
Why is it that you believe it's not possible to coherantly
use the same term to apply to *both* types? Confusion isn't
my favourite thing, but IMHO it isn't inherantly bad either.
> The first class--for which the need for a class designation is,
> I think, lesser--is genuine fantasy--meaning tales in which
> what we take to be the natural laws of the universe are
> breached--but set in conventional, familiar contemporary milieus
> (milieux?). That sort is, as best I understand it (which may not
> be well), what the term was first used for in literature.
I take it that you don't mean "Urban fantasy" here? What do
you see the prime differences being between the two, or do you
consider UF to be a subset of MR?
> The other class is tales like the Bradburys adduced above, which
> have the feel, the flavor, of fantastic or magical happenings,
> but which are simply portraying real things in magical or poetic
> terms, *as if* they were true magic. That class really needs a
> name.
Indeed it does. There are plenty of this type of story too,
Roald Dahl for example made a good living writing them,
though he obviously went right down into MR (The story
about feeding the child on royal jelly) and true fantasy
reasonably often as well.
>It is a class a great deal older than the term MR,
Well, yes, but I'll note again that this doesn't invalidate
the term. There are many things for which we use new words
that have been around for *far* longer than the words which
we currently use for them.
> as witness, for example, Chesterton's 1905 _Club of Queer Trades_.
> (Chesterton did many tales of that sort.)
Indeed. However, I might just quibble about Chesterton. He did
indeed use heavy symbolism in his tales, much of it of a heavy
religious / spiritual nature, however, he doesn't in my mind
acheive the right sort of atmosphere in most of his tales for
them to be classed in this category. Although, rethinking, I
admit that a few do... Hmm. I suspect that he might be
sitting right on the dividing line of my definition of what
is and is not in this category, because I can't seem to decide
either way.
> Today, I think the term "magical realism" is best avoided like
> the plague as being too confusing and ill-defined.
Fair enough, though I'm not sure I agree. It was ineresting
to hear your definitions anyway.
--
Chad R. Orzel
<ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 01 Jul 2001 03:38:37 +1300, Michael Caldwell wrote:
>>Anyway, what do people here think? Is there any useful divide between
>>fantasy and magic realism? Do you need any actual magic to be
>>involved for it to meet the criteria of these categories? Do you
>>think that the 2 stories I listed
>[Bradubury's "The Wonderful Ice-cream Suit" and "The Town Where Noone
>>Got Off"]
>> do indeed fit into this broader
>>category? If not, why not?
>I think that "magic realism" is a sorely overused buzzphrase that has,
>by dint of that overuse, lost any consensus meaning or value. (Recall
>that it was coined to apply to painting, and only acquired literary
>application by transfer.)
I'm not sure I see that, but based on a lot of other threads here, you
seem to be inhabiting a largely parallel literary universe, at least
in terms of critical terminology and the like. I wish Graydon were
still around-- it'd be interesting to see if you're both posting from
the same alternate universe...
At any rate, I don't think that occasional (or even moderately
frequent) misuse of a term renders it worthless. But that may stem
from years of watching physics terms hacked into oblivion by technical
semi-literates...
>The loss is a shame, because there are a couple of categories of tale
>that could each use a simple, commonly understood designator, and MR
>has been used for each, plus other things, muddying the waters.
>
>The first class--for which the need for a class designation is, I
>think, lesser--is genuine fantasy--meaning tales in which what we take
>to be the natural laws of the universe are breached--but set in
>conventional, familiar contemporary milieus (milieux?). That sort is,
>as best I understand it (which may not be well), what the term was
>first used for in literature.
I think you're mistaken in that. The classic "magic realist" works
fall more in your second category, namely:
>The other class is tales like the Bradburys adduced above, which have
>the feel, the flavor, of fantastic or magical happenings, but which
>are simply portraying real things in magical or poetic terms, *as if*
>they were true magic. That class really needs a name. It is a class
>a great deal older than the term MR, as witness, for example,
>Chesterton's 1905 _Club of Queer Trades_. (Chesterton did many tales
>of that sort.)
(Particularly in the case of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who IIRC has more
or less flatly stated that the "magic" stuff in his books is
metaphorical...)
Looking at these categories, though, I'm not sure there's enough
difference between them to really demand a distinction. Assuming, that
is, that you pull "urban fantasy" works like the various Borderlands
stories out of the first category. Is there really a need for two
different names for these categories. What's wrong with using "magic
realism" for both?
Later,
OilCan
Eric Walker
All >> quotes are my earlier post; unless otherwise noted, > is
Michael Caldwell. There are elisions throughout, for brevity.
>> I think that "magic realism" is a sorely overused buzzphrase
>Like "Science fiction" you mean? When does a phrase which is
>used a lot become "sorely overused"?
[And Chad Orzel wrote: "At any rate, I don't think that
occasional (or even moderately frequent) misuse of a term renders
it worthless. But that may stem from years of watching physics
terms hacked into oblivion by technical semi-literates..."]
It is overused when it is widely applied to things only somewhat
alike.
>. . . I'll note again in passing the lack of *any* sort of
>consensus meaning to the terms "Science fiction" or "Fantasy", as
>demonstrated on a semi-regular basis on this very group when a
>newby trips over that can of worms again.
Which may signify that those terms too are sorely overused
buzzphrases--though I think that, while there is not a consensus
on their exact meanings, the differences arise in a limited number of
cases on the border between them; I don't think anyone is calling
_The Wind in the Willows_ science fiction or _Big Planet_ fantasy.
But I think, as I said later, that MR is being used for two whole
classes as distinct as science fiction and fantasy, or nearly so.
>However, just because something lacks "consensus value", it
>does not mean that it lacks "value". If nothing else, the way in
>which a person uses it, or defines it, tells you a lot about how
>they think, and makes you think about how you yourself think
>about the divide.
True, but only assuming you can quickly derive a reliable reading
on how another is defining or using the term. Too often, "magic
realism" is supposed by its users to be self-explanatory, so we
have to dig deep to get some idea of what each thinks that "self-
evident" explanation is.
>> The loss is a shame, because there are a couple of categories
>> of tale that could each use a simple, commonly understood
>> designator, and MR has been used for each, plus other things,
>> muddying the waters.
>Why is it that you believe it's not possible to coherantly
>use the same term to apply to *both* types? Confusion isn't my
>favourite thing, but IMHO it isn't inherantly bad either.
In mine it is. "Magic realism" is a phrase, words, language: the
function of language is to enable one careful user to place
thoughts in the mind of another careful user with precision and
elegance. The more precision and elegance (in the mathematical
sense), the better the usage. Worse, one user of the phrase may
mean one thing and a hearer or reader another without either of
them being aware--or at least not for some time--that they are at
cross purposes.
>>The first class--for which the need for a class designation is,
>>I think, lesser--is genuine fantasy--meaning tales in which what
>>we take to be the natural laws of the universe are breached--but
>>set in conventional, familiar contemporary milieus (milieux?).
>>That sort is, as best I understand it (which may not be well),
>>what the term was first used for in literature.
>I take it that you don't mean "Urban fantasy" here? What do you
>see the prime differences being between the two, or do you
>consider UF to be a subset of MR?
[And Vlatko asked: "Isn't this what's generally called 'urban
fantasy?'"]
I am aware of the term "urban fantasy," but consider it too
limiting for the general class I am describing above, in that the
setting need not be urban for a tale to belong. Indeed, I really
should have omitted the word "contemporary"--to imply that only
contemporary cities are "real" (as in "realism") is, I think,
too confining. We are only dealing with settings in which magic
is not generally *thought* to work, and in which its workings in
the tale seem special and unusual. I imagine that a tale set on a
farm in 1732 could fit the category (I won't go to the wall on
that, but it's my sense of the thing).
I consider "urban fantasy" to be a subset, though a very large
fraction, of the class I described--but note that I did not label
that class MR because I do not use MR as a label at all myself,
just because of the confusion I see in doing so.
[And Chad Orzel said: "I think you're mistaken in that. The
classic "magic realist" works fall more in your second category"]
That may well be so; which had the term first, though, is, I fear,
no longer significant.
>>The other class is tales like the Bradburys adduced above,
>>which have the feel, the flavor, of fantastic or magical
>>happenings, but which are simply portraying real things in
>>magical or poetic terms, *as if* they were true magic. That
>>class really needs a name.
(Those tales too need not be in modern urban settings: I believe
someone mentioned "the canonical 'non-magic Fantasy' novel,
_Swordspoint_.")
>> Today, I think the term "magical realism" is best avoided like
>> the plague as being too confusing and ill-defined.
>Fair enough, though I'm not sure I agree. It was ineresting to
>hear your definitions anyway.
Thank you; please keep in mind, though, that the definitions were
of two somewhat different classes of tale to either of which (and,
in usage, both of which) the term can be applied--I gave no
definition of MR itself just because I think the term now too
fuzzed to be able to have much real meaning.
And Chad Orzel said:
>Looking at these categories, though, I'm not sure there's enough
>difference between them to really demand a distinction.
>Assuming, that is, that you pull "urban fantasy" works like the
>various Borderlands stories out of the first category. Is there
>really a need for two different names for these categories.
>What's wrong with using "magic realism" for both?
Well, it's not a hanging crime, to be sure. But I feel that most
readers would like to differentiate the two, and that most, when
using the phrase MR, actually have only one of those categories in
mind--but which one varies with who is using it. We will, I
think, remain fuzzed until some clever soul devises a term for one
or the other (or a term for each) that becomes widely recognized.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
(I left all of this because I couldn't decide where to cut.)
You haven't been here for the "urban vs. suburban vs. rural fantasy"
discussion, right?
Anyway, I think the confusion is stemming from the fact that you used
the term "breached", which would imply a suddenness of occurence and
an unusuality of the phenomenon. *That* might cover a goodish part of
the "urban" fantasy.
But, and this is just thinking aloud, "magic realism" is actually a
work happening in a recognisably realistic world where a magical
element is not noticed as a breach by the characters. For instance,
Alice Hoffman's _Practical Magic_ has the women doing magic and
spells, but nobody else is aware of that and they take it for granted.
Works in similar vein would be John Nichols's _Milagro Beanfield War_
or ... no, I lost it.
I see that the line between such "magical realism" and, for instance,
"secret histories" or "urban fantasy" is very fuzzy. It might be that
the the line is quite hard to put down and it might be that I'm unable
to put it more precisely.
Evelyn C. Leeper
Michael Caldwell <absu...@es.co.nz> wrote:
>
> Anyway, what do people here think? Is there any useful
> divide between fantasy and magic realism? Do you need
> any actual magic to be involved for it to meet the
> criteria of these categories? Do you think that the 2
> stories I listed do indeed fit into this broader category?
> If not, why not?
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper/magreal.htm
--
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
NOTE: Ignore both the man behind the curtain and the address in the headers.
Please use evelyn-dot-leeper-at-excite-dot-com to mail to me as the
address in the header will stop working in a few weeks.
Richard Horton
<absu...@es.co.nz> wrote:
>Anyway, do you think the two Bradbury stories I listed would fit
>into this "magic realist" definition of yours, or would they fall
>back out into "Mainstream fiction"?
I need to reread them -- I don't remember them that well. I'll report
back -- when, I don't know.
Gerry Quinn
>
>I am aware of the term "urban fantasy," but consider it too
>limiting for the general class I am describing above, in that the
>setting need not be urban for a tale to belong. Indeed, I really
>should have omitted the word "contemporary"--to imply that only
>contemporary cities are "real" (as in "realism") is, I think,
>too confining. We are only dealing with settings in which magic
>is not generally *thought* to work, and in which its workings in
>the tale seem special and unusual. I imagine that a tale set on a
>farm in 1732 could fit the category (I won't go to the wall on
>that, but it's my sense of the thing).
>
I think magic realism should be reserved for a particular literary
style, which has nothing to do with magi or science fiction. It's more
like anachronism - it ignores inconsistency in the interest of some
generally modernist literary trope.
- Gerry Quinn