[Yobmod]

Hi Everybody,
this is my first thread, which i've started because as far as i can tell there isn't one devoted to the sub-genre (genre? style?) that is most commonly refered to as Magic Realism.

So i was wondering what people thoughts / opinions were on this area.

Do you read any?
Do you enjoy them? :)
Do you miss the cliche's of epic fantasy, or is it a nice break? :rolleyes:
Does anyone even have a workable definition that would exclude urban fantasy? :confused:
Or is there essentially no difference between magic realism and fantasy set in the real world? :confused:
Is the mainstream acceptance of magic realism completely arbitary / due to better writing / more adult front-covers? :p

Do people have recomendations that don't get mentioned often (maybe 'cos they missed out on mainstream recognition, but are not readily accepted by fantasy) and if i move away from the biggest names (Marquez / Rushdie) will i find a load of trash? Is there a magic realist equivalent of Goodkind?

That will do for now i think, oh and before someone posts: 'GRR Martin is the best and ASoIaF is realistic and has magic', ive read them, they're ok, i'm not interested :D

[Yobmod]

Here's a definition from M.H. Abrams' A Glossary of Literary Terms:

The term magic realism, originally applied in the 1920s to a school of painters, is used to describe the prose fiction of Jorge Luis Borges in Argentina, as well as the work of writers such as Gabriel García Márquez in Colombia, Gunter Grass in Germany, and John Fowles in England. These writers interweave, in an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism in representing ordinary events and descriptive details together with fantastic and dreamlike elements, as well as with materials derived from myth and fairy tales.
...These novels violate, in various ways, standard novelistic expectations by drastic -- and sometimes highly effective -- experiments with subject matter, form, style, temporal sequence, and fusions of the everyday, the fantastic, the mythical, and the nightmarish, in renderings that blur traditional distinctions between what is serious or trivial, horrible or ludicrous, tragic or comic.

And to answer some of my own questions:
I read magic realism when i can find it, and i've enjoyed what i've read. However, ive only read those books that have garnered huge amounts of praise (Eg One Hundred Years of Solitude because the author got the nobel prize, Midnight's Children won the Booker of Bookers', and next up is Kafka etc) so i'm probably getting a skewed view of the area.
Also non of the magical realism i've read has been by an american / british author and i'm sure it must exist, but maybe its not labelled as such.

The little Urban fantasy i've read only differs in that the magical aspects in magic realism are regarded as a bit unusual (or comonplace) but not impossible whereas in urban fantasy the magic is secret or hidden and most people are never aware of it, let alone believe in it.

So the freaky things that go on in Macondo in 100 years... (people floating to heaven / being incredible strong / being carried off by ants) are no more remarkable than the run of the mill drama of living in a close knit comunity. Hence Magic realism.

but in the Land of Laughs by J. Carrol, which is also set in an isolated comunity, the people have a secret (an author living there changes reality by writing about it, eg. turning people into dogs), and when outsiders find out about there's amazement and disbelief. Hence Urban fantasy.

[Archren]

I have read some things that were presented to me as "Magic Realism" and they were very interesting. I don't generally go seeking it out, but will read it if recommended to me.

However, from the limited selection I was exposed to in college, it seemed that if something with fantastic elements was written by a non-European they called it "Magic Realism" and respected it highly, but if it was written by a European they called it "Fantasy" and dismissed it. That is not by any means what the phrase was coined to mean, but it seemed to me to be the way it was being applied.

Did anyone else notice that trend?

[ChrisW]

I have no idea what you people are talking about :confused:.

umm is aSoIaF just plain old fantasy which i'm assuming "magic realism" isn't?

[KatG]

Magic realism is a literary movement -- a type of story-telling which mixes the real world with the fantastic in symbolic and archtypial ways. Kaftka's novella, "Metamorphisis," in which a European man wakes up to find he's become a giant cockroach, is one of the most famous examples of magic realism, but the term is mostly associated with the Latin and South American literary style writers who have championed it. More recently, Indian and West Asian writers who have a long cultural tradition of fantasy elements in their fiction, have gotten a lot of attention for their work and these stories are often called magic realism as well.

Magic realism is not an official sub-genre of the fantasy genre, but is instead considered non-genre fantasy and is not usually sold in the genre sections of bookstores. Many, though not all, of the magic realist writers come from countries that do not have a separate fantasy genre, though Marquez and other Latin American magic realist writers are very supportive of the sff genres in the press.

The fantasy genre is a market category specifically created by sf publishers in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia to provide fiction for fantasy fans. It is marketed primarily in a special section of bookstores with sf, and has four basic sub-genres:

Epic fantasy (also previously called high fantasy or sword & sorcery fantasy) -- Stories set in a pre-industrial setting, whether the historical past or an imaginary realm; usually epic in scope in plot and number of characters.

Humorous/comic fantasy -- Fantasy stories meant to be humorous or satirical and may be set in the future, past, present or imaginary realm.

Dark fantasy -- Stories that have a dark, edgy, Gothic tone and plot and are meant to both spook and titillate; may be set in the future, past, present or imaginary realm.

Urban fantasy (also called contemporary fantasy) -- Fantasy stories set in a post-industrial setting (1800's or later.) This setting may be in the recent post-industrial past, the present, or the future, or set in an imaginary realm that is post-industrial in nature.

Urban fantasy got its sub-genre name because of cyberpunk sf, which developed into an official and popular sf sub-genre in the 1980's. The sff publishers wanted to let fans of cyberpunk know that there was a fantasy equivalent involving the modern world with high tech and urban centers. In reality, a lot of "urban" fantasy does not take place in an urban setting and has little in common with cyberpunk sf. For that reason, the term "contemporary" is also used a lot to denote the sub-genre.

Recently, discontent with the name "urban fantasy" has led to a possible new fantasy sub-genre, dubbed awkwardly the New Weird. This sub-genre is a mix of horror fantasy, dark fantasy and the grittier urban fantasy titles. Whether other sub-genres will be designated in the market, splitting up urban/contemporary fantasy further, is yet to be known. However, it is unlikely that any new sub-genres will include magic realist authors, since they are published by non-genre publishers. It's also unlikely you'll find a magic realist equivalent of Goodkind, but you might find some urban fantasy equivalents such as Neil Gaiman or China Mieville.

Non-genre fantasy you might like (not necessarily magic realists):

Bertice Berry -- "Redemption Song," "The Haunting of Hip-Hop"
Michael Chabon -- "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"
Jonathan Letham -- "The Fortress of Solitude"
Sherman Alexie
Laurie Foos -- "Ex Utero"
Glen David Gold -- "Carter Beats the Devil"
John Updike -- "The Witches of Eastwick"
Toni Morrison -- "Beloved"
Alice Sebold -- "The Lovely Bones"
Amy Tan
Kate Atkinson -- "Emotionally Weird"
Jonathan Safran Foer -- "Everything is Illuminated"
William Goldman -- "The Princess Bride"
Charles Johnson -- "Middle Passage"
Stephen King -- "Bag of Bones," "The Green Mile"
William Kotzwinkle -- "The Bear Went Over the Mountain"
Annie E. Proulx -- "The Shipping News"
Tom Robbins
George Saunders -- "Pastoralia"
Zadie Smith -- "White Teeth"
Louise Erdrich

[Lani]

I think I have only read two novels that would fit into the description for magic realism. One of them is by a Canadian author Robertson Davies called Fifth Business. I can't say I was particularly pleased with the style... the contrasts between magic and reality are too strong and I felt it was neither here nor there. I like to read both fantasy and fiction, but this combination didn't really work too well for me. It might have been the book itself of course, since I found it had some rather slow moments and left many threads unanswered at the end. Surprisingly enough fantasy makes more sense to me than this sort of mixture. It wasn't quite urban fantasy either because urban fantasy even when set in everyday world, sort of totally commits itself to being a fantasy novel without any apparent hesitation. Magic realism from what I saw seemed to use magical elements and then pretend that nothing out of ordinary happened.

The second book that I believe belongs to this genre is Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Eaquivel which I found to be more interesting and entertaining than Fifth Business, but it was written very differently also, but once again the fact that all this magic happens and everyone goes on and ignores it bothered me quite a bit. This was much more of a fun read though and made me accept the genre much more than the former book.

[FicusFan]

Isabel Allende also writes Magical Realism: The House of Spirits and Of Love and Shadows . Some have also called Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren Magical Realism.

[Leiali]

I have never considered Magic Realism and Fantasy in the same breath. I have read quite a fair bit of Magic Realism in the past, Isabelle Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I read Like water for Chocolate too, so I think it does seem to grab the fancy in a similar way to fantasy. One author who also writes Magic Realism but gets overlooked is Louis De Bernieres, who wrote a whole series of books about a South American village which are very funny and engaging, but they have been overshadowed by Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Of all these writers and books, my favourite is Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Charming.

I forgot Rushdie - Midnights Children is well worth a read.

[Yobmod]

Thanks for the recomendations from Kat and Leili and ficus :D

About half of them are on my reading list, but so far i've only read Midnights Children and The Bear that went over the mountain. Both were very good, and the latter is also funny and a comparitively light read for anyone who's put off by dense prose or inscrutable plots. (A bear finds a book manuscript and goes to the city, put on clothes and tries to get published. His obviously bear-like appearance and limited vocabulary and interpersonal skill turns out to be little handicap when it comes to becoming the next big thing in publishing :p ).

Another good introduction (IMO) is Perfume by Patrick Suskind. Its set in 18th century europe and the (anti)-hero has an almost magical sense of smell but no personal odor. His quest to create a perfume that makes him smell human dominates his life - oh, and he's a psycho!


Personaly, ever since i discovered magic realism i've regarded it as another strand of spec fiction. I can understand people not enjoying it as much , but it seems so similar to other types of (non-epic) fantasy. So GRR Martin is a fantasy author, but Fevre dream is only a tiny step from magic realism (people are initially shocked by the vampires, but get over it very quickly).

[intensityxx]

Does anyone even have a workable definition that would exclude urban fantasy? :confused: Why would you want to exclude urban fantasy? Actually there's urban fantasy a la Charles de Lint or Trash Sex Magic, then there's the New Weird form of urban fantasy.