What is "magical realism" even suppose to mean? What's the point of it all? How do I even start with this genre?
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Magical Realism
What is "magical realism" even suppose to mean? What's the point of it all? How do I even start with this genre?
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Realistic settings with magic elements, I guess
Is this magic realist
realistic settings with magic elements can just be urban fantasy, magic realism is when nobody bats an eye when something supernatural happens
imagine there's a vampire
in a fantasy book, the character being a vampire is adressed as something supernatural, right?
in a magic realism book, the narrator simply starts talking about some dude called eddie that lives in a castle and that has a distinct diet that consists of blood, and the obnoxious habit of levitating away from debt-collectors(he's a gambler)
No I mean the same post again and again repeated like a strange horrid cycle, and no one pointing it out
and this post
I'm getting dejavu
Give me a magic realist Black personman I can call out to
katar
El realismo mágico es el variante latinoamericano del género de fantasía baja (es decir, elementos fantásticos sobrepuestos en un ambiente aparentemente real, con personajes que aparentan ser como humanos reales). Lo mismo que se puede decir de anime tales como Ghost Hound o Mononoke aplica tal cual para cualquier obra de autores como García Márquez.
So 'The Master and the Meme' is magical realism too? And 'Faust'?
Sí
>So 'The Master and the Meme' is magical realism too?
Yeah
Someone pill me on Asturias.
I'm about to read 'Mulata'. Read the first few pages it's basically Mayan mythology on every concoction of hallucinogen.
>Read the first few pages it's basically Mayan mythology on every concoction of hallucinogen.
Tell me more, that and his stuff about Guatemalan dictatorship is what interests me
Are you reading in Spanish or English? His works are difficult to grasp even in Spanish sometimes
English, but Rabassa is a 10/10 translator so I'm not worried about a poor translation. In fact, the dizzy swirl of imagery and symbols is excellently conveyed by Rabassa imo.
Have you read any of Asturia's other works, or any other Latin American lit? How were they?
This will be my first Asturias, but I plan on reading Penguin's new translation of his seminal work, 'The President'. I've read pretty much all of Marquez (great writer); Borges (outstanding); a short story collection by Cortazar (it was okay, but I need to read more of this guy); 'Pedro Paramo' by Ruan Julfo which is also a sublime story. But my favourite so far: 'I, The Supreme' by Roa Bastos. Imagine Beckett and Lovecraft and Marquez mixed up with Christian and Indigenous symbology and filtered through a historical drama about Paraguay's first 'dictator' after breaking away from Spanish colonial rule. Absolutely crazy book. Latams really be impressing me so far I have to say.
>Imagine Beckett and Lovecraft and Marquez mixed up with Christian and Indigenous symbology and filtered through a historical drama about Paraguay's first 'dictator' after breaking away from Spanish colonial rule.
tbh this is the appeal of these books for me, everything stated
Very good writer that could sometimes dip into the "socially conscious" writing that was popular on his time (and still is I guess). I would recommend to read three books of him to get a feel to see if you like him, and those would be Mulata de Tal, Hombres de Maiz and El Señor Presidente, in that order in my opinion, because while El Señor Presidente is basically his meme book, I feel that in Hombres de Maiz and Mulata de Tal specially his style really flourishes, not to say that El Señor Presidente is bad in any way; I just think the other two are way more realized.
I think Mulata de Tal is his best book, where he writes about religious conflicts through an intensely surreal aesthetic, flooded with mayan imagery, of which he was basically a scholar of, being the translator of the Quiche (mayan) holy book Popol Vuh to spanish.
That said, I would recommend to begin with Hombres de Maiz or El Señor Presidente because they are way easier to understand, as Mulata is notorious for having a really difficult language on top of an incredibly (not an exaggeration) strange narrative structure.
If you enjoy those, I would say it is definitely worth it to dive deeper into his other works, of which I think that El Espejo de Lida Sal, Leyendas de Guatemala, and El Hombre que lo Tenía Todo Todo Todo are definitely stand outs.
destoolment
>What's the point of it all?
Does there have to be a point to it? Usually the magical elements are passed off in realistic settings as being completely normal. You could read the Latin American magical realists such as Márquez, Cortázar, Juan Rulfo, etc. It can be found outside of that whole scene for example in Salman Rushdie or even some chapters of Pynchon. I recommend Bruno Schulz and Jan Potocki too
>Usually the magical elements are passed off in realistic settings as being completely normal.
But why and how
Historically magical elements while maybe bizarre weren't that much out of the ordinary. You could be reading an ancient Roman military report and you'd find something like
>oh and a water spirit told the centurion where to cross the river
like it was completely normal.
How does that differentiate it from basic urban fantasy genre fiction?
It doesn't.
So magical realism is trash genre fiction and not worth reading?
It is genre fiction trash, but you shouldn't altogether exclude the possibility of reading genre fiction just for fun.
>It is genre fiction trash
Then I'm not going to read this Tolkien bullshit
It's not genre fiction. None of the Latin American authors from the time of 'magical realism' was reading Tolkien nor any of the goyslop you nerds like to read.
I would say the "realism" in magical realism is about the topics that literature deals with. At least in Marquez's case, his books are about politics, frustrated and unrequited love, poverty and struggling by, etc. Which are not the usual topics of the fantasy genre. But in the end, "magical realism" was just a catchy label to encompass the literature coming out of latin america in that period (60s-70s, give or take a decade).
You can find fantasy with political or social elements in ASoIaF and The Handmaiden's Tale, which are the kind of books IQfy hates the most. You can also find non-Latin American fantasy fiction with heavily psychological elements in visual media like Shigofumi. Neither the use of psychological issues nor the insertion of politicial issues in fiction with fantastical elements is unique to Latin American fiction writings.
>ASoIaF and The Handmaiden's Tale
You never read Marquez at all, didn't you.
What the frick is your problem?
Are you fricking autistic? Is this a poor attempt at trolling?
Never post here again.
You know, you could actually read a book and decide for yourself instead of letting some other anon's ignorant hot take make a decision for you.
Magic realism disrupts the reader’s sense of reality whereas fantasy creates another completely enclosed reality. Whereas fantasy “imposes absolute closure” and “implies complicity on the part of the readers,” the literary fantastic seeks reader hesitancy.” The story begins in the “real world” and when something unreal happens and the reader is never sure if the cause is supernatural or natural, such as a psychotic break or a drug induced hallucination.
Excellent post.
Is that the explicit object of magical realists though? Or is that an interpretation of what their works do to the reader
Explicit. If you want to start go 100 Years and Master and the Margarita
>Master and the Margarita
Added to my list of books I'm never gonna read
neat post, but unfortunately for you, I've detected a closed, but mistakenly unopened
>>>>>>>"
I cannot fathom being as moronic as you are right now
Lol
Lmao, even
Try not being stupid next time, idiot
You're making me cry, anon.
I'm sorry, anonkun I was out of line
A was simple mistake anyone but me clould make
I'm sorry for being rude
Asturias, though not someone who viewed himself as being a magical realist writer, actually gave a decent description
>"an Indian or a mestizo in a small village might describe how he saw an enormous stone turn into a person or a giant, or a cloud turn into a stone. That is not a tangible reality but one that involves an understanding of supernatural forces. That is why when I have to give it a literary label I call it "magic realism."
yes it's a pagan holdover
>Historically magical elements while maybe bizarre weren't that much out of the ordinary. You could be reading an ancient Roman military report and you'd find something like
>oh and a water spirit told the centurion where to cross the river
>like it was completely normal.
I've read a lot of roman military stuff and never saw anything like that. Where did you see it
It was in Caesar's secret war commentaries. You only get to read it if you have a high enough IQ.
You can see supernatural stuff in ancient history books talking about the the days of the first kings and the foundation of many rituals or traditions, just as you can see them in hagiographical writings from the Middle Ages that were written for the sake of being used by preachers to inspire believers to follow God, but usually, such elements only appeared in stories from a time period that came long before the writer's own time period. Herodotus saw the roots of Greek history in Greek mythology, but none of his accounts of the Graeco-Persian Wars comtain any supernatural elements. They have oracles and priests, but those were ordinary human beings who just so happened to be believed to have a connection with the gods.
Herodotus literally tells about the Spartans taking omens as a reason not to cross a river, and then sacrifice in honour of the river (god) in order to honour him for protecting his people. And that's just the first example among many I recalled of gods directly affecting the outcome. Have you even read Herodotus?
You can find the supernatural everywhere in older writings. I don't get how one can miss it with only a minimal amount of reading.
>Historically magical elements while maybe bizarre weren't that much out of the ordinary. You could be reading an ancient Roman military report and you'd find something like
>oh and a water spirit told the centurion where to cross the river
>like it was completely normal.
Which part do you find weird?
Bro, river spirirs are real, the are called norfs.
I second the recommendation of Rushdie, he has a great sense of humor. Of course, Garcia Marquez is probably the most classic example of an author within the genre.
The best way to discern what it is is probably to read some works by these guys, Murakami, Schulz and others.
Read two of their fiction works each and make up your own mind on whatmagical realism is, and whether you agree with the term or not. Of course, you'd probably best be off also reading realist fiction and fantasy or mythology too, before trying to decide whether something is a magical variety of something else.
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>Prominent English-language fantasy writers have said that "magic realism" is only another name for fantasy fiction. Gene Wolfe said, "magic realism is fantasy written by people who speak Spanish,"[54] and Terry Pratchett said magic realism "is like a polite way of saying you write fantasy."[55]
Why are gringos like this.
Because they are fricking anglois.
sounds that they are salty fantasy isn't well regarded
They are talking shit because they suck dick. No, but seriously, there's a big misconception on what's going on with this magical realism stuff because people who indulge in this false polemic don't understand shit because they are not actually readers of Literature.
Look at how the writers you cited are from Fantasy (aka "genre fiction). They have no conection at all with the literary tradition (the Canon) from which Márquez was writing.
Fantasy novels (in the 'sense' of genre fiction and it relationship with the works who precedent and go after them) are rooted in the tradition of European Mythologies. Fantasy writing as we understand it since it's beginning has it's in Arthurian-Germano-Celtic Myths. This has nothing to do with Márquez.
García Márquez magical realism has it's roots in oral tradition of storytelling, in the rural, the agrarian world and in the towns and villages of Colombia (that as many others from South America) had a clear disconection with Government and the capital cities so civical order was loosely impossed. The most influent writer on Márquez was probably Faulkner, again, a novelist with a vital conection with the rural spaces.
Marquez magical realism has more to do with the projection of the imagination that Spanish arrivers did over the Americas territories, the brand new exuberant continent from the time of the discoveries was fulled with Mediterranean Medieval and greco-latin images over the inhabitants (like with the Amazonians).
>Fantasy writing as we understand it since it's beginning has it's in Arthurian-Germano-Celtic Myths. This has nothing to do with Márquez.
García Márquez magical realism has it's roots in oral tradition of storytellin
García Márquez magical realism has it's roots in oral tradition of storytellin
>Marquez magical realism has more to do with the projection of the imagination that Spanish arrivers did over the Americas territories
So is magical realism just an extension of an ancient mythical worldview, or is it opposed to it? Is it a reflection of literary forms, or of popular folk tales and oral traditions? Does it reflect the real world, or does it reflect fantasy worlds closely inspired by reality?
Arthurian romances were originally written by people who lived in a world that was still full of knights, priests, where many monks went along rural paths begging for food and seeking shelter in caves or in small, isolated huts. Walter Scott's historical novels were written inspired by real historical events and set in real places, featuring characters taken directly out of old chronicles. Even today in the United Kingdom, there are many rural estates still owned by descendants of those families that came together with William the Conqueror in 1066, and there is still somewhat of a difference between old money families who have a real noble title and new money families who became rich only a few generations ago through enterpeneural activities.
The contemporary fantasy genre is inspired by ancient mythologies and folklore from many different places just as it is inspired by these old historical romances. Just as Juan Rulfo makes use of old Mexican folk beliefs about the apparition of spirits of the deceased in his novel Pedro Páramo, so do many fantasy writers make use of creatures taken from folk beliefs, such as vampires, necromancers, alchemists, zombies, and opposing auras, all too commonly appearing somewhere in suburban America in many young adult novels. Many of Stephen King's novels are set in real towns in his home state of Maine, and have characters in them inspired by people whom he met in real life in them, yet few people would dare compare him to García Márquez for some strange inexplicable reason.
What is the reason then? Is it only the pretense of being literary works, or is it the fact that they come from Latin America?
homosexual you're wrong and probably doing spanish revisionism which makes you even more revolting. Watch a single interview with Marquez: he drew his influence from his own Grandmother telling him indigenous tales as a kid. The state of this board so much eurogay cope kek
>García Márquez magical realism has it's roots in oral tradition of storytelling, in the rural, the agrarian world and in the towns and villages of Colombia
>he drew his influence from his own Grandmother telling him indigenous tales as a kid
What's the highest grade you finished? Be honest, elementary school? I don't want to make fun of you because you clearly never graduated even high school.
Instead of posturing like a sexless homosexual, why don't you explain why he's wrong? Because I've watched the same interview and Marquez says just that: no mention of spaincucks.
>sexless homosexual,
Frick off, sex haver.
>The state of this board so much eurogay cope kek
This whole site is filled with shit like that and is why one should take it all with a grain a salt. You got writers like Astirias who were inspired directly by Mayan folklore he grew up with and translated Mayan books like Popol Vuh into Spanish, yet that post would gloss over this fact.
And his books and other more political ones have their roots in Latin American dictator novels, but with added fantasy to show characters being small parts in an absurd world they can rarely have an effect on, especially in Marquez's One Hundred Years. The surreal nature mirrors the politics of people being caught in unrest after unrest and having little change on it
Essentially, the surreal being treated as mundane is meant to reflect that, and mimic the way a poor farmer or indigenous person's folkloric view of the world, not "projecting imagination of Spanish arrivers over the Americas". If that's true, then it's clearly not the the intention.
Sergiyev Posad
cлyчившeecя
AG YA44
пocꙑлaти
Just start 100 years
What is with the random spam
It's everywhere yet no one bats an eye
The surreal being treated as mundane, fitting
There's this guy who sucks on his sisters boobies in the book and thus I really like it.
I was jerking off to e-girl on gelbooru and there was a single comment saying that a e-girl's breasts reminded him of One Hundred Years describing a young girl's books as "b***h teats"
And that's how I started learning Spanish
>How do I even start with this genre?
Borges, Calvino
Magical Realism: You pick the book for the magic, but stays for the realism.
Fantasy: You pick the book for the fantasy, but leaves when you acquire some taste.
The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier was a good read.
start and end with your picrel
swiftly move onto real books
What's a "real" book then, gay
No offense to latinbro but Magical realism is such an overhyped nothing of a genre.
Magical realism is just a setting in which objects and entities are imbued with causal/spiritual power. Basically a pagan worldview. It’s associated with Spanish because Spanish countries are Catholic, and Catholicism preserved pagan thinking in stuff like the worship of saints, mass, exorcism, consecration. Therefore Latin minds to this day are more open to magic actually being real because the church had magical abilities. This thinking was crushed in the Reformation, so magical realism is basically the body of belief that educated white people and other assorted Anglobrains call “superstition”
So is magic realist writing just the Latin American equivalent of fiction about UFO abductions?
>Magical realism is paganism
Based if true
Mexican paganism is probably the worst ever. Pure demon worship.
Marquez is Colombian, moron
>nooo he's THIS kind of Hispanic not THAT kind it's a big difference
There is, ironic anti-intellectualism won't get you anywhere. Cope.
Also that conversation wasn't about Marquez you pedant
almost nothing Mexico related has been discussed, Mexico is clearly the first thing that came to his mind because hurr latin america
It's commonly referred to as MEXICAN magical realism
I literally never heard anyone use that to non-Mexican authors. The majority of magic realist writers aren't even Mexican.
isn't garcia marquez himself colombian? don't waste time replying to a dumb american lole
Are there any pagan entities that Christians don’t think are demonic? Not supposed to sound snarky I’m genuinely curious about that
Sure plenty. Zeus.
The Mexican gods were truly twisted and evil.
Would they think Zeus was like “one face of God” or a seraphim/archangel in dosguise or something? I don’t think monotheists could think greco-roman Gods actually existed the way pagans conceived of them
>Would they think Zeus was like “one face of God” or a seraphim/archangel in dosguise or something?
That's sacrilege and something other religions view Christian figures like Jesus as.
The Christians who don't think other gods were fake just say that they were all fallen angels and therefore demonic
t. has evangelical friend
>Sure plenty. Zeus.
God frick no, Christians literally destroyed Greco-Roman statues, they were all demonic. They seethe at you suggesting they based their art on them, especially how God or Jesus are depicted. The people who don't hate them have to try to come up with theories that they were just kings. When Jesuit missionaries went to China they tried hard to not view Confucianism as a religion because if they did then their church would wipe it all out
Anything that isn't in the bible(or ordained by Big Hat Man) is demonic
So?
In my garden there's a big rock.
I read that my grandma talks to elves.
Now there are elves in the rock.
They told me to buy dogecoin.
In the end I learned about the true meaning of Christmas.
The way magical realism does fantasy and the way normal genre fantasy does it is very different, in different tones, inspired by different sources, and for different purposes and meanings.
I thought this was obvious
>bruh the Illiad is magical realism
magic realism is the admission that myth is built into our minds and the world
>Magical realism is schizophrenia caused by living in a place that's full of toxic chemicals seeping from the ground
No that's US literature
>t. Brazilian
Pynchon is a magical realist?
逃げるファンタジーです
Is my book magical realism?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B4M98NTH
Moxy fruvous ruined Gabriel Garcia gayquez. Yikes at one of your biggest fan boys being a Canadian
>What is "magical realism" even suppose to mean?
Realistic settings with magic elements, I guess
It means you wrote a fantasy novel but still want to pretend it’s literary fiction.
Is this like an automatic response among angloids
I’m just shitposting.
Really magic realism is anything set on Earth and fantasy is anything set Not On Earth (or “””Earth””” so far in the past/future that it isn’t, like LOTR).
Little, Big
Fantasy books renamed so art hoes can pose as smarter than sci Fi nerds. The anglosphere made the term to differentiate between the fantasy fiction their culture creates and these new books that they want taken more seriously. Shakespeare has ghosts and fairy's so are we gonna call him magical realism?
Honestly I love the book but it's the most overrated books of the 20th century. Borges, Bolano and Cortaza are way better.
how can you morons not get fricking magical realism? it's just low fantasy but nobody finds the fantastical elements weird or abnormal in any way
in fantasy, whenever something fantastical happens, characters point it out or only a select few characters in the know get it while the "muggles" are left scratching their heads or confused, in magic realism everybody rolls with whatever crazy shit happened like its nothing
for example, imagine that in a book a goblin pops out of nowhere into a family having dinner on the table.
in a fantasy book, most characters get impressed except for one that happens to know about goblins(if there is such a character)
in a magic realism book, everyone goes "oh hey eduardo" and they give him some tacos, so you're left wondering if you misread or if every character has schizophrenia
>low fantasy but nobody finds the fantastical elements weird or abnormal in any way
So would that make funny animal cartoons magical realist fiction?
Probably
The original Pinocchio kid's book is sometimes considered a precursor to Magical Realism
There is evidence that Mexican writer Elena Garro used the same term to describe the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann, but dismissed her own work as a part of the genre.[15]
You know, the guy who wrote the Nutcracker, a toy soldier fighting a seven-headed mouse kin.
Garro wrote a story about a normal housewife who leaves or stranded car to have an affair with a 16th century Aztec man that's somehow there in 50's Mexico, but she didn't consider herself a magical realist.
It's a weird term.
I'm currently halfway through 100 Years of Solitude. It's very good so far. People definitely weren't joking about all the incest and same names. Easy read. Just pick it up and start reading anon.
What a lot of people in this thread need to understand is that different genres have different lineages that are filtered through the academy as well as the publishing industry.
E.g.: mainstream genre fiction in the US (i.e.: "fantasy") has different lineages that go back to pulp magazines in the 1930s and 40s, Victorian fairytales, etc.
Márquez and Rushdie are united by time period (postmodernity) but have different cultural backgrounds and variables they were working with. Different histories and contexts.
For the academy, these categories help create fields of study and aid in textual analysis. For the publishing industry, these categories in terms help sell books to readers.
These definitions are not static though. Genre categories are also not these monoliths that subsume individual writers.
I don't find positioning someone like Márquez against contemporary fantasy fiction to be that helpful, since the industry is wide. You'll find contemporary fantasy writers who are inspired by Márquez, Borges, Rushdie... and then you'll find contemporary fantasy writers who were inspired by video games, Magic: the Gathering, and anime.
I understand the autistic impulse to categorize and compartmentalize everything, but I don't know if it's helpful.
FWIW, I generally position magical realism as engaging a more politicized history. I also position it as more of a 20th century tradition. If 21st century fiction is otherwise just placing fantastical elements in a realist world (i.e. Earth), fabulism is the nomenclature I'd use. Once again though, these categories/"genres" are mobile and up for debate.
In the first chapter a magnet is described as being this wonderful invention, while a magic carpet (if memory serves) is almost commonplace.
That's magical realism.
go listen to Rushdie explaining it
Really should've been posted already
the point is beauty. you still want to tell a human story, engage in realism, but you sprinkle it with beauty, to make it more beautiful, more pleasurable for the reader.
if the magical realist writes the grapes of wrath, he still wants to tell a sad story, but he wants the reader to smile throughout the book, instead of being sad all the time.
Can any of you homosexuals harping on the Mexican Colombian distinction describe some important differences between the two? Not saying they don't exist just wondering cause they're pretty damn close together and they're both recently made nations. More different than like Virginia and New York are from each other?
anyone else thing Marquez was a likely pedo?
All good writers were
It's how pretensious people call the fantasy genre. Also I reccomend a brazilian writer called Murilo Rubião. He's not well known so I don't know if you can find his works in english language.
>Murilo Rubião
Don't waste your time. He's a shallow and limited writer.
Why do people who write about orcs and elves insist on putting their books next magical realist books
I can assure you most of these writers never heard of a Bilbo gaygins or Hogwarts in their lives
Realistic settings with magic elements, I guess
I hate Europe.
Mogadishu
when a realism author is done with the banana company and wants to give Macondo a second chance, he comes up with something like "and then the important people from our capital reached an agreement with the important people from their capital and they went away as quickly as they had arrived".
magical realism makes it rain for 4 years non-stop and the people from the banana company were forced to leave, because that doesn't really happen, but there's poetry in a biblical deluge.
an 'orrible awful lot toodue toodo today todie
Eh Toady?
reddit thread
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Magical theorist
Anyone here had a chance to read Time Commences in Xibalba? Or anything else by the author?