Fantasy and Magical Realism

I was going to write this as a response to Katy's post, but I realized it would be too long entirely and have started a new post altogether.

First, thoughts on the question Katy posed, similar to those already expressed--I think that fantasy is generally, in one way or another, "magical," but it's not always the kind that we want to stereotype as "magic" (e.g. that of witches, wizards, etc.). Sometimes it's paranormal, but in my opinion such things fall under a blanket category of something like magic because it can't be explained how they got there. --I have a friend who, when asked a certain type question he didn't know the answer to (e.g., "How did you end up getting that grade when you didn't study?" or "How did you get problem 4 on the calculus test?"), would reply, "Magic." Oddly enough, that's kind of how I think of "magic"--it's the force behind unexplained things (at least in fictional worlds of the type we mention... in reality I attribute unexplained things to God in one way or another, but that's another matter entirely, as God is not generally considered much in ghost stories except as a force that characters in terror pray to without answer) (or does anyone want to contest that? That could be another topic to discuss).

Anyway, reading how Katy wrote about the relationship between magic and fantasy reminded me of a genre of writing called "magical realism." The example everyone seems to give is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," which hopefully you have come across in a literature class at one point. If you haven't read it and would like to see what I mean, click here.

From what I understand, the difference between fantasy writing and magical realism is not the element of magic but the element of doubt. In stories like "Smoke Ghost," which I would label fantastic, the thing the man sees may or may not be there, and while he begins questioning it, there is the possibility that he is simply crazy, and so there is always doubt. However, in stories like Marquez's (linked above) that are magical realism, the point is generally that somehow something unexplained has come to exist in this world--and no one questions it.

In Marquez's story, basically, an angel crashes down by the home of some people and then becomes something of a spectacle. They really can't decide in the end if he's an angel--because he doesn't look the way one would normally envision an angel, nor is he very extraordinary in his abilities except for a few little tricks and the fact that he has wings--but there follows a natural progression of him becoming a tourist attraction, becoming a nuisance, etc.... All the characters in the story are very matter-of-fact about the angel that has crashed into their midst, and they deal with it; when he leaves, they're no more surprised or in awe than they were in the beginning. It seems that in fantastic stories characters are often not believed and sometimes leave even the reader questioning what really happened; magic realism never explains how but leaves no doubt that something extraordinary appears or occurs, but it's no big deal.

On the other hand entirely, I've heard the argument made that magic realism is just a literary way of saying fantasy or of making the fact that one writes fantasy sound "better." I would not claim this personally--as a creative writing exercise I recently wrote a story about a mermaid** that I intended as magical realism (in that her presence in a Laundromat is nothing particularly surprising--if anything, just rare). In my head, it is not the same kind of story as what I would call a fantasy story.

Any other thoughts? Anyone read any other magic realism and have an opinion either way? Are they different or should they all just be called the same thing?

~Meg

** If you want to read my mermaid story, buy a copy of Sigma Tau Delta's new literary journal DewPoint--we should be releasing it next month, and it will be awesome. ^^ Also if you buy the journal you'll get to read loads of things that are way better than my mermaid story.