Authors inspire magic, realism with style

All Things Literary

Magical realism is one of those writing styles (like stream -of-consciousness) that comes across as being unbelievably ridiculous — at least, until the reader finds him or herself engrossed in a particular text. Perhaps another name for such a style would be the “everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” style because when you get down to it, it’s a technique in which anything goes, in which all possibilities exist for imagination.

The name itself seems contradictory — “magic” and “realism” don’t mesh in the same way that “autobiographical” and “fiction” don’t. One would think that a novel would have to choose between being magical or realistic — a middle ground seems impossible. Yet, this is the genius of such a writing style — that in most cases it comes across as being brilliantly believable.

Your standard magical realist novel is one rooted in the real world, yet tinged with the kind of mystery and magic normally reserved for fantasy novels. In the pages of such books, ghosts and devils can walk the earth, people can rise from the dead and the most unexpected events can become commonplace. As I said earlier, anything goes in magical realism novels.

Case in point — an excerpt from “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, perhaps the preeminent writer (and preeminent novel) of magical realism. A murder just has taken place behind a closed door. That’s relatively normal, you’d say to yourself, no surprises there — but read Garcia Marquez’s following sentence:

“A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed curbs, passed along the Street of Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendia house … and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Ursula (the victim’s mother) was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.”

That, right there, is a perfect example of magical realism, and it doesn’t end there. The victim’s corpse continues to exude a horrible stench regardless of the myriad of ways through which the family tries to inter it. While the plotline isn’t believable on a literal level, our suspension of disbelief still is intact by the time the line of blood makes its way into the kitchen (this probably is more evident for those who have read the novel entirely, but bear with me, please). Readers don’t have the time to stop and figure out the logistics of such an episode because the writing itself carries us along continually to even more extravagant events, each of which we continue to swallow.

Pardon the pun, but the effect is nothing short of magical. What kind of book column would this be without a plug for other essential magical realists aside from Mr. Marquez Salman Rushdie — perhaps my favorite writer — who deals heavily in magical realism, as does the writer Mario Vargas Llosa.

You’d be hard pressed to find many American magical realist texts; most critics see magical realism as a cultural response to colonialism. At times, such works do tend to feed off of a kind of cultural mystery for those readers unfamiliar with either a novel’s or magical realism novel’s respective settings that might not agree with some cultural critics. Others may think of these novels as fluff, bedtime stories for those of us who’ve transcended the pages of Dr. Seuss.

I disagree with the above-mentioned viewpoint, but you might not. Here’s the catch — the only way you’re going to find out which way you lean is to pick up a copy of Garcia Marquez’s “Autumn of the Patriarch” or Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses.” Both texts are good places to start.