Magical Realism: Ten Recommended Reads
The great Gene Wolfe was dismissive of the term “magical realism,” claiming it was “fantasy written in Spanish.” I dare to disagree with one of my heroes, but I think that the genre (or form, or mode, whatever) is distinct as a way of telling, in its striking of a balance between the fantastic and realist traditions without privileging either. It also ranges beyond the Spanish-speaking world, though you can make a case of its being best done in Latin America.
More of this definition later in the unfolding blog tour for the revised and revisioned edition of my own Trajan’s Arch (see the upcoming post at “Sheila’s Guests and Reviews). All said and done, the best approach to magical realism is by looking at some examples and deciding for yourself whether or not you can tell it from fantasy. Here are some good places for the interested reader to begin:
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude. If you were to choose one book from the list, this would be the one. Most representative of magical realism, and one of the great novels of the last…well, 100 years. Look as well at GGM’s Love in the Time of Cholera, or at Leaf Storm, his early collection of short stories.
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children. Another must-read, a book that parallels the birth and origins of India with the life of the novel’s protagonist.
- Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon or Beloved. To commemorate one of America’s great writers at the time of her passing—profound and provocative fiction that could well be characterized as magical realism.
- Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber. A short story collection that revisions the fairy tale as magical realist fiction. Carter was an incandescent writer: a good introduction to her work.
- Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis.” Written before magical realism had been labelled as such. One of the great short novellas (long short stories?) of any time. If you accept the premise of the audacious first sentence, everything that follows makes perfect, realistic sense in the story.
- Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones. One of the true masters of short fiction, and a precursor of magical realism in his wildly speculative stories. Take a look at “The Aleph,” “The Garden of Forking Paths,” or “The Circular Ruins” for mind-blowing fictional premises. Oh, what the hell! Read the whole volume.
- Isabel Allende, House of the Spirits. Sprawling and magical Chilean family history. Read and loved it ages ago—I’m yearning to return.
- Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood. Magical realism meets horror, intrusion fantasy, and Jungian psychology. Goes to show the fluidity of the form, and the first in a series by a writer who died too soon.
- Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo. Fairly recent novel, also touted as fantasy, by a Barbadian writer who draws upon West African folklore and mythology.
- Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum. Surreal coming-of-age in the chaos of post-WWII Germany.
About the author: Over the past 25 years, Michael Williams has written a number of strange novels, from the early Weasel’s Luck and Galen Beknighted in the best-selling DRAGONLANCE series to the more recent lyrical and experimental Arcady, singled out for praise by Locus and Asimov’s magazines. In Trajan’s Arch, his eleventh novel, stories fold into stories and a boy grows up with ghostly mentors, and the recently published Vine mingles Greek tragedy and urban legend, as a local dramatic production in a small city goes humorously, then horrifically, awry.
Trajan’s Arch and Vine are two of the books in Williams’s highly anticipated City Quartet, to be joined in 2018 by Dominic’s Ghosts and Tattered Men.
Williams was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and spent much of his childhood in the south central part of the state, the red-dirt gothic home of Appalachian foothills and stories of Confederate guerrillas. Through good luck and a roundabout journey he made his way through through New England, New York, Wisconsin, Britain and Ireland, and has ended up less than thirty miles from where he began. He has a Ph.D. in Humanities, and teaches at the University of Louisville, where he focuses on the he Modern Fantastic in fiction and film. He is married, and has two grown sons.
Book Synopsis for Trajan’s Arch: Gabriel Rackett stands at the threshold of middle age. He lives north of Chicago and teaches at a small community college. He has written one novel and has no prospects of writing another, his powers stagnated by drink and loss. Into his possession comes a manuscript, written by a childhood friend and neighbor, which ignites his memory and takes him back to his mysterious mentor and the ghosts that haunted his own coming of age. Now, at the ebb of his resources, Gabriel returns to his old haunts through a series of fantastic stories spilling dangerously off the page–tales that will preoccupy and pursue him back to their dark and secret sources.
Author Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mythical-Realism-The-Michael-Williams-Page-128713900543978/
Tour Schedule and Activities
8/14 Armed with a Book http://www.armedwithabook.com Review
8/14 I Smell Sheep http://www.ismellsheep.com/ Guest Post
8/15 Horror Tree https://www.horrortree.com Guest Post
8/16 The Seventh Star Blog http://www.theseventhstarblog.com Top 10
8/17 The Literary Underworld http://www.literaryunderworld.com Guest post
8/18 Jazzy Book Reviews http://bookreviewsbyjasmine.blogspot.com Author Interview
8/19 Sheila’s guests and reviews http://sheiladeeth.blogspot.com Guest Post
8/19 Armed with a Book http://www.armedwithabook.com Interview
8/20 Stuart Conover’s Homepage https://www.stuartconover.com Guest Post
8/21 The Sinister Scribblings of Sarah E. Glenn https://saraheglenn.blogspot.com/ Author Interview and possible review
Links for Trajan’s Arch
Kindle Version: https://www.amazon.com/Trajans-Arch-Michael-Williams-ebook-dp-B07RD1RF9T/dp/B07RD1RF9T/
Amazon Print Version: https://www.amazon.com/Trajans-Arch-Michael-Williams/dp/1948042754/
Barnes and Noble Link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/trajans-arch-michael-williams/1100075829?ean=9781948042758