The Inventor of Magical Realism

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/05/25/the-inventor-of-magical-realism-mr-president-asturias/

by Caiero • 3 years ago

62 26 3 years ago

The origins of Magical Realism are (appropriately) obscure:

"German magic-realist paintings influenced the Italian writer Massimo Bontempelli, who has been called the first to apply magic realism to writing, aiming to capture the fantastic, mysterious nature of reality." - Bowers, Maggie Ann (2004). Magic(al) Realism. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-26854-7.

Rather than any one person or culture being its source, it may perhaps be better attributed to an aspect of human storytelling since time immemorial.

nico5• 3 years ago

Love this take

I feel like AI has forced us to face this

No one person or entity is the sole author, creator or owner of anything

Everything is a mix of previous things

And we are constantly re-creating previous concepts in different ways

passion__desire2• 3 years ago

Everything is a mix of previous things

"There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages."

― Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

ofalkaed• 3 years ago

They are referring to the genesis of the Latin American literary movement commonly referred to as Magical Realism not the general idea of essentially realist stories with magical and fantastic elements which is ancient. Sure we can call most any religious text or mythology Magical Realism but only on the level of plot, literature is more than plot and the way the authors of the movement deal with things like theme and subtext place them firmly into literary fiction, these distinctions are important.

Edit: Thinking on this more, mythology and religion can't really be called Magical Realism from what I have read of the movement, in mythology and religion we know how the trick was done we have a god or some creature who did it even if we can not understand how they did it; in Magical Realism we don't get to know how the trick is done, it is just magic and left unexplained. Even fairy tales and folklore don't work as Magical Realism because they are so tied up in the religion and mythology of the culture that produced them, they can seem magical and unexplained when removed from that culture but that is different. I would not call myself well read in the movement yet so I could be completely wrong here.

williamcotton• 3 years ago

I hear Magical Realism and I immediately think of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez! The creators of Lost definitely read that book… the wrecks of ancient ships deep in the jungle, the ghosts of ancestors haunting the present, the way their community narrative evolves out of the mists of story and time. Amazing stuff.

nico5• 3 years ago

Neither Gabriel García Márquez nor Mario Vargas Llosa had yet been born when the Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias began to write his first novel, El Señor Presidente, in December 1922.

Amazing. In school we read the other two authors quite extensively, yet never anything by Asturias.

The double edge of first mover advantage?

Anyway, thankful for the genre and the amazing stories these great writers have left us.

aaroninsf• 3 years ago

c. the 90s I was taught Asturias and other members of El Boom like Gabriel Cabrera Infante, and Julio Cortázar, and also Borges and Isabel Allende, in English at the undergraduate level...

but that was by a particularly contemporary and enlightened professor of contemporary literature...

Super recommend: Blow-Up and Other Stories by Cortázar and of course for anyone who somehow hasn't read it Borges' Labyrinths... the latter in particular is full of ideas which resonate more ever more significance...

nico5• 3 years ago

Love Cortázar

Haven’t read Labyrinths, thank you for the recommendation

magpi3• 3 years ago

Marquez was also inspired by Kafka's Metamorphosis, which was published in 1915.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/may/09/gabr...

nico5• 3 years ago

Never really felt like reading Metamorphosis or Kafka again

But at the time, it felt like such an incredible adventure

Thank you for the article and references

gustavorg• 3 years ago

In an interview, García Máquez, on reading the first sentence of The Metamorphosis, stopped reading and asked himself, is it possible to do this?

atombender• 3 years ago

The biggest influence on Marquez, according to Marquez himself, was Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo (1955), which is a masterpiece. Borges considered it one of his favourite books, but it's still almost forgotten in the English-speaking world. Highly recommended to anyone who likes magical realism.

neonate• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/DeDJK

briga• 3 years ago

He's not well known in the English speaking world because barely anyone publishes his books. The translation of his classic Hombres de maiz has been out of print for quite a while and I've never seen an English copy in any book store. Even in Mexico it's fairly difficult to find.

8bitsrule• 3 years ago

"Magical Realism 101: Definition and 15 Essential Classics"

- https://reedsy.com/discovery/blog/magical-realism

Had never heard this term until I ran into Jon Hassel's 1983 jazz album.

The Inventor of Magical Realism

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