Yeah for sure. I feel like the discussion around magical realism/fabulism is often difficult for people, like myself, who've been brought to have a post enlightenment worldview to truly wrap their head around. I consistently get the impression that magical realism/fabulism is a fictious depiction of an animistic worldview, especially when looking at magical realism as a response of indigenous peoples to colonial, postenlightenment ideas.
I'm very happy to see Magical Realism come up in this series! I was blown away when I read One Hundred Years of Solitude -- what a performance! I like the idea of a spectrum from simile to metaphor to "fabule", although I wonder if it makes it sound too easy. Garcia Marquez talked about it as an attitude, or *more* than an attitude: you don't just tell the fantasy, you have to *believe* the fantasy. In fantasy you say, "Imagine a world." In magical realism you say, "This *is* the world!" What an audacious thing to do.
Good notions, Thad, hard to put the “magical realism” genie back in the bottle. Marketers way overuse it for everything that is “off” realism. I could call my stories fables or satirical tales, but we won’t sell books with those labels.
Borges was strongly indebted to Western literature (e.g. Herbert Asbury's "Gangs Of New York" was the basis for his essay on "Monk" Eastman), so what goes around, comes around.
Thank you for writing this. I've always been somewhat perplexed by the full meaning of magical realism and you have helped give me a much clearer picture. I am newer to fabulism, and this article helped me get a batter grasp of it. I have been thinking the book I'm currently writing (The Museum of Curious Objects) could be called fabulist, and this article has made me realise it is (hints of magic in the real world), so thank you for that.
Would a story that presents a more animistic, preenlightenment worldview than is often found in modern fiction be considered fabulism?
I believe such a worldview could work in many genres.
Yeah for sure. I feel like the discussion around magical realism/fabulism is often difficult for people, like myself, who've been brought to have a post enlightenment worldview to truly wrap their head around. I consistently get the impression that magical realism/fabulism is a fictious depiction of an animistic worldview, especially when looking at magical realism as a response of indigenous peoples to colonial, postenlightenment ideas.
I like that a lot
I'm very happy to see Magical Realism come up in this series! I was blown away when I read One Hundred Years of Solitude -- what a performance! I like the idea of a spectrum from simile to metaphor to "fabule", although I wonder if it makes it sound too easy. Garcia Marquez talked about it as an attitude, or *more* than an attitude: you don't just tell the fantasy, you have to *believe* the fantasy. In fantasy you say, "Imagine a world." In magical realism you say, "This *is* the world!" What an audacious thing to do.
Good notions, Thad, hard to put the “magical realism” genie back in the bottle. Marketers way overuse it for everything that is “off” realism. I could call my stories fables or satirical tales, but we won’t sell books with those labels.
You're probably right
Shared this Bluegrass Writing Studio EKU Facebook page. At last! Explanations that are understandable. Bravo!
I knew you must have when I saw it was shared and I'd had traffic from Facebook
Stupendous presentation.
Borges was strongly indebted to Western literature (e.g. Herbert Asbury's "Gangs Of New York" was the basis for his essay on "Monk" Eastman), so what goes around, comes around.
Thank you for writing this. I've always been somewhat perplexed by the full meaning of magical realism and you have helped give me a much clearer picture. I am newer to fabulism, and this article helped me get a batter grasp of it. I have been thinking the book I'm currently writing (The Museum of Curious Objects) could be called fabulist, and this article has made me realise it is (hints of magic in the real world), so thank you for that.