quote:Originally posted by dkw: Or maybe she was just answering a question from the audience. At a forum designed to answer questions from the audience.
Now that's a stretch, don't you think? Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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quote:Originally posted by dkw: Or maybe she was just answering a question from the audience. At a forum designed to answer questions from the audience.
Whenever I see someone making a remarkable understatement which points out the actual non-issue-ality of a conflict like this, I always imagine the poster involved, in this case dkw, saying it immediately prior to whipping out a pipe and puffing it in a spruce manner, as if to visually exclaim, 'hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?'
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: It's pretty well established in mainstream literature, and Pat Murphy was playing around with it in The City, Not Long After back in...what, 1989? I guess I can't think of a lot of other authors who have tried to make it work is SF, though.
I think of MR as well-established in the fantasy literature; e.g., John Crowley (Little, Big, 1981, World Fantasy Award), Charles DeLint (just about everything he does), and some of Megan Lindholm (aka Robin Hobb). Neil Gaiman? I know there are others, but those are the first that come to mind.
I quite like urban fantasy/MR as a subgenre.
Do you view urban fantasy as being exactly the same thing as magical realism, though? I don't, but I've been sitting here for the last five minutes trying to articulate why, and failing miserably.
To take Pat Murphy as an example, though, I'd say that The City Not Long After is clearly a post-apocalyptic magical realism novel, whereas Nadya: The Wolf Chronicles is just as clearly a fantasy novel that happens to be set in a meticulously researched and depicted frontier North America.
I want to say that whether something is MR or fantasy has everything to do the the degree to which the fantastical elements permeate the story. In TCNLA, while the MR elements do form key events in the novel, they aren't constantly there. In NtWC, though the societies depicted are breathtakingly realistic, the main character's a freaking werewolf. Instant fantasy, for me.
But DeLint...the fantastical elements certainly pervade his work, but at the same time it does feel to me as though there are MR elements to his work.
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I'd say that the difference in the two-- Magical Realism and Contemporary Fantasy-- is the reaction to the strange. It's been my experience with the genres that in CF, characters who encounter the strange tend to react with wonder, terror, awe, etc.
In MR there is less of an emotional reaction. There is also minimized explanation of the strange. For example, in Robert Silverberg's Against the Flow our protag starts traveling back in time. No reason or mechanic is given; the character doesn't even try to find out, IIRC. This is typical in my experience with magical realism.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Guys, I don't know -- I'm unfortunately not up on literary terminology, and I may well be using terms very loosely. Heaven knows I haven't been in the literary loop for a long time, if ever.
But the elements of strangeness, of the fantastic, that are accepted as commonday and never explained -- I see that in Helprin and Crowley, certainly, and not always in De Lint, but in some of his works. Same as for some Ray Bradbury (but again, not consistently). It may be that I just won't get some distinction you are making. More's the pity!
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Edited to add: I am trying to edjumacate myself on the specific qualities of MR by reading some online essays here and there. Intriguing!
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: I'd say that the difference in the two-- Magical Realism and Contemporary Fantasy-- is the reaction to the strange. It's been my experience with the genres that in CF, characters who encounter the strange tend to react with wonder, terror, awe, etc.
Ooh, yeah, I'd agree that that's it precisely.
quote:Originally posted by CT:Guys, I don't know -- I'm unfortunately not up on literary terminology, and I may well be using terms very loosely.
Oh, pfft--like I'm any more steeped in literary knowledge than you are. I'm just sitting here thinking about stuff that I have unexamined perceptions of and trying to untangle it all.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: Oh, pfft--like I'm any more steeped in literary knowledge than you are.
Um, yeah? Duh.
quote:I'm just sitting here thinking about stuff that I have unexamined perceptions of and trying to untangle it all.
One of the most fun parts of life.
Have you read Little, Big and/or Winter's Tale? If not, would you like to? (I keep extra copies to lend from when I see them in secondhand stores, and I never require book reports. *grin Hey! We never finished talking about China Mountain Zhang. You probably already know this (and we've probably already discussed it, but the world is frequently anew to me -- a major benefit of age), but she's doing well past the Hodgkin's Lymphoma.)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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No, I haven't read either of those! And yes, I'd love to!
I do the same thing with CMZ and David Brin's Kiln People, and would with Peter Watts' Blindsight if it weren't so hard to find copies of it.
You're right--that CMZ discussion never did get finished, did it?
I was aware of her doing well past the Hodgkin's Lymphoma, but your mention of it made me remember that it's been ages since I've looked at her blog. Ever checked it out? It's generally fairly interesting (though for some reason I seem constitutionally incapable of actually following people's blogs consistently).
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Sign up for Google's RSS feed reader. You can get a thingamajiggy for your google toolbar that will change colors when there's anything new.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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