I really am struggling with the idea so-called "magical realism", since I'm not familiar with latin narratives.
How is it reconciled with real life at all? From a european standpoint it is a lie to invent someone's history (in a supposedly historical document), but after reading Marquez's nobel speech on how people from south america experience the world its made me rather confused; he claims that it is simply part of their culture and it's not a lie at all. I've been trying to wrap my head around its use in The General and his Labyrinth (I'm about halfway through), specifically.
>>8128675
As a Latino, I can say that he's part wrong and part right. Spanish as a language is mostly descriptive, so you can twist things to sound more oniric than they already are and you wouldn't technically be lying. Just spicing things up. As for things that happen here, we have a whole local and regional mythology for weird shit that happens (from santería, ghosts, creatures and such) that overlaps with the normal reality in a way that leaves you expecting and rationalizing stuff that other cultures normally wouldn't. The real world is also strange sometimes. From coincidences to random occurrences, it is not strange for everyone to have a "weird story" to tell. Hell, I have a bunch.
TL, DR : people are weird, weird shit happens, the language is weird, we're used to this.
>>8129055
go back to r/books
link to that speech?
>>8129286
retard
>>8128675
but mythology is not unique to south america, nor is the belief that the supernatural "overlaps with the normal reality". plenty of people in e.g. the middle east, india, africa etc still believe that
and there are plenty of e.g. european magical realism writers
>>8129403
well, those things are all true as far as I know
but I was referring to latin america's specific history of mysticism (you know, going back to the days of fountain of youth and el dorado) rather than speaking generally
![c3b[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/dxHY6re.png "c3b[1].png")
magical realism it's just urban fantasy outside of genre fiction :^)
>>8129403
I was just explaining according to what Garcia Marquez said. Of course there's other writers that can accomplish what he does, it's just the context that we live in. Personally, I'm very fond of Neil Gaiman for that same reason. It just seems plausible to me.
>>8129286
fucking drone. how about you leave /lit/ and try and get a personality elsewhere.
>>8128675
I always saw it as a Compelling narrative device, no more no less.
>>8129493
But those are rooted in European perception of the New World. You'll find plenty of similarities in American works--McCarthy, for instance, is chock-full of it.
>>8130339
Good for McCarthy. In Latin America it turned into a genre spanning many countries over a short period of time, which is what OP was asking about, r-tard.
Besides Europeans use European folklore in their works, the experience of Latin Americans means Indigenous shiz mixes with European.
>>8130339
>yeCarthy
retard
Marquez basically explains it as the folk lore stories his grandparents told him.
>>8129055
i like you
I thought Haruki Murakami was magical realism too?
>>8130339
>McCarthy, for instance, is chock-full of it
McCarthy hates magical realism.
>>8128675
>magical realism
>not called pretentious fantasy
How real is your magicalism?
>>8131014
This.
When I took the ACT there was some absurd, obfuscatory passage about an orange suspended on/in a "line" in the sky. The questions were shit, partly because there was no way to write good questions for the passage.
>tfw I got a 35
>tfw it was the english section
>tfw if only I had any other test version
>>8130706
>>8129403
>>8129055
>tfw "magical realism" is glorified skinwalker posting
>>8129368
> all we creatures of that disorderly reality have needed to ask little of the imagination, for the major challenge before us has been the want of conventional resources to make our life credible.
>To interpret our reality through schemas which are alien to us only has the effect of making us even more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.
>people who desire to have their own life while sharing the good things in the world
>Nevertheless, in the face of oppression, pillage and abandonment, our reply is life.
Colombian here. I had never read that speech and I am not particularly fond of his work, I actually strongly dislike it, but it is all in there. We in latam simply have no self identity as a group, we are trapped in the conflict between building a society which deserves that name and the effort to be a part of the modern world. Only that, unlike for instance asian societies which had a well developed culture to face that modern world and are in that same struggle, having been succesful in integrating it within their own culture and values, we had no unified culture when modernity arrived and now we have no ground to make it grow on.
This kind of literature gives you a picture of how people live here, by facing a reality they hate but cant escape and are forced to sugar coat it somehow in order to be able to live in it, no matter how little it 'leaves to imagnation'. I guess that kind of literature grows out of the mixture of living life in that incomprehensible and hostile reality and the instinctual striving for life inside every human being, because sometimes I look at kids growing here and wonder why do they cling to life... I wouldnt if I hadnt travelled around a bit living abroad for some time, and having seen that life can be different and something you can make on your own as you go along.
When you see colombians or latinos and dont get what they do, or are disgusted by how they live, take advice from wittgenstein: "when you feel like hating people, try to understand them instead, and thus be in peace with yourself"
>>8132907
Do you have any other authors or works you like from latin america, then?
>>8132942
not really... anything i have read is stuff they gorged on us at school, which i just forgot and ran away from as soon as i could. however i can mention a strange avant-garde movement called nadaismo, "nothing-ism", and its main figure, the poet gonzalo arango. i dont know if its good or original, it might be a cheap copy of the beatniks, but it called my attention by its name some time back, when i was diving into dadaism and surrealism.
>>8129368
thats not the full speech btw. i tried to look for it in english but couldnt find it.
As a Spaniard, to fully get Magical Realism you should try to live on Spain, or a Latin American country of your choice. Once you get used to the surrealist corruption, like building an airport for persons, you come to understand Magical Realism better.
>>8128675
It's basically a combination of 'special snowflake' meets historical revisionism to make ourselves seem greater, as a people as an individual, than we ever truly were.
>>8134388
I think you're being a tad reductive
what literature have you actually read from latin america?
>>8129337
good one
>>8128675
Magical realism uses elaborate metaphor tied into narrative to reveal deeper truths about subjective reality than old fashioned realism can. Beloved by Toni Morrison is be the best example I know.
>>8129403
More sounds like the Spanish speaking world hasn't embraced the supremacy of logic to the same extent as most of the western world where contradictions and absurdities are not necessarily viewed as impossible or even particularly strange.
>>8134411
If by most of the western world you mean europe then yes you're right
china has a different way of dealing with truth claims and avoids linear narratives too
it's not like you're right just because you say so
>>8133716
Just read it in Spanish.
>>8134399
The famous one, Like Water for Chocolate
I'm talking more about the concept discussed of 'inventing a history' as not being a 'lie' than I am the concept of magical realism which I don't see as being the same thing.
>>8134421
>If by most of the western world you mean europe
yes
>china has a different way of dealing with truth claims and avoids linear narratives too
it's not like you're right just because you say so
didn't say i was right just stating an opinion, and magical realism doesn't seem to be mostly allegorical in nature like what you see in alot of chinese writing
