[HN Gopher] The Inventor of Magical Realism
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The Inventor of Magical Realism
Author : Caiero
Score : 24 points
Date : 2023-05-08 12:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nybooks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nybooks.com)
| nico wrote:
| > Neither Gabriel Garcia Marquez nor Mario Vargas Llosa had yet
| been born when the Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias began to
| write his first novel, El Senor 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 wrote:
| c. the 90s I was taught Asturias and other members of _El Boom_
| like Gabriel Cabrera Infante, and Julio Cortazar, 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 Cortazar 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...
| nico wrote:
| Love Cortazar
|
| Haven't read Labyrinths, thank you for the recommendation
| jl6 wrote:
| Universal all-purpose Borges recommendation:
|
| "You should read Jorge Luis Borges's short story 'Pierre
| Menard, Author of the Quixote'. It's only six pages long,
| and you'll be wanting to drop me a postcard to thank me for
| pointing it out to you." - Douglas Adams
| knodi123 wrote:
| well, eight pages, in my edition....
|
| https://raley.english.ucsb.edu/wp-content/Engl10/Pierre-
| Mena...
| magpi3 wrote:
| Marquez was also inspired by Kafka's _Metamorphosis_ , which
| was published in 1915.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/may/09/gabr...
| nico wrote:
| 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
| diversionfactor wrote:
| 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.
| nico wrote:
| 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
| ofalkaed wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Also, the village of Macondo where the story is set is
| something quite like the Garden of Eden out of the Book of
| Genesis, which might qualify as the oldest work of magical
| realism in existence.
|
| https://www.bartleby.com/essay/Biblical-Allusions-In-
| Gabriel...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/DeDJK
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