Magical Realism in Short Fiction

Introduction

The term “magical realism” has proved difficult to define, from its inception in European art to contemporary Latin American literature. Scholars agree that the term remains ill-defined and rather vague but definitely concerns the seamless weaving of the extraordinary with the mundane, the magical with the everyday. Scholars agree that the term “magical realism” was first employed by Franz Roh, a German art critic. Roh used the term in 1925 to describe paintings strikingly different from the expressionist art so popular in 1920’s Germany; he argued that the work of the magical realist painters was more defined and focused than the expressionists before them. The magical realism art movement spread over Europe and eventually engaged the interest of Alejo Carpentier, a Cuban living in Europe, whom critics credit with bringing the movement and style to Latin America. As scholar Maggie Ann Bowers argues, Carpentier coined the phrase “lo realismo maravilloso” (marvelous realism or magic within the real). Carpentier wrote books about the Cuban nation, while other writers, such as Jorges Luis Borges, felt the influence of Magical Realism on their fiction. Bowers also argues that the publication of the scholarly essay “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction” in 1955 by Angel Flores led to a heightened interest in the genre, both for writers and readers.

Though most readers continue to associate the genre with the magical, incredible, and marvelous (and likewise feelings of wonderment and happy surprise), other scholars wrestle with the connotations of the term, which they find problematic when assigned to literature treating serious themes. Certain writers, such as Jeanette Winterson and Ben Okri, for instance, refuse to associate their work with the Magical Realism genre, though some readers and critics would classify them as such. Winterson and Okri are displeased when the term is applied to their work for reasons ranging from dislike of labels in general to the fact that their work, based on difficult trials in their personal lives (Okri experienced the Nigerian civil war firsthand), is belittled when associated with magic or fantasy. Similarly, some scholars struggle with applying the term to literature that treats serious subjects. For instance, if a work addresses significant social or cultural issues (such as poverty or racism), the writer’s statements about the serious subjects can be downplayed and even ignored while magical or marvelous images instead receive a wealth of attention.

The major authors in the Magical Realism movement have been and continue to be minorities. Some scholars suggest that the genre allows minorities to enhance and beautify their cultures, often ignored by those in the majority and in power. In turn, Magical Realism is often closely associated with postcolonialism and is used by authors to explore the independence and freedom of a people or culture who have suffered for years under the oppression of a governing country or people (strategies used by both Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie, in particular). While many readers delight in the illustrious images employed by Magical Realism writers, some critics feel disappointment in writers of color, who infuse magical and wondrous images in the portrayal of vicious cultural battles, in which little magic occurred and instead assimilation, dread, and even violence provided the dominant imagery.

The authors explored below represent the major writers who use Magical Realism in their short fiction. Such imagery instills wonder in their readers and simultaneously creates awareness of significant life questions or important cultural issues.

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), an Argentine, began his life in the city of Buenos Aires, where he later became a professor at the city’s prestigious university. Many scholars consider Borges as the first writer to employ actively and consciously the Magical Realism style. Borges’s fiction, written in his native Spanish language, has reached only English-speaking readers through careful work of translators; however, some of the fluidity of his short fiction is lost in translation, and phrases that resonate with poetic beauty in Spanish become labored and even clumsy literal explanations in English. Nonetheless, Borges’s volume of stories entitled Collected Fictions (1998) resonates with readers because of its employment of rich imagery and Magical Realism. Edited by Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions is one of the first works to provide an array of Borges’s short fiction all translated by the same author, which reviewers agree adds a sense of consistency in narrative tone. The stories employ some of Borges’s most well-known and favorite motifs, such as fire, mazes, tigers, and dreams, among others. These symbols occur in stories that weave together the magical and the mundane, presenting readers with stories obviously composed in the Magical Realism vein.

Borges’s classic “The Circular Ruins,” for instance, tells the story of a wizard who desires to create a man. The wizard aims to do so while dreaming, and after many days the wizard realizes he has created a man who lives only in dreams. At the close of the story, the wizard also realizes he exists only in the dreams of another. In another of Borges’s most-beloved tales, “The Lottery in Babylon,” Borges writes about a lottery system in which nearly all the people of the mystical land of Babylon participate, and the random rewards and punishments they “win.” The wizard attempting to dream a man into being and the reliance of an entire town’s population on a magical lottery to determine each person’s fate demonstrate Borges’s Magical Realism at its best since the images, although incredible, appear completely natural and ordinary in the worlds he creates. His short fiction, like his longer works, poses questions about human existence, identity, and the role of luck and chance in the universe; his Magical Realism imagery, coupled with the themes of his pieces, strike readers and encourage them to think about typical issues in atypical ways. Though Borges is considered one of the greatest Latin American writers of all time, his fiction became truly popular in North America only after the rise, popularity, and acknowledgement of Gabriel García Marquez, on whom Borges was a major influence.

Gabriel García Márquez

Considered the most prolific Magical Realism writer, Gabriel García Márquez serves as the standard to which all other writers in the genre are compared. Though he explains he was influenced by Borges’s work, García Márquez often is credited with the title of founder of the Magical Realism genre. Like that of Borges, García Márquez’s work also must be translated from his native Spanish. His experiences as a journalist informed his career as a fiction writer, and his canon is largely dominated by his novels, though his poetry, journalistic work, and short stories are immensely popular and receive adoration. The Columbian author showcases his talents at their height in his greatest novel Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1970); the epic novel chronicles the Buendía family in the town of Macondo, a city based on the town in which Marquez lived in his youth. Macondo serves as the setting in several of García Márquez’s works, demonstrating the affinity for the quaint town that resounds with charm and spirit. The novel abounds with examples of Magical Realism imagery, including a rainstorm that lasts for nearly five years, a shower of flowers, and a woman (bed sheets and all) taken to heaven in the middle of hanging her laundry. García Márquez wrote many novels, and some of his other great works include La hojarasca (1955; novella; translated as Leaf Storm in Leaf Storm, and Other Stories, 1972), El otoño del patriarca (1975; The Autumn of the Patriarch, 1975), and El amor en los tiempos del cólera (1985; Love in the Time of Cholera, 1988). In 1982, García Márquez received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Most scholars consider him not only the greatest Latin American writer but also one of the greatest writers in the world. His influence on writers in the genre is undeniable.

A compilation of García Márquez’s short stories, Todos los cuentos de Gabriel García Márquez (1975; Collected Stories, 1984), was published with great notice. The volume includes much of García Márquez’s short fiction, including his highly acclaimed “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” the most famous of all his short stories. In the story, a creature—an old man with wings—lands in the courtyard of a home by the sea. The couple living in the house marvels at the winged creature and attempt to communicate with him, but the angel (as they have come to refer to him) does not speak their language. A religious official doubts the old man’s status as angel, and the couple locks the poor elderly man in the chicken coop. Soon they begin charging admission to view the angel, since so many townspeople are desperate to see him. The couple grows rich and builds a mansion, but they leave the old angel in the chicken coop. One day the angel grows new feathers on his wings and manages to break free. Without pause, Marquez intertwines the miraculous and ordinary. Though many of the characters feel disbelief upon first meeting the angel, they soon tire of him and instead swarm to see a woman who has been transformed into a spider. This story demonstrates Magical Realism at its best, when extraordinary, outstanding images and events blend seamlessly with the mundane. Like many of his other works, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” explores the themes of loneliness and isolation, prompting discussions about the way people deal with solitude, and how people respond to magic, by locking it away, forgeting about, and neglecting it in search of something more entertaining and novel.

Toni Morrison

Often considered one of the greatest African American and women writers of all time, Toni Morrison is renowned for her extensive and poetic use of Magical Realism imagery. Like Marquez before her, Morrison received the Nobel Prize for her immense canon of work. In 1993, when Morrison won the Nobel Prize, critics had praised her most for her novels, including The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), and Jazz (1992). Critics and readers alike champion her work for the way in which it educates readers and raises awareness about issues prominent in the African American community. In Beloved, for instance, Morrison (by means of nonlinear plot structure) chronicles the life of Sethe, an escaped slave who killed one of her children (and nearly killed several others) in an attempt to save them from enduring a life of slavery. Morrison often uses Magical Realism imagery to make painful experiences and events beautiful and easier to endure. For instance, in Beloved, the enormous, terrifying scar on one former slave’s back becomes a beautiful, blossoming tree in Morrison’s masterful descriptions. Similarly, Sethe, without hesitation, welcomes the corporeal ghost of the daughter Sethe brutally murdered into her life and home; they eat together, dance together, and do one another’s hair, though one is clearly a ghost.

Morrison, celebrated for her novels, has published little short fiction; the short story “Recitatif” (1983), however, is often anthologized and showcases Morrison’s affinity for using Magical Realism in creating awareness about issues concerning African Americans. The short story provides an account of experiences between two girls, Twyla and Roberta. They first meet at an orphanage as young girls and then again several times later in life as adults. Readers often assume one girl is Caucasian and the other is African American, but Morrison never reveals the ethnicities of either character. The crux of the story focuses on Maggie, a mute woman who worked at the orphanage. Each time the two meet after their first experience together at the orphanage, they discuss Maggie; the women cannot remember if Maggie was Caucasian or African American. Similarly, the women cannot remember if Maggie was truly mute or if she was frightened into silence by some of the angry older orphans. The main female characters in “Recitatif”—Twyla, Roberta, and Maggie—serve as Morrison’s Magical Realism elements; through them, Morrison intertwines the sensitive issue of race within the lives of three women who remain without ethnicity. Maggie, in particular, is a character who, although very real in the story, is fluid and changing in the women’s memories. In turn, Morrison raises significant questions about race relations and the portrayal of African Americans and Caucasians in general. Morrison’s short story encourages readers, through the use of Magical Realism and the altering of everyday reality, to question the definition of race and its implications, both in fictional and real worlds.

Salman Rushdie

Known formally as Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, Rushdie is best known and celebrated for his novels Midnight’s Children (1981) and The Satanic Verses (1988). Scholars agree that Marquez has influenced Rushdie’s work. Born and raised in Mumbai before attending Cambridge, Rushdie in his writing focuses on the experiences on the area of South Asia and on members of the Indian Diaspora, and the way in which the Eastern and Western worlds (most often India and Britain) intertwine, clash, and harmonize. Most of his work concerns postcolonialism and the way in which groups of people find identity and independence after being freed from the rule of a governing country. His short-story collection East, West (1994) capitalizes on the themes most important to Rushdie, while his careful employment of Magical Realism imagery serves as commentary on cultures.

Rushdie structured his East, West collection of short stories in three specific sections: East, West, and East, West. The stories in the East section, critics and scholars agree, are the most realistic, both stylistically and plotwise; the stories in this section all focus on India. Rushdie includes few—if any—Magical Realism images in the East section. Conversely, the short stories in the West section of the collection (“Yorick,” “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers,” and “Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain Consummate Their Relationship”) not only focus on the Western world but also present a striking contrast in content and structure. In comparison to the stories in the East section, stories such as “Yorick” and “Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella” take well-known stories in the West and manipulate or add new perspectives to the original content. The stories in West do not use traditional narrative techniques but instead employ inventive techniques, infusing traditional narrative with sections of drama or stream of consciousness. The story richest in magical realist imagery, however, is “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers,” in which characters of all sorts arrive at an auction to bid on the ruby slippers from L. Frank Baum’s world of Oz as well as on other items, such as the Sphinx, the Statue of Liberty, and the Taj Mahal. Rushdie fuses the magical land of Oz with a room of materialistic people battling for possession of a pair of shoes. In the East, West section, Rushdie’s tales focus on his dominant theme of the interactions between and the adjustment to the “other” culture, East or West. Critics agree that the absence of magical realist imagery in the East section, in comparison to its presence in the West portion of the collection, suggests that the Eastern world is more grounded in reality than the Western world, though characters in several of the East stories seem quite ungrounded (like a young man in “The Free Radio” who rides around town on his bicycle, listening to an imaginary radio). The infusion of magical realist imagery in tales such as “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers” seems to suggest that Rushdie feels Westerners let their fantasies about procuring objects overrule their rational sides. Like Morrison, Rushdie uses magical realist imagery to emphasize statements about cultures and their differences.

Isabel Allende

Born and raised in Peru, Isabel Allende grew into one of the most celebrated Latin American authors and a forerunner in the Magical Realism genre. Allende has been moved by the plight of Latin American people and women in particular. Like her predecessor Marquez, she worked as a journalist and bases some of her work on the realities with which she became closely acquainted. Her most beloved novels focus on women, including La casa de los espíritus (1982; The House of the Spirits, 1985), Eva Luna (1987; English translation, 1988), and Hija de la fortuna (1999; Daughter of Fortune, 1999); similarly, her collection of short stories Cuentos de Eva Luna (1990; The Stories of Eva Luna, 1991) follows the additional adventures of the title character of her 1988 novel. The collection of short stories centers on the impoverished Latin girl Eva Luna and includes other characters already familiar to Allende’s readers from the novel Eva Luna, including Rolf Carlé. The Stories of Eva Luna, in fact, opens with a piece in which Carlé asks Luna to tell him a story she has never told another person; so ensues a collection of stories rich in magical realist imagery.

Many of Allende’s stories focus on the experiences of women, such as the Magical Realism-infused “Simple Maria,” in which a prostitute completes her duties with great passion in her desire to satisfy her sexual needs, or “The Schoolteacher’s Guest,” in which an elderly schoolteacher summons the strength to brutally murder the man who killed her son. Many scholars consider Allende a feminist, but some critics debate whether her stories can be taken seriously and, in depicting women with marvelous strength and power, encourage greater respect for women or whether the female characters in her outlandish magical stories are simply meant to entertain readers.

Conclusion

The Magical Realism movement flourishes around the world in contemporary short fiction, but, without the influence of artists (such as Carpentier) who lived in Europe during the rise of the movement and carried Magical Realism back to their native countries, the genre would not have become as popular and effective in areas of the world such as Latin and Central America. Authors of color or who are minorities, such as Marquez, Rushdie, and Morrison, use the genre as a vehicle to create awareness about issues impacting their native cultures with powerful imagery. Though scholars, critics, writers, and readers grapple with a clear definition for “magical realism,” they know when they encounter it, based on images in which a writer strikes a balance between the everyday and the spectacular.

Bibliography

Benito, Jésus, Ana Ma Manzanas, and Begoña Simal. New York: Rodopi, 2009. Uncertain Mirrors: Magical Realisms in U.S. Ethnic Literatures. New York: Rodopi, 2009. This work examines Magical Realism in comparison to other literary movements, such as postmodern and postcolonial studies; Benito, Manzanas, and Simal also study the work by various authors in Magical Realism and the way in which they represent themselves and the characters within the genre.

Bowers, Maggie Ann. Magic(al) Realism. London: Routledge, 2004. This book serves as a helpful introduction to the Magical Realism movement. In this book Bowers provides an overview of the genre and a close examination of the genre’s connections with postcolonialism.

Faris, Wendy B. Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. Faris discusses key components of Magical Realism fiction and explores the work of authors from around the world. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of Magical Realism, ranging from studies of narrative structure to the representation of women. This work examines both the importance of the Magical Realism tradition and its greater cultural implications.

Gaylard, Gerald. After Colonialism: African Postmodernism and Magical Realism. Johannesburg, South Africa: Wits University, 2006. Gaylard studies how two genres of fiction—postmodern and Magical Realism—provide reflections on and responses to colonialism in Africa. He argues that genres such as Magical Realism, which allow writers freedom and release, provide African writers a sense of liberty in an era of colonization and assimilation.

Hart, Stephen, and Wen-chin Ouyang, eds. A Companion to Magical Realism. Rochester, N.Y.: Tamesis, 2006. This collection provides readers with a close examination of the Magical Realism genre. Writers trace the genre’s history, its common symbols, and the politics of representation in close readings of texts by authors including Marquez, Borges, and Allende.

Hegerfeldt, Anne C. Lies That Tell the Truth: Magic Realism Seen Through Contemporary Fiction in Britain. New York: Rodopi, 2005. Hegerfeldt discusses the debate over the definition for the genre and gives in-depth analyses of literary techniques employed often in Magical Realism. Rushdie’s and Morrison’s work, among many others, is discussed.

Linguanti, Elsa. Coterminous Worlds: Magical Realism and Contemporary Post-Colonial Literature in English. Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 1999. Linguanti’s collection primarily focuses on novel-length works by some of the most notable writers in the genre, including Rushdie. Linguanti also examines less mainstream Magical Realism texts, thus providing depth and breadth to the literary tradition.

Schroeder, Shannin. Rediscovering Magical Realism in the Americas. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. Schroeder’s book examines works of Magical Realism in the Americas (North and South), but awards special attention to North American magical realists such as Morrison. Schroeder acknowledges that the genre is often associated primarily or only with Latin and Central American writers and confronts this assumption with discussion of often neglected Magical Realism writers.

Takolander, Maria. Catching Butterflies: Bringing Magical Realism to Ground. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2007. Takolander, like other Magical Realism scholars, discusses the debate over how the genre should be defined as well as its inception and its influence around the world. By examining historical context, Takolander attempts to provide answers to questions about the genre’s presence, dominance, and influence in the literary world.

Zamora, Lois Parkinson, and Wendy B. Faris, eds. Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. London: Duke University Press, 1995. This book provides a collection of essays about examples of and developments in the Magical Realism movement in art, literature, and other media.