tiganeasca
Moderator
I think it's a little surprising that there is no thread dedicated to the topic of magic realism, especially since it has been such an important touchstone for so long. So long, in fact, that I am inaugurating this thread with an article from the New York Times entitled:
Saying Goodbye to Magic Realism
Describing new Latin American literature as ‘magic realist’ prolongs a stereotype that overlooks the full depth and richness of each novel’s true genre.
By Silvia Moreno-Garcia*
Dec. 8, 2022
This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.
Lens is a close look at an emerging global trend or insight through creative narrative.
I once joked that I chose the title “Mexican Gothic” for my sixth novel with the hope that people would say it was a Gothic novel instead of a magic realist one. Throughout my career, I’ve had the words “magic realism” lobbed at everything I’ve written. Once, someone called my work “science fiction magic realism,” a term that continues to puzzle me to this day.
Magic realism once referred to the literary style of a loosely connected group of Latin American authors who penned works some 60 years ago, but in the English-speaking world, the term has become synonymous with Latin American writing in general. Picture every work by a British writer being called “Austenesque” today, and you get an idea of this phenomenon.
I’ve spoken to Mariana Enriquez, the award-winning author of “The Dangers of Smoking in Bed,” a couple of times about this expansive label. We both find it baffling, since it ties our work to the literature of our grandparents, obliterating time and space and geographical differences to create one single, lumpy category.
But does it matter what we call Latin American literature? Isn’t a rose by any other name just as sweet? In my experience, it matters because categories create expectations. When a work is described as magic realist, the picture it typically evokes is that of Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” But if you use the phrase to talk about “Eartheater” — a recent Argentine novel by Dolores Reyes about a young woman who dwells in a slum and has visions of missing people — the result would be jarring. I also feel it primes editors to hunt for a magic realist output that is rare in modern Latin America. Many genre authors are increasingly immersed in what might be called a Gothic or suspense epoch.
This doesn’t mean everyone has stopped writing magic realism. The genre seems to have more of a life among second- and third- generation Latin American writers living in the United States or Britain. But even there, I feel the magic realism label subtly erases the efforts of an emerging group of horror writers, such as V. Castro and Gabino Iglesias, whose work cannot be neatly encompassed by that term.
My reticence might seem merely philosophical, but there are practical aspects to it as well. Consider the issue of “comps,” the term used in the publishing industry for comparative titles. Comp titles are published books that are similar to a manuscript being pitched. They’re a type of shorthand for the industry and they can help editors make acquisition decisions. Before “Mexican Gothic” became a best seller, I believe there was a dearth of Latin American horror comp titles. This might have made it more difficult for an author to land a book deal for a novel in that genre. By labeling “Mexican Gothic” a Gothic and horror novel, it allowed editors to imagine the possibility of more titles existing on the horror shelf, a space that until that moment was perceived as out of bounds for Latin American authors.
I know authors of color who have told me that books they had unsuccessfully pitched before were suddenly met with nods after the success of “Mexican Gothic,” which was published in 2020 and follows a young Mexican socialite who journeys to an isolated house in the mountains where secrets abound.
Bookshelves at the Mexico City studio of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. Credit...Pedro Pardo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Latin American genre fiction is quickly branded as magic realism, it can lead the publishing industry to ignore a wide variety of books and stories and prevent works from being translated or acquired because they don’t fit an outdated mold.
Categories should not act as straitjackets, and yet the magic realism label has sometimes strangled rather than liberated Latin American literature. I’ve written one novel that I think might fit this genre. Even then, “Signal to Noise,” my debut novel set in the 1980s that follows three misfit teenagers in Mexico City who cast spells using vinyl records, feels aesthetically removed from the quaint small-town vistas of post-revolutionary Mexico that most people associate with magic realism. The rest of my work jumps wildly in tone, and “Mexican Gothic” owes a debt of gratitude more to the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga, who followed in the footsteps of Edgar Allan Poe, rather than any of the Latin American Boom writers.
Last year, I arranged for David Bowles to translate “The Route of Ice and Salt,” by José Luis Zárate, into English, publishing it through my own micropress. Written in the 1990s, it’s an erotic, queer reimagining of Dracula’s voyage to England aboard the Demeter, told from the point view of the captain of the doomed ship. I published this novella myself in English because I was surprised it hadn’t been done before (it had previously been translated into French). Perhaps it had been ignored by English speakers because it was written by a well-respected but not necessarily best-selling Mexican author, but I suspect its vibe — deeply Gothic, lush horror — might have also rendered it unpalatable to editorial tastes. It was, perhaps, just not the magic realism publishers have come to expect from Latin America.
In my experience, the term magic realism is often overused and stereotypical, spoken without much thought. It’s not the only term I dislike. I’ve also heard my work called “telenovela-like,” which I find unappealing because dramatic work by other writers wouldn’t be called a soap opera, even when great catastrophes might befall the protagonists. Therefore, “Lapvona,” by Ottessa Moshfegh — described as “a mix of fairy tale and folk horror” in The New York Times Book Review — is not a telenovela, but “Mexican Gothic” becomes one. People default to the telenovela label like they default to magic realism for a similar reason: because it’s an easy designation and because it’s associated with Latin American aesthetics.
I wish we had more nuanced, complex conversations about books. Why can’t we speak in expansive terms about genre and aesthetics? About mood and texture? About things that fit into categories and the ones that defy them? “Tender Is the Flesh,” a novel by the Argentine author Agustina Bazterrica about a future in which humans are farmed for meat consumption, is a science fiction novel, but it’s also maybe horror — there is a long tradition of cannibalism horror novels, after all — and its tone is at times satirical.
The magic realism conundrum will not be resolved quickly or easily, but I believe a wider selection of books from writers with a Latin American heritage can help move us toward a world in which our vision of this region is vaster and richer. This is happening, albeit slowly. Ms. Enriquez, for example, is making her novel-length debut in English with “Our Share of the Night,” out next year in the United States. I checked its category on the Penguin Random House website: It is filed under “Gothic and Horror.”
*Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the best-selling author of “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau,” and several other books. She has won the Locus and British Fantasy awards for her work as a novelist, and the World Fantasy Award as an editor.
Saying Goodbye to Magic Realism
Describing new Latin American literature as ‘magic realist’ prolongs a stereotype that overlooks the full depth and richness of each novel’s true genre.
By Silvia Moreno-Garcia*
Dec. 8, 2022
This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.
Lens is a close look at an emerging global trend or insight through creative narrative.
I once joked that I chose the title “Mexican Gothic” for my sixth novel with the hope that people would say it was a Gothic novel instead of a magic realist one. Throughout my career, I’ve had the words “magic realism” lobbed at everything I’ve written. Once, someone called my work “science fiction magic realism,” a term that continues to puzzle me to this day.
Magic realism once referred to the literary style of a loosely connected group of Latin American authors who penned works some 60 years ago, but in the English-speaking world, the term has become synonymous with Latin American writing in general. Picture every work by a British writer being called “Austenesque” today, and you get an idea of this phenomenon.
I’ve spoken to Mariana Enriquez, the award-winning author of “The Dangers of Smoking in Bed,” a couple of times about this expansive label. We both find it baffling, since it ties our work to the literature of our grandparents, obliterating time and space and geographical differences to create one single, lumpy category.
But does it matter what we call Latin American literature? Isn’t a rose by any other name just as sweet? In my experience, it matters because categories create expectations. When a work is described as magic realist, the picture it typically evokes is that of Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” But if you use the phrase to talk about “Eartheater” — a recent Argentine novel by Dolores Reyes about a young woman who dwells in a slum and has visions of missing people — the result would be jarring. I also feel it primes editors to hunt for a magic realist output that is rare in modern Latin America. Many genre authors are increasingly immersed in what might be called a Gothic or suspense epoch.
This doesn’t mean everyone has stopped writing magic realism. The genre seems to have more of a life among second- and third- generation Latin American writers living in the United States or Britain. But even there, I feel the magic realism label subtly erases the efforts of an emerging group of horror writers, such as V. Castro and Gabino Iglesias, whose work cannot be neatly encompassed by that term.
My reticence might seem merely philosophical, but there are practical aspects to it as well. Consider the issue of “comps,” the term used in the publishing industry for comparative titles. Comp titles are published books that are similar to a manuscript being pitched. They’re a type of shorthand for the industry and they can help editors make acquisition decisions. Before “Mexican Gothic” became a best seller, I believe there was a dearth of Latin American horror comp titles. This might have made it more difficult for an author to land a book deal for a novel in that genre. By labeling “Mexican Gothic” a Gothic and horror novel, it allowed editors to imagine the possibility of more titles existing on the horror shelf, a space that until that moment was perceived as out of bounds for Latin American authors.
I know authors of color who have told me that books they had unsuccessfully pitched before were suddenly met with nods after the success of “Mexican Gothic,” which was published in 2020 and follows a young Mexican socialite who journeys to an isolated house in the mountains where secrets abound.
Bookshelves at the Mexico City studio of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. Credit...Pedro Pardo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Latin American genre fiction is quickly branded as magic realism, it can lead the publishing industry to ignore a wide variety of books and stories and prevent works from being translated or acquired because they don’t fit an outdated mold.
Categories should not act as straitjackets, and yet the magic realism label has sometimes strangled rather than liberated Latin American literature. I’ve written one novel that I think might fit this genre. Even then, “Signal to Noise,” my debut novel set in the 1980s that follows three misfit teenagers in Mexico City who cast spells using vinyl records, feels aesthetically removed from the quaint small-town vistas of post-revolutionary Mexico that most people associate with magic realism. The rest of my work jumps wildly in tone, and “Mexican Gothic” owes a debt of gratitude more to the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga, who followed in the footsteps of Edgar Allan Poe, rather than any of the Latin American Boom writers.
Last year, I arranged for David Bowles to translate “The Route of Ice and Salt,” by José Luis Zárate, into English, publishing it through my own micropress. Written in the 1990s, it’s an erotic, queer reimagining of Dracula’s voyage to England aboard the Demeter, told from the point view of the captain of the doomed ship. I published this novella myself in English because I was surprised it hadn’t been done before (it had previously been translated into French). Perhaps it had been ignored by English speakers because it was written by a well-respected but not necessarily best-selling Mexican author, but I suspect its vibe — deeply Gothic, lush horror — might have also rendered it unpalatable to editorial tastes. It was, perhaps, just not the magic realism publishers have come to expect from Latin America.
In my experience, the term magic realism is often overused and stereotypical, spoken without much thought. It’s not the only term I dislike. I’ve also heard my work called “telenovela-like,” which I find unappealing because dramatic work by other writers wouldn’t be called a soap opera, even when great catastrophes might befall the protagonists. Therefore, “Lapvona,” by Ottessa Moshfegh — described as “a mix of fairy tale and folk horror” in The New York Times Book Review — is not a telenovela, but “Mexican Gothic” becomes one. People default to the telenovela label like they default to magic realism for a similar reason: because it’s an easy designation and because it’s associated with Latin American aesthetics.
I wish we had more nuanced, complex conversations about books. Why can’t we speak in expansive terms about genre and aesthetics? About mood and texture? About things that fit into categories and the ones that defy them? “Tender Is the Flesh,” a novel by the Argentine author Agustina Bazterrica about a future in which humans are farmed for meat consumption, is a science fiction novel, but it’s also maybe horror — there is a long tradition of cannibalism horror novels, after all — and its tone is at times satirical.
The magic realism conundrum will not be resolved quickly or easily, but I believe a wider selection of books from writers with a Latin American heritage can help move us toward a world in which our vision of this region is vaster and richer. This is happening, albeit slowly. Ms. Enriquez, for example, is making her novel-length debut in English with “Our Share of the Night,” out next year in the United States. I checked its category on the Penguin Random House website: It is filed under “Gothic and Horror.”
*Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the best-selling author of “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau,” and several other books. She has won the Locus and British Fantasy awards for her work as a novelist, and the World Fantasy Award as an editor.
