"Magical realism is just pretentious fantasy"

[Anonymous No.20693277]

>Prominent English-language fantasy writers have said that "magic realism" is only another name for fantasy fiction. Gene Wolfe said, "magic realism is fantasy written by people who speak Spanish,"[54] and Terry Pratchett said magic realism "is like a polite way of saying you write fantasy."[55]
>"Magical realism is just fantasy by those who do not want to write fantasy"
This is a sentiment I have seen repeated here occasionally, usually hostile.
I think the one defining wedge between genre fantasy and magical realism is the simple fact that most genre fantasy is written as commercial products, while a lot of magical realism was written under, or inspired by and commented on, dictatorships and civil wars and generally social turmoil. You'll find a few authors that were censored, exiled, or "disappeared". Obviously that's not to say they didn't have to go through publishers, or were all serious and didn't write entertainment too, but sometimes they'd have to wait a decade.
Quite a few of magical realist stories are basically an evolution of the classic Latin American dictator novel, and probably several other Hispanic genres that I'm not adequate enough to comment on. The magic part can take different purposes and have different influences depending on the author and nationality. Marquez's influences come from the folklore told to him by his family and their superstitions, the surrealness in One Hundred Years of Solitude is used to show acceptance absurdity of life and the futility for the characters to change their surroundings, appropriate for a country mired in civil war. Both him and Borges were very influenced by the ghost town story of Pedro Paramo.
Meanwhile Asturias, who wrote before the 60's boom, used the term to refer to pre-Columbian stories, like the Popol Vuh, which he translated, or the Annals of the Cakchiquels. He would use magic to illustrate an indigenous and peasant magical view of the world and conflicts with Catholicism such as in Mulata de Tal. I bring this up because someone said the genre was exclusively in a Spanish colonial view of the Americas and was rooted only in Spanish literature.
(1/2)

[Anonymous No.20693279]

Most genre fantasy is purposefully meant to be shameless escapism, most originating in pulp fiction. And there's nothing wrong with that, and there's obvious more depth than that, like influence from romanticism as well as mythology, usually northern European, stuff you may already be aware of. But the point isn't the same as magical realism, even if some authors do wish to explain more than just how orcs rape, which there are plenty of.
Fantasy nerds see "magical" and assume it's gonna be like their dragons and orcs book, see "realism" and just think it's just pretentious(everything would look pretentious in comparison) hipster shit, and assume it's praised only because of its region or language of origin, showing their completely dismissal of it or anything behind it. Meanwhile they also fetishize anything that comes out of Japan which could be accuse of the same thing.
I generalized a lot of things and didn't feel fit enough to go into more details for both genres, but I wrote as clear as my observations could make.
(2/2)

[Anonymous No.20693309]

>>20693277
people who said that don't read or like magical realism so their opinions mean fuck all
sci-fi/fantasy fags are unironically the most pretentious people in literature.

[Anonymous No.20693374]

>>20693309
They basically have an inferiority complex when it comes to this topic for some reason. I've seen it in a Marquez thread a few days ago, and popping up in the archives from time to time.
It did make me think and try to wrap my head around it for the first time, but my conclusion would've been like any other shitpost.

[Anonymous No.20693400]

>>20693309
They basically have an inferiority complex when it comes to this topic for some reason. I've seen it in a Marquez thread a few days ago, and popping up in the archives from time to time.
It did make me think and try to wrap my head around it for the first time, but my conclusion would've been like any other shitpost.

[Anonymous No.20693417]

>>20693277
It's still a meme term that only makes sense as a historical/geographical category, not an actual genre. Calling anything made outside of Latin America "magical realism" is retarded.

[Anonymous No.20693421]

>>20693417
why

[Anonymous No.20693436]

Angloid fantasy cucks mad that their stories about Blumbo the Wizard are rightfully tread as trash while latin american chads rack up all the praise for coming up with a way to make respectful literature out of fantastical concepts.

[Anonymous No.20693444]

>>20693436
>Blumbo the Wizard
lol

[Anonymous No.20693467]

>>20693417
Plenty magical realist Latin American authors either applied the term to books written long before the boom(it was only applied to Asturias retroactively), to stories far out of LatAm(Elena Garro used it to describe the Nutcracker), or just outright rejected it(Borges).
It can definitely be written outside of Latin America, but the region itself is unique enough to make it its own.

[Anonymous No.20693514]

>>20693421
Because the stylistic definition of "magical realism" is so vague you can make it apply to half the 20th century canon if you want it to, at which point you might as well just say "fantasy" or "surrealism." You either use it to refer to a specific group of authors or it means nothing. It's like the "I-novel" genre in Japanese literature, which could technically cover dozens of western confessional novels. Nobody does that because it's obviously retarded, yet for some reason academia is filled with morons who love to do the same thing and call as many things as humanly possible "magical realism."
>>20693467
>the region itself is unique enough to make it its own
Yeah, that's kind of my point.

[Anonymous No.20693532]

>>20693279
>Fantasy nerds see "magical" and assume it's gonna be like their dragons and orcs book
Literally not one. It's plebs like you who see the word fantasy and equate it with dragons and orc, as you've displayed with this massive cope post.

[Anonymous No.20693533]

>>20693514
>Because the stylistic definition of "magical realism" is so vague
I dunno, I feel that "realism except every omce in a while dream logic invades but is treated as if it's just another part of the real world" is a pretty concrete definition, and there's nothing wrong with having a name for something like that.

[Anonymous No.20693558]

fantasy is speculative
Magical realism isn't

[Anonymous No.20693584]

>>20693532
>Literally not one.
I don't see a reason why anyone would try to equate the two beyond the simple fact that both have magic in it.
>It's plebs like you who see the word fantasy and equate it with dragons and orc
It's shorthand for cliched stock fantasy that tries to be different by making their elves look weirder or simply changing the tone("dark fantasy").

[Anonymous No.20693618]

>>20693277
When someone tells you fantasy is not literature, you should slap them with your hardback copy of Ficciones.

[Anonymous No.20693627]

>>20693618
Ficciones is not fantasy in the English connotation of the genre.

[Anonymous No.20693654]

>>20693627
It's typically not thought of as such, because it is highly literary and so good, but if you think about it, it is. It is.

[Anonymous No.20693663]

>>20693654
How?

[Anonymous No.20693670]

This is all like saying Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is fantasy.
I mean, yeah? But also not really what people mean by "fantasy" anymore.

[Anonymous No.20693684]

>>20693663
Oh my bad, I thought you grasped the most basic understanding required to participate in this conversation. It's self-evident, and now you can just imagine me patting you on the head in a patronizing manner. I won't be teaching you how to wipe either, so don't hold your breath for that, but if you'd like you could try telling me how it isn't.

[Anonymous No.20693696]

>>20693670
>all fantasy is lord of the rings, period
>why, why does all fantasy copy lord of the rings?!?

[Anonymous No.20693700]

>>20693684
I have read stuff like Pierre Menard and it has nothing to do with fantasy. The second part also has detective-like stories, which again, have nothing to do with fantasy.

[Anonymous No.20693707]

>>20693277
>You'll find a few authors that were censored, exiled, or "disappeared".
Anglo moment.

[Anonymous No.20693728]

>>20693707
He's right.

[Anonymous No.20693729]

In the second and third world, art cannot be separated from political existence, it is inextricably woven into the life of the author

In the first world, many have the stability and comfort to write pure escapist fantasy, the very experience of settling down with some Tolkien or Pratchett is comfortable, it's comforting

These Latin American novels provoke, they challenge the reader and express something both deeply political and personal

I would recommend any first worlder to read about Third Cinema and how exactly legacy of colonization manifests itself in Latin America's political economy

Not out of any sort of vague idealism, but to understand my people on a human level and learn a greater historical context that the institutions of the first world will not teach you

[Anonymous No.20693738]

[Anonymous No.20693744]

>>20693729
>Third Cinema
Sounds like some cringe marxist movement.

[Anonymous No.20693767]

>>20693707
El Señor Presidente was written in 1920's Guatemala but had to be released 40's Mexico due to censorship
Even fucking comic book writers would never bee seen again

[Anonymous No.20693773]

>>20693729
>Third Cinema
Sounds like some based marxist movement.

[Anonymous No.20693779]

>>20693744

I am far from marxist but I value the truth

As a Christian we are commended by God to speak up for the rights of the poor

If you understand the relationship between US corporations and Latin American politics then you will be learning things that the powers of this world do not want you to know

That is better than living in the dark, under the power of lies

[Anonymous No.20693782]

Fantasy writers and sci-fi writers suffer from the same problem Stephen King is suffering. They got the money, their names are known (some consider it fame), could be almost considered success, but there is no respect for their work.

[Anonymous No.20693788]

>>20693779

commanded*

[Anonymous No.20693789]

>>20693779
>If you understand the relationship between US corporations and Latin American politics then you will be learning things that the powers of this world do not want you to know
Sure but this has nothing to do with "colonization."

[Anonymous No.20693798]

>>20693789
>"colonization"
I don't think you'd even care about literal colonization.
Latin America's situation is still very much tied to the legacy of colonialism right down to its own infrastructure, and US imperialism continued to exploit that.

[Anonymous No.20693819]

>>20693789

It has everything to do with the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the Americas, from land allocation to Indigenous relations to university liberalism to the daily lives of first worlders

If you can't draw these connections then you will completely miss the bigger picture of the Americas, most of which is Latin America

You don't want to be a mindless drone of corporate propaganda

In fact, if you live in the USA and you don't see the value in understanding a lick of Spanish then you are in the dark on what is happening on these continents and how it relates to our lives and future

It would be equivalent to a being a cow on a farm who is grown and slaughtered on corn without even understanding what is going on around him

That is my last word on this, would at the very least learn about Operation Condor and Smedley Butler

[Anonymous No.20693821]

>>20693277
Yeah, I agree. It's completely disingenuous and flat out wrong to call magical realism fanstasy. Magical realism is a lot more subtle than fantasy. The former usually stays solidly in the real world that we know, but introduces slight supernatural elements to make a point, whereas fantasy is set in a completely different world from the outset. Like with anything, the boundaries are fuzzy but I think that there is a tangible enough difference between the two to classify certain. For example, I would classify what I've read of Garcia as fantasy.

[Anonymous No.20693825]

>>20693696
>playing dumb

[Anonymous No.20693827]

>>20693767
Cool post, bro. 4channel mods decided to hide it during 20 years until it's the right time to publish it... in tohno chan. Don't worry because it's not censorship.

[Anonymous No.20693853]

I think magical realism started as a pretentious referral to Latin American fantasy but it’s become merely a way for intellectuals to smuggle fantasy into literary fiction without appearing to have broken blurred distinction they helped create.

[Anonymous No.20693890]

>>20693853
see >>20693309

[Anonymous No.20693901]

>>20693890
Well, it’s true that I don’t like it.

[Anonymous No.20693960]

>>20693277
All literature is fantasy. All literature is written as commercial products
Magical Realism as a genre is Borges fanfiction, and Borges himself loved lowbrow trash fantasy/horror. Quit being pretentious

[Anonymous No.20693988]

>>20693960
literal gibberish

[Anonymous No.20694182]

>>20693988
You have to finish grade school to be on /lit/

[Anonymous No.20694354]

>>20693729
art is mostly leftist political propaganda here
either because artists get many gibs from leftists govs
or because college is just a indoctrination camp nowadays

[Anonymous No.20694379]

>>20694182
nothing you said was true or coherent

[Anonymous No.20694435]

>>20693277
magical realism, fantasy and high fantasy are easily distinguishable

[Anonymous No.20694553]

post some GOAT magical realism other than Marquez

[Anonymous No.20694574]

>>20694553
Pedro Paramo

[Anonymous No.20694618]

>>20693417
Jünger, Bordewijk, Malaparte, Savinio, Ortese were long writing magischer Realismus while you spics were still living in mudhuts

[Anonymous No.20694638]

>>20694379
Everything he wrote was true and coherent. Now leave this board.

[Anonymous No.20694649]

>>20694574
That's more like a gothic ghost story. You see, the term 'magical realism' is useless.

[Anonymous No.20694668]

One Hundred Years of Solitude is fantasy. Beloved is a ghost story. Brave New World is sci-fi with a ton of world building, same goes for 1984. Borges is mostly fantasy. Pelevin is fantasy. Murakami is fantasy. Master and the Margarita is fantasy.

The difference is that these were well received enough to be seen as literature.

Obviously genre fiction does produce a "type" of book. Books that are extremely focused on world building and their fantasy or sci-fi elements, less on universal human experiences. However this hardly defined the genres, because there is plenty of light sci-fi.

Shadow of the Torturer is considered genre fiction because the setting is too alien, but also because it doesn't rise to the level of Borges, etc., despite what the author might think. Bakker had a similar sort of chip on his shoulder. He shouldn't though, being genre fiction isn't a value judgement, and while he can be king of genre fiction, he's not going to be for lit in general by a very long shot.

[Anonymous No.20694676]

>>20694668
Where does S King fit in?

[Anonymous No.20694683]

>>20693729
>In the first world, many have the stability and comfort to write pure escapist fantasy, the very experience of settling down with some Tolkien or Pratchett is comfortable, it's comforting
>implying this is apolitical

[Anonymous No.20694712]

>>20694553
Underrated early Knausgaard. The framing device is a thesis on angels by a fictional renaissance scholar and his commentaries on retellings of biblical stories in a style similar to Hamsun's neorealist works.

[Anonymous No.20694716]

>>20694712
Forgot my image.

[Anonymous No.20694831]

>>20694712
This looks great or cringe.

[Anonymous No.20694893]

>>20694668
>The difference is that these were well received enough to be seen as literature.
I don't buy this. The people who wrote those stories set out to do something beyond just working within particular expectations of fiction.

Genre fiction is just fiction that tends to work within the expectations of a genre, and seldom reaches outside of it. It speaks in a language that fans of the genre can understand, and that is usually what measures it success. For instance

>what if a story about orcs...but good orcs...

Not necessarily a bad thing, but in dealing with these fanciful concepts it sacrifices depth, since ultimately what it's dealing with is not human sensation, but words, with human sensation as a byproduct.

Can't speak for genre insecurity though. There seems to be a subset of people who really want to be seen as smart, and base their entire ego around it, and many of them tend to be Fantasy writers. Perhaps they enjoy the idea of having a world only they can explain the complexities of.

[Anonymous No.20694894]

>>20693738
Such a great book. Actual literary fantasy just as good as if not better than most magic realism I’ve read.

[Anonymous No.20694932]

>>20693738
Isn't this really long and gay?

[Anonymous No.20694998]

>>20694831
Bit of both to be honest.

[Anonymous No.20695041]

>>20694894
Agreed, beautiful book.

>>20694932
You sound like a teenager playing fortnite. Maybe literature just isn’t for you. Try /v/.

[Anonymous No.20695151]

>>20693960
Midwit

[Anonymous No.20695330]

You will never write real literature. You have no prose, you have no style, you have no deepness. You produce the male version of Wattpad stories propped by Hollywood and the inflated publishing industry.

All the “validation” you get is two-faced and half-hearted. Behind your back book publishing companies despise you. Your professors are disgusted and ashamed of your work, your “editors” laugh at your characters and ideas behind closed doors.

Critics are utterly repulsed by you. Thousands of years of literature have allowed educated men to sniff out shit books with incredible efficiency. Even sci-fi/fantasy writers who “pass as art” wrote uncanny and unnatural texts to an average reader. Your themes are a dead giveaway and even if you manage to make a dumb teenager read your books, he’ll despise you as soon as he gets into literature.

You will never be happy. You wrench out a fake smile every single Comic-Con and tell yourself it’s going to be ok, but deep inside you feel the depression creeping up like a weed, ready to crush you under the unbearable weight on knowing your work represents everything Walter Benjamin and Adorno feared literature would degenerate in capitalism.

Eventually it’ll be too much to bear - once you get old you'll buy a classic, read it and understand what art is. Your family will find you, heartbroken but relieved that they no longer have to live with a semi-literate in the same house. When you die they’ll bury you with a headstone marked with your name, and every passerby for the rest of eternity will know a shit writer is buried there. Your body will decay and, hopefully, your work will be forgotten forever.

This is your fate. This is what you chose. There is no turning back.

[Anonymous No.20695736]

>>20695041
>You sound like a teenager playing fortnite. Maybe literature just isn’t for you. Try /v/.

So you don't deny that it's long and gay.

[Anonymous No.20695762]

>>20693277
I don't know what the point of this post is apart from "magical realism is different from high fantasy", a thing obvious to everyone - the authors saying it is fantasy like the rest are plainly resentful over their favourite genre being despised and you fail to show why one should be preferred to the other
You say most fantasy is written for commercial purposes but this has no bearing on actual quality, you point out the origins of magic realism but it is the easiest thing in the world to trace the origins of modern fantasy through romanticism to epic literature of the 16th and 17th centuries

[Anonymous No.20695985]

>>20693277
I think it would be fair to say magical realism being a form of more high brow fantasy.

[Anonymous No.20696141]

>>20693738
Comfy read, /lit never talks about this.

Why can’t more fantasy be like this instead of wizards and dragons?

[Anonymous No.20696169]

>>20693798
>and US imperialism continued to exploit that.
If only the US was actually imperial and the actually did that.

[Anonymous No.20696177]

>>20696169
Just because you're not gaining the fruits of their crimes, it doesn't mean they have not, had not done this and have not been doing this. You're just a civilian and the masters enjoy all the spoils while you pleb has to be emotionally invested and be making excuses for them. For free.

[Anonymous No.20696185]

>>20694893
>Perhaps they enjoy the idea of having a world only they can explain the complexities of.
The same goes for litfic writers as they ultimately control the narrative. There is nothing special about magical realism.

[Anonymous No.20696203]

>>20696177
No, my problem is that they aren't actually doing imperialism. Atleast not they way I'd prefer. They should be conquering for the honour of it and then burning all the coffee fields just to flex on the decadent idiots. Just subjugating them in fulfillment of the struggle for existence.

[Anonymous No.20696231]

>>20693277
Would anyone call Shakespeare magic realism? Its got fairy's and ghosts in.

Marquez is very good, but magic realism is as much a cancer as high fantasy with both producing second rate works.

>Muh murakarmi, Muh Rushdie, Muh Isabella Allende, muh Olga Tokarczuk

Those are the prominent authors of this genre.

It's a midwits literature and as shit as fantasy. Read the classics and neither fantasy nor magic realism.

[Anonymous No.20696270]

>>20694638
"All literature is fantasy" is wrong when we're discussing a specific genre of fiction called fantasy with specific definitions, in which case, by definition, means it can't be literature as a whole. You're gay semantic game is wrong and pointless.

[Anonymous No.20696277]

>>20696270
Define fantasy

[Anonymous No.20696285]

>>20696231
>fairy's and ghosts
Isn't what makes something magical realism. It's the way the fairies and ghosts and spurts of dream logic are
>1
a part of an otherwise realistic milieu
and
>2
are treated as if they are totally normal despite obviously not being so

[Anonymous No.20696302]

>>20696277
the fantasy GENRE is a type of fiction, not a synonym for all fiction like the retard I was replying to was arguing. If all literature is fantasy then there's no reason to have a specific category called fantasy and this discussion is mute

[Anonymous No.20696313]

>>20694893
Yeah, that's what I mean by a "type" of book, with your generic orcs etc. This describes the Witcher books, even though I think they are decent (short stories were the best parts though).

But you have near future sci-fi like After Party which is all about humans relationship with God in a world where science seems to show that it's all chemicals. What is a psychedelic made you see God long term, have you brain damage so that now you see an angel at all times?

This is a book with relatively light sci-fi elements that focuses on a common theme of literature. It's a fun book, not great, even for the genre, so it is known as sci-fi, but has it been received very well it would be like Remains of the Day or the Handmaid's Tale in classification. I'm fairly certain of that.

Likewise, The Sparrow is sci-fi assigned in seminaries and theology programs. It's based on the story of a saint who went to the New World, got stranded, tried to convert the natives, got brutality tortured and disfigured, and then went back to preach to them again.

It's largely a story about faith, particularly Catholicism, and the clash of cultures and how conversions can and can't work. The alien setting takes all the colonial connotations out and let's you focus on just the alien cultures meeting and the attempt to spread the word of Christ to others who have no context for it.

It's still marketed as sci-fi, but since it was so well received and began showing up in seminary classes, it has slowly begun pushing through that line into the literature section. Notably though, aside from the ability of Earth's civilizations to get a spaceship to another civilization, none of the technology used is much different from today's. Same for the aliens, they find them because they are broadcasting symphonies on the radio, and they seem to have a sort of 19th century level technology.

I read it a while ago and it's been fun to see it transcend its genre over time.

[Anonymous No.20696315]

>>20696285
Ok, according to that definition Twilight is magic realism.

[Anonymous No.20696323]

>>20696315
no because the vampires aren't treated as totally normal. They all live in secret for fucks sake.
you're so desperate to be right you haven't taken a second to think through your arguments

[Anonymous No.20696326]

>>20695736
It's about the same length and gayness level as One Hundred Years of Solitude.

[Anonymous No.20696331]

>>20696285
>1 a part of an otherwise realistic milieu
Well Shakespeare is amongst the greatest phycologists in writing so yes to that. He is probably the most realistic writer in existence; real being our inner essence ofc.
>2 are treated as if they are totally normal despite obviously not being so
Reactions to the fey are completely different depending on the character/play. Look to bottoms reaction to the fairy's in a midsummer nights dream.

[Anonymous No.20696337]

>>20696169
>>20696203
A 15 year whose only knowledge of history comes from map painter games and watches fashwave videos wrote these

[Anonymous No.20696340]

>>20696315
Twilight is paranormal fantasy. The vampires and werewolves are not normal people in that world, people don't just shrug at them as in magical realism.

But the line can be pretty blurry. Beloved sort of walks both.

[Anonymous No.20696352]

>>20696337
That's too specific to not be a projection. Anyway, that's how I'd prefer inevitable imperialism.

[Anonymous No.20696368]

>>20696331
If you going to call A Midsummer's Night Dream, probably the most central text in English fantasy along with Milton, Bauwolf and LOTR, magic realism then your a retard midwit who should go back to reading their light literature.

[Anonymous No.20696378]

>>20693696
Five books trying to be Lewis Carroll still won't be enough compared to all the ones trying to be Tolkien, and both Carroll and modern fantasy writers were doing different things

[Anonymous No.20696386]

>>20696352
>That's too specific to not be a projection.
This site is literally filled with people like that and then make twitter accounts with fifty emojis of crosses on their name
>Anyway, that's how I'd prefer inevitable imperialism.
Yeah, no one cares and you don't even know anything about these countries, that's why you sound a high schooler

[Anonymous No.20696393]

>>20693960
>Magical Realism as a genre is Borges fanfiction
Why do you feel the need to talk about something you clearly show to have no fucking idea about.

[Anonymous No.20696395]

>>20696386
>This site is literally filled with people like that
And you must be one of them or either obsessed.
>Yeah, no one cares and you don't even know anything about these countries
I don't expect people to care. I don't see the point in pulling my pants in a knot because people won't do what I want them to do like you. And I don't see why knowledge about latin American countries is relevant to what I'm talking about.

[Anonymous No.20696409]

>>20693277
>Muh murakarmi, Muh Rushdie, Muh Isabella Allende, muh Olga Tokarczuk

Those are the prominent authors of this genre.

[Anonymous No.20696469]

>>20696395
>And you must be one of them or either obsessed.
They easy to spot because they're obnoxious and this site is for people with that much stunted maturity.
>I don't expect people to care. I don't see the point in pulling my pants in a knot because people won't do what I want them to do like you. And I don't see why knowledge about latin American countries is relevant to what I'm talking about.
You are in a thread where one of the main points was the history of these countries as being the biggest influences on these books, one big thing that entails being violent US involvement in said countries, and you walk in with some midwit take about what "real" imperialism is and they should've just burned the fields and some wannabe-British lord jack off posts. That itself was barely relevant

[Anonymous No.20696529]

>>20696469
>this site is for people with that much stunted maturity.
Like you, fellow 4channel user.
This thread was about someone defending the validity of "magical realism" as a term and pretending his version of fiction is somehow more "real" than others(fantasy). Then you started talking about the woes of reality(imperialism) and pretending America currently practices imperialism which keeps down the latin man. I said I wish America practiced real, honest imperialism for it's own sake and not whatever materialist jargon you describe mainly to try and burst your myopic self-righteous bubble-view of reality.

[Anonymous No.20696533]

>>20696469
We get it, you hate 4chan. You don't have to be here but still you persist because you like being angry and arguing with people you hate. If not, just go to reddit or something.

[Anonymous No.20696548]

>>20693819
I think there is a fair argument to be made that this isn't colonization. This isn't a morale judgement, it's just that the mechanics of developing an actual colony (e.g., the US in the Philippines, European nations in most of Africa) are quite different and understanding one through the lens of the other isn't helpful. The blanket use of "colonization," stems from the politics of the Cold War, and attempts to blend the independence of actual colonies with the struggle of other countries for less foreign interference, into a single issue.

There is unfortunately a tendency of going to extremes on this topic. On the one hand you have people who are totally ignorant of US policy in Latin America, how direct it was at times, and how negative some of the consequences were. You also have those who try to deny US involvement in some of these events.

On the other hand, you have people who want to see all of Latin American, and really Third World history as dependent on the actions of foreign powers. The CIA becomes all powerful in these narratives. If the CIA acted somewhere, in Iran for example, the CIA was the main mover of events.

This sort of narrative falls apart on closer scrutiny of the actual events. CIA HUMINT was always far weaker than the Soviet's, and influence was fairly limited. The coup in Iran involved a single American, fairly junior case office, making some phone calls and dispensing $100,000 in cash, whose primary use was to hire rioters for a day.

The Iranian coup was done by Iranians and by the Shah getting out of his panic and having supporters call him back in. US influence being decisive is a useful political narrative, but the fact is that the CIA only tended to move the needle marginally in most places. The US used orders of magnitude more of its power in Vietnam and Korea, and didn't dictate results.

US influence also doesn't explain the collapse of growth in Argentina, which was wealthier than the US and much of Europe going into the 20th century. Internal politics drove problems there, just like internal politics drove Chile's rise to developed nation status.

There is a happy medium of realizing the US did a lot of atrocious things in LA, and that its drug policies continue to have catastrophic effects for Central America and for its own citizens, and having them as colonial overlords in the sense that the British ruled India or Ireland.

[Anonymous No.20696556]

>>20693277
>>20693279
So if I write a novel about a queer kid of color under the Drumpf regime who can sense people's true gender identity by touching them, am I writing magic realism?

[Anonymous No.20696582]

>>20696548
And given how much migration dominated US politics, you'd think that people would have picked up on Huntington's advice that we take the trillions spent in the Middle East and throw it into support and development in Latin America.

Here is a hard conservative arguing for something many liberals have long wanted.

Central America is in dire need of technical support, development aid (and not just predatory loans), and security assistance. The War on Drugs, which is highly tied to the region is an absolutely massive cost for the US economy. We have to bear the costs of the largest prison population on Earth and all that lost labor. We have more deaths from gang and cartel violence within our borders every year than we did in either of our last wars.

But security assistance and financial aid is muted. Honestly, given how important remittances are for Third World countries (they now dwarf all aid and loans combined), developed nations should really consider just direct cash payments to likely migrants. Obviously macroeconomic side effects need to be watched, but giving people cash instead of specific aid tends to reduce side effects as pricing dictates consumption, and giving aid directly to people gets around corruption in weak states.

[Anonymous No.20696680]

>>20696529
>>20696533
Newfags are always so overzealous it's painful

[Anonymous No.20696696]

>>20696680
Go home grandpa

[Anonymous No.20696939]

>>20693277
I just call it fantasy and there is nothing wrong with that. Moder/middle/old english writers have been writing fantasy since the middle ages. When you say magical realism it makes me think of hard vs. Soft magic. I don't like to explain magic in fantasy books because magic is simply just flavor to the story

[Anonymous No.20697016]

>>20693421
Because they're only places where gritty ultraviolent "realist" magiks work

[Anonymous No.20697052]

>>20696556
No.

[Anonymous No.20697121]

>>20696548
The fact that you still have people that deny any CIA or US involvement in these regions show that angry people online doesn't match an agency for an international global superpower and people's willing ignorance. The Banana Massacre mentioned in Years of Solitude was done by the US on Colombian workers, and before the establishment of the CIA. So was the overthrowing the Honduran government and occupation of Nicaragua. Blaming everything on the US is reductive, but serves better than the denialism and jingoism USAians have, and on 4chan that usually comes with racism or talking about how the Spaniards should've owned everything, as if that doesn't fuel the internal problems that people discuss, a long with others.
The original post that started this chain mentioned colonialism and the US separately, but someone got defensive enough in indicating the US that they read it as US colonialism.
>which was wealthier than the US and much of Europe going into the 20th century
If you were a rich upperclass descendant of criollos, Argentina's wealth is overstated and your average person, a mestizo, indio getting shot, or european immigrant with no voting rights, saw none of that.

[Anonymous No.20698264]

>>20696315
In Buenos Aires a College professor stated that Regular Show was state of the art Magic Realism.

[Anonymous No.20698403]

>>20693277
>Prominent English-language fantasy writers have said
opinions of literally negative worth

[Anonymous No.20698766]

>>20693277
If you read a fantasy work and a magical realist test you clearly see that they both hold a very specific and different relationship with politics, the reader, the narrator and the object of narration. I have a meeting soon so I can't go very deep into this but if anyone's interested I can delve more into this later today.
>>20693467
It was not exactly applied to Asturias retroactively. The term and the characteristics of the genre started to be developed by him, Carpentier and Uslar Pietri. Even if the exact term was only coined by Uslar Pietri til a bit later, they were all conscious they were making a new kind of LatAm lit that had to be considered together. These were all non-boom writers too ––magical realism precedes el boom even if the more fleshed out forme of it was borne in this movement.
>>20693729
This kinda explains a lot of Latin American literature ––and magical realism too–– but also ignores a very big part of LatAm lit and intellectual thought. Precisely one of the key aspects of many Hispanic American movements (the vanguardias, modernismo) is that art can be separated from political life ––that art is independent and is ruled by its own terms. It's not true that in the third world art can't be separated from politics; we've done it before.

[Anonymous No.20698786]

> Magical Realism is just fantasy but pretentious
> Religion is just fantasy that people think is real
> Sci-fi is just fantasy in space
> All fiction is fantasy because it's not real

Holy shit, fantasy authors need to stop co-opting other genres just to make themselves feel better about the fact that their own genre is almost entirely commercial garbage devoid of any literary merit. Get over it nerds.

[Anonymous No.20698802]

>quibbling about genre again
Genre labels exist solely for the purpose of marketing. If you care about the specifics of genre outside of that you have terminal funkobrain and need to be put down.

[Anonymous No.20699026]

>>20698802
Retarded take. If literary genres didn't exist it would be impossible to talk or think about novels, poetry, short stories etc. The fact that certain genres are used by publishers to sell books doesn't mean genres don't exist. It's important to take into account how a literary genre is constituted as it's a necessary category to understand how literature evolves. If you simply discarded the idea of genre you would not be able to understand in what ways a novel like Don Quixote reacts to the way novels were written beforehand and in what ways it expanded and innovated the ways a novel could be written and what could constitute a novel in the first place.

[Anonymous No.20699426]

>>20698766
>I have a meeting soon so I can't go very deep into this but if anyone's interested I can delve more into this later today
This post was overall pretty informative so I'd be willing to hear more

[Anonymous No.20699603]

>another thirdie cope thread
Yawn. Spanish writing peaked in the 14th-15th centuries.

[Anonymous No.20699629]

I hate fantasy books but I love fantasy. Truth is fantasy books should’ve stopped with Tolkien. The best fantasy world, TES, is a video game, which should yell you everything.

[Anonymous No.20699777]

>>20699426
Basically, Magical realism consciously creates a dissonance between the way the narrator describes its object and the way the reader perceives it. An event that would otherwise be considered ludicrous or, well, magical is told in a nonchalant way, as if it was truly something, stemming from the fact that MR is told from a perspective (the Latin American popular masses) where things like this are truly believed to be possible. The magical in this manner is naturalized, made normal, while still preserving a dissonance from the perspective of the reader, who is forced who is forced to perceive that event as natural, even if he knows that it can't be possible; a tension is made between the epistemological base from which the text is narrated and from which the text is read ––this dissonance and tension does not exist in fantasy.
MR is also an inherently political genre, but in a somewhat more complicated way than this would normally be understood. I won't get into this because this thread will probably die and no one will read this.

[Anonymous No.20699851]

>>20699777
Lucky number seven trips
>MR is also an inherently political genre, but in a somewhat more complicated way than this would normally be understood. I won't get into this because this thread will probably die and no one will read this.
I'd still like to hear it, it's an integral aspect and it's a miracle the thread still managed to survive previous mentions of it

[Anonymous No.20699861]

>>20699777
I'll always archieve lit threads that generate actual discussion on topics that are of my interest. This is one of them.

[Anonymous No.20700118]

>>20698403
What I want to know is why they're like this

[Anonymous No.20700170]

>>20699603
You just came here to mouth off some buzzwords too. Don't talk about writing. Don't.

[Anonymous No.20700400]

>>20693277
>>20693279
the distinction between literary and genre fiction did not exist in latin america at the time which is why it was possible for a hybrid to regularly be written. the distinction has only become a thing there recently due to the push of publishers
borges regularly read and was influenced by fantasy and was delighted whenever his stuff would get published in pulp magazines. magical realism is just fantasy sorry

[Anonymous No.20700790]

>>20700170
They are mixing market demographics with literary traditions.

[Anonymous No.20700793]

>>20700170 Sorry
This >>20700790 was for this >>20700118

[Anonymous No.20700830]

>>20696556
What you're writing isn't magical realism then, it's just faggotry.

[Anonymous No.20700868]

The real reason that magical realism gets fellated is that it's written by non-whites.

[Anonymous No.20700881]

>>20700868
It's like when you see a poem is written by someone with a name like N'gubu Ugdindu. You know it's terrible, but will have no trouble being published and will be lauded by critics.

[Anonymous No.20700888]

>>20693277
You are taking fantasy writers' comments on the literary world's refusal to treat novels like BotNS seriously because it's "just" fantasy and misconstruing it as a hostility to the genre of magical realism (which in 2022 has become as derivative as your typical "orcs, goblins and dragons" fantasy).
All the authors you mentioned are very well respected within the genre fiction ghetto.

[Anonymous No.20700931]

>>20693277
>Muh murakarmi, Muh Rushdie, Muh Isabella Allende, muh Olga Tokarczuk

Those are the prominent authors of this genre. I'm going to keep posting this until someone replies with either praise for these authors or admits that magic realism is a shit genre along with fantasy. I've read works by all these authors and I was unimpressed.

[Anonymous No.20701041]

>>20693277
I used that pic when I posted threads about The United Fruit Company and the banana wars in general, it's an interesting history.

[Anonymous No.20701073]

>>20693277
Magical Realism is just good fantasy with literary value

[Anonymous No.20701134]

>>20701073
no that's stuff written by the sf new wave authors

[Anonymous No.20701142]

>>20700830
There is no difference

[Anonymous No.20701143]

Leftist poopoo just like 99% of other fantasy and science fiction.

[Anonymous No.20701167]

>>20697121
There isn't much denialism, you guys just have tunnel-vision and are blinded by vapid historicism.
>as if that doesn't fuel the internal problems that people discuss, a long with others.
Like what, resentment? Revolts? Drug cartels?

[Anonymous No.20701247]

>>20696313
>remains of the day
is about a butler coping with the realities of postwar britain. are you by any chance referring to never let me go (same author)? that one actually has scifi elements. in any case i do agree with you that ultimately there is much subjectivity in differentiating magical realism and fantasy.

[Anonymous No.20701257]

>>20699777
that’s a lot of words to say “magical realism is when supernatural events occur but aren’t treated as supernatural by the story”

[Anonymous No.20701297]

>>20701167
>Like what, resentment? Revolts? Drug cartels?
Remnants of centuries of colonial infrastructure and remaining social hierarchy of it was literally just mentioned several posts
And revolts are backlashes to these problems and drug cartels are a result of the US failed war on drugs, quite a few 90's ones founded by graduates of the CIA trained School of the Americas and were literally helped by the CIA such as with the Contras in the 80's

[Anonymous No.20701327]

>>20701041
>when I posted threads about The United Fruit Company and the banana wars in general
I'd love to read those posts
It's an interesting painting and was used as the cover for the Persian translation of Los ojos de los enterrados, it's fitting for a lot of his works
I wish they used it for the cover of the new English translation of El Señor Presidente released a few days ago, but Penguin insists on using fucking ugly nu soi art for their new translations these days, I don't fucking know why

[Anonymous No.20701329]

>>20701297
>Remnants of centuries of colonial infrastructure and remaining social hierarchy
So? Would you prefer incan hierarchy or nahuatl or something? As for the US, yeah, it sucks that it's a progressive democracy that suffers from chronic imperium in imperio. Imagine if the war on drugs became actual and nit the debacle we were left with

[Anonymous No.20701375]

>>20701329
>Would you prefer incan hierarchy or nahuatl or something?
No one is asking for that and there's a few hundred years of history of people trying to form something new that you can read up on, it's never anything wild
>US, yeah, it sucks that it's a progressive democracy
lol
>Imagine if the war on drugs became actual and nit the debacle we were left with
>hehe you complain about interference but we could just NUKE YOUR ASSES YEAH AMERICA FUK YEAR
Yawn

[Anonymous No.20701429]

>>20693417
Another anon in a similar thread commented that the original pinocchio story is often mentioned as a proto-magical realist story

[Anonymous No.20702360]

>>20693684
Isn't it funny when a person pretty much says nothing at all but does the active effort to speak mockingly so as to pretend that they're in a place of superiority.

[Anonymous No.20702372]

>>20694649
funny how you just asked that question solely in order to bait someone into answering you earnestly so you could come up with some sort of uninformed and factually untrue gotcha snarky reddit moment

[Anonymous No.20702399]

>>20701142
>t.assblasted fantasyfag

[Anonymous No.20702412]

>>20700868
>>20700881
It's okay, just say you're a midwit it takes less words

[Anonymous No.20702427]

>>20700868
That's more likely the reason angloids seethe at it and insist it's just like their tolkien rip offs

[Anonymous No.20702619]

>>20702372
You are in delirium.

[Anonymous No.20702627]

>>20702427
>the reason angloids seethe
sffg writers you mean

[Anonymous No.20703370]

>>20702399
There is no meaningful difference that makes the one better than the other. You are fighting over skub

[Anonymous No.20703549]

>>20693277
realism by itself in any medium is for pretentious faggots who want to seem adult.
people who always wants to force the view of "magic is just super advanced science" are retards that need realism otherwise they are insecure about the things they might want to like.

[Anonymous No.20703575]

>>20703549
>people who always wants to force the view of "magic is just super advanced science" are retards that need realism otherwise they are insecure about the things they might want to like.
You have absolutely no idea what this thread is about, dear frogposter.

[Anonymous No.20703602]

>>20703575
I don't really care.
Magical realism sounds gay as fuck, and people who wants to force realism on fantasy are the biggest pesuds or larping retards. terry prachet included.

[Anonymous No.20703619]

>>20702619
>oh no!I've been caught so I'll throw random accusations
>>20703370
>I can't see any meaningful difference because I'm a mental midget but I'll pretend my short sightedness is fact

[Anonymous No.20703620]

>>20703602
>sounds
>force
Again, you don't need to have an opinion on things you don't know anything about
Magical realism does the exact opposite of what you're talking about and has no connection to it or this gay nerd scene

[Anonymous No.20703624]

>>20703602
you don't know what magical realism is at all you're actually just making it up and pretending that whatever the fuck you're making up is what it really is

[Anonymous No.20703625]

>>20703602
>absolute fucking retard enters thread and just starts violently shitting his pants
100% american

[Anonymous No.20703633]

>>20703625
he's so obviously thinking of urban fantasy too

[Anonymous No.20703638]

>>20703625
>>20703624
>>20703620
This just proves that I'm correct and you are all nerds who cream their pants when it's explained on page 521 that magic is actually molecular manipulation of antimatter or some shit.

[Anonymous No.20703651]

>>20703638
? what, that does not happen in magical realism at all, stop pretending to know something you don't know shit about

[Anonymous No.20703656]

>>20703651
>magical realism
>realistic magic
wow so complicated to understand

[Anonymous No.20703660]

>>20703656
I can't believe it got me so long to realize I was getting baited, my passion for pointless internet arguments got the best of me

[Anonymous No.20703741]

>>20693279
>>20693277
I think it’s obvious that it’s not instantly “bad” or “lower-tier” even if they ARE writing so-called “fantasy” — Homer’s Iliad, the Odyssey, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Divine Comedy, much of Kafka’s and Borges’s works, and the like, are also all “fantasies,” literally having fantastic elements in them. The issue is in terminology and snobbishness, as well as the modern artificial phenomenon of “genres,” books being split up into genres so different publishers and pulp magazines could specialize in “different genres” — the detective novel, fantasy, sci-fi, and so forth.

The low/high-art dichotomy is not necessarily defined by what “genre” you’re writing in, as in the artificial literary vs genre fiction divide, it’s by the very quality of what you’re writing. Writers like Chandler brought the mystery novel to a high form of development, a vast range of writers from Stapledon to to PKD for sci-fi, and so forth, all while shamelessly writing as “genre writers”, as writers fulfilling a specific niche of “what type of books they’re writing.” On the other hand, “literary fiction” writers, “the greats,” have also shamelessly employed tropes of “genre fiction” and simply developed them to a high-degree.

“Magical realism” could be said to just be a snobbish literary term for a more sophisticated, high-quality form of fantasy, which they created because they didn’t want to be put on a par with a rote novelistic form of Dungeons-and-Dragons, as well as because it has unique qualities similar to “realistic literary fiction” seamlessly blended with tropes of fantasy in a way different from
the typical fantasy novel. A work of Pynchon’s like Gravity’s Rainbow is simultaneously historical fiction and science fiction but since we view Pynchon as more “sophisticated” and “literary,” we call it “postmodern literature,” instead of a sci-fi or historical fiction writer, which he in a way is (especially the latter). However, on the other hand, it’s also true that “genre fiction” broadly — in terms of airport thrillers, the pulp you see on revolving racks in pharmacies and the like — IS often trash because it’s stereotypical cliche stock rehearsed rote uncreative crap made to sell to a certain market.

[Anonymous No.20703945]

>>20694553
Aura
The Tin Drum
Baron in the trees

[Anonymous No.20704285]

>>20700931
>>20703638
>>20703660
HunterxHunter is magical realism. Togashi is the best magical realist writer of our time.

[Anonymous No.20704597]

>>20703660
It turned into bait but you can tell he was serious at first and then tried to double down and save face through irony. A lot of smartasses make the same assumption as he does because they don't read.

[Anonymous No.20704668]

>>20703741
>“Magical realism” could be said to just be a snobbish literary term for a more sophisticated, high-quality form of fantasy, which they created because they didn’t want to be put on a par with a rote novelistic form of Dungeons-and-Dragons
I don't see anyone putting it in that category beyond the D&D crowd trying to