|
I think posters ahead of me have done well as far as magic realism goes, it seems to be mostly a Latin American movement that fuses the magical with the real instead of jumping to a whole other world to get from one to the other. Outstanding examples would be "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Garcia Marquez, "the House of the Spirits" by Allende, the short stories of Borges and Cortazar as well as "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie. Hey, any book that got the author put under a fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini has got to be worth a read, right?
As for fantasy, that's pretty easy to define as well. Fantasy takes place in a whole different world, or at least the central focus of the story is on one. Under this definition Narnia would be fantasy, but then again, what the hell do I know? Otherwise, the style tends to be more grand and romantic overall than the other categories you've listed, and incorporate elements such as talking animals and the revival of the medieval way of life. The first may be present in magic realism, the second never. Standouts include, of course, Tolkein, the father of modern fantasy, as well as his modern followers Terry Brooks, Terry Pratchett, Tad Williams and Ursula K. Le Guin. Unfortunatley, the standard for fantasy writing seems to be series that stretch out over 20 books, which I find to be freakin' annoying, but other may appreciate. So it goes. I would also place Harry Potter in this category, because while its events supposedly take place in the real world, the central focus is on an entirely different society that experiences the magical element. Also, the grander themes of fantasy and its romanticism are much too abundant for me to place it in the category of magic realism.
Surrealism is harder to define, as its main forum for presentation would be in the visual arts, and also because its orthodox style has had almost no influence on modern prose. What that style actually was was "pure psychic automatism", according to Andre Breton, the poet who founded the movement and was later humorously labelled "The Surrealist Pope", for his excommunication of members of the movement such as Salvador Dali and Alberto Giacometti, often for purely personal reasons. What his style entailed was automatic writing, in which the writer would just sit down and let the words flow from his pen, with a specific resistance to any kind of logical order or presentation at all. It is easy to see why this most often took the form of poetry, and Pablo Neruda took inspiration from automatism during his encounter with surrealism in the Spanish Civil War. The first Surrealist novel, no a book, rather, because a novel would entail some kind of structure, was entitled "The Magnetic Fields", which was written one chapter a night, each by a different writer in the automatic style. However, this style for obvious reasons did not have mass market appeal, and so we mostly run across surreal subject matter when it comes to literature. Flann O'Brien's "The Third Policeman" is the first example of this that comes to my mind; it is seperated from being magic realism because in the new world none of the distinctly earthly elements remain, and from fantasy because there doesn't appear to be any talking animals or any other normal elements of that style. Sci-fi it is not, because of the unique ending of the book (SPOILERS) in which the main character discovers that he's in hell.
Sci-fi tends to depend on either aliens or far-off developments in human technology as a base for its premise, and sometimes can blend with fantasy, since they both fall under the category of soeculative fiction. One such writer would be Marion Zimmer Bradley. Modern "pure" science fiction tends to have limited appeal to the nerd audience, very similar once again to fantasy. I'm not a big fan of it for the most part, as it tends to go on grand series which I have already alluded to my dislike for. As far as classic SF goes, however, there's some substantial literature there, including Asimov, Bradbury, hs most prominent SF work being "Martian Chronicles", and Kurt Vonnegut, with such books as "Player Piano" and "The Sirens of Titan". For some reason, most sci-fi writers who actually recieve a broad fanbase depart from the style altogether. Who wudda thunk?
Drug Lit, on the other hand, is sompletely seperated from all above categories, for the reason that it almost without fail takes place in the real world, and any departures are explained by the presence of mind-altering substances. The first to advocate this new method was Aldous Huxley, who wrote "The Doors of Perception" about what benefits hallucinogens such as mescaline and LSD can have for the imagination. In fiction, it became mostly associated with the Beat movement, and not surprisingly is more often written about drugs than while on them. Some of the more standout examples are "Naked Lunch" by Burroughs, as well as works by Kerouac and Ginsberg.
Hope this helped!
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
