Feb
8
Writer’s Statement (if i were a writer)
Posted by: | February 8, 2010 | Comments Off on Writer’s Statement (if i were a writer)
Magical Realism is something I take very seriously. The first magical realism story I ever read was in a Grade Seven English class. It was “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” by Marquez. I still consider it to be on my Top 10 Best Short Stories Ever Written in Any Language list, which of course is littered with other Latin American writers (ah Juan Rulfo!- what a hottie.) Ever since I began with Marquez’s short story I’ve attempted to write Magical Realism, nay I’ve attempted to mimic Magical Realism into a construct relevant to me. Having grown up by the Pacific, there were numerous attempts at trying to describe an ocean that would swallow my mother and spit her out golden and drunk. Failure. Instead of flowers for rain I tried sea urchins- failure. Definite failure. I have since resigned to the fact that I just don’t have the background for Magical Realism. Both my parents practiced law, I was raised in the States where politics are more or less transparent (relatively speaking to most Latin American governments) and though I’d love to be better friends with Metaphor, we’re both just so busy doing our own thing- we hardly have the time to meet up. I tend to stick to painstakingly sincere emotional characters and when more marvelous elements poke themselves into my stories they are quickly justified into a reality. I cannot write Magical Realism.
And now with the last 2 books we’ve read, I realize that perhaps I was meant for mimicking something older than Magical Realism. My vision of the world cannot hold up in a Magical World, probably because I’ve never had to escape into one, but perhaps it can survive in a Surrealist Marvelous World. Asturias and Carpentier take historical views of their respective worlds and fictionalize them. Of course there are hints to magical things, but the justifications are close at hand: Mayan creation myths, slave psychology. They are metaphors- exquisite, wonderful metaphors- but not the full fledged magic that is in magical realism. Metaphors by definition are a comparison of two unlike things without using like or as. Magical realism, as I understand it, (mind you the last time I heard an academic explanation of this was in grade seven) is the integration of magic into real life. A woman bursts into butterflies and she bursts into butterflies just the same as if she were to open her kitchen cabinet. She burst into butterflies and it is treated with the same normalcy as an everyday action- there is no comparison to a reality, no metaphor, because it is intended to be the reality. The distinction is subtle but key. And as much as Magical Realism has frustrated and inspired me, “lo real maravilloso”, as I’ve studied so far through Leyendas and El Reino de Este Mundo, seems a little closer to my North American, middle class writerly grasp. Perhaps it is because Asturias and Carpentier hadn’t ventured so far from their European literary model just as my North American writing influences have. But even so, the results are marvelous- inspiring even.
