Quik Piks

[1.08.06] Canadian author Paul Auster has recently written what the Toronto Star calls his "warmest, shaggiest novel" yet with The Brooklyn Follies. The story, about a man who obsessively photographs the same streetcorner on a daily basis, is a typical Auster effort, as his "fiction concerns how narrative shapes reality." The unusual temporality of the story nudges it into near-magical realist territory, though perhaps not as much as his Mr. Vertigo, which tells the tale of a boy who can walk on air.

[1.06.06] Get this: Emily Carter for the Star Tribune reviews Zakes Mda's novel The Whale Caller with this utterly amusing statement at the beginning: "The term 'magical realism'…, applies to Zakes Mda's novel, The Whale Caller. But this truly magical book transcends any such tidy labels." Tidy? Wow, we've heard magical realism slandered for being many things, but never Tidy. Hmm. Wonders truly never cease.

[12.08.05] Okay, so it's old news, but here's what Seattle's The Stranger wrote in promoting Margin's final fifth anniversary reading in Ballard last December: "Kathleen Alcala, Tamara Kaye Sellman, Wayne Ude, and others read from a genre of writing involving the occurrence of weird shit." Well, it's not quite how we'd characterize magical realism, but I think it's a little closer than Emily Carter's view [above].