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4. In your opinion, is literary magical realism a relevant and useful narrative form for the 21st Century?

M. ELIZA HAMILTON ABEGUNDE, Writer/Healing Facilitator, Chicago, IL

Yes. Very relevant and useful. I think that what we dream now and write comes from a place -- at least for me -- that can help us see clearly where we are going. In addition, it allows us to explore history and the future in a way that a larger and more diverse audience can approach.

KELLI RUSSELL AGODON, Poet/Mother/Editor, Washington State/USA

Yes.

FORREST AGUIRRE, inventory analyst and managing editor for Ministry of Whimsy press, Madison, WI

Yes. Science Fiction can't keep up with reality. LRM will always be a step ahead of reality.

DOUG ANDERSON, Editor, KLANG, Seattle, WA

This depends totally on the skill of the writer; if he's good and needs to use it his work will determine the relevancy and usefulness of the technique.

Some form of MR seems integral to literature. Even in the 19th realistic narrative you had improbable coincidence, which is a kind of heightened magic. Dickens' atmospherics were a kind of magical incantation -- mood setters...don't you think?

ANONYMOUS, translator, Spain

Yes, I think that today magical realism is very useful for this century as this is a century that appears to be dependent on magical and evasive elements unlike the past century that depended on technology or the Nineteenth century that depended on human labour and industry. Today we have progressed from depending on individually 'earning our keep' to being subsidized by others (the Third World countries we exploit to our advantage). Magical realism serves as our 'dessert.'

JOE BENEVENTO, Professor of English, Truman State University and writer (fiction and poetry), Kirksville, MO
jbeneven@truman.edu

Yes, certainly, but it takes great writers to make anything work, and especially this is true of magic realism.

DARIO CIRIELLO, decorative painter, US

Of course.

ELLEN DATLOW, fiction editor, US

Fantasy, if that's what you're talking about, will always be useful in fiction.

GLENDA GUEST, writer/academic, Australia
glendaguest@ozemail.com.au

It's probably the ONLY literary mode that serves the post-modern. The self-consciousness, self-referentiality, use of potlatch, embedded grotesquerie etc. are all manifestations of Western culture as it is now. As a post-colonial writing it is still the best writing for the colonised to tell their histories into mainstream literature.

JAY MISKOWIEC, publisher & professor of English, Mpls. Community and Technical College, Minneapolis, MN
information@aliformgroup.com

Yes and no. If writers simply try to imitate people like GGM, they will only produce a poor copy. I think there is also a return to a kind of 'social realism,' or a 'realistic' realism to help us understand this world around us.

DON MUCHOW, sales, Dallas, TX
muchow@earthlink.net

Now more than ever.

DORENE O'BRIEN, writing teacher

Absolutely. See Answer #2.

JOHN PROHASKA, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
muchow@earthlink.net

Absolutely. The freedom of MR allows concepts to be approached in new ways and the fantastic aspect makes things compelling. There are no restrictions of potential accomplishment that can be attributed to the 'genre' other than possibly 'turning off' those whose thinking is predisposed to be dismissive of works with fantastical elements.

SARAH WEBB QUEST, freelance writer, South Yarmouth, MA

Hell, yes! It challenges and inspires the way we live our lives!

KEN RAND, "semi-fulltime writer;" dayjob: part-time library shelver, West Jordan, UT
KRand27577@aol.com

Absolutely. The mix of the real and the perceived -- virtual and propaganda -- is getting harder to comprehend. I just finished reading Life: the Movie. Highly recommended. Thus, stories about magic realism will have a more relevant place in literature. More and more, we'll see it as a sub-genre of existing genres. (I doubt it'll ever get its own space at B&N, but it'll be on other shelves.)

JUSTINA ROBSON, writer, UK

Any narrative form is useful for its purpose, as long as you understand its purpose. No narrative form has universal application. It's horses for courses. Magical realism allows you to do some fiddling that other forms don't, most notably with time and in the exploration of the history of ideas and symbols. It also permits a lot of 'reality creep', legitimising the appearance of miracles and deities in forms which would otherwise completely wreck a serious mimetic fiction. Its literary respectability comes from the undeniable skill of the breakout writers who first came to the attentions of Western academics. In the contemporary world our conscious upheavals are on a faster, grander scale perhaps than of late. The technology-driven nature of the Western cultures and the broad span of media seems more suited to SF than magical realism to me, but this suitability is probably an illusion due to my preferences. There's no reason magical realism can't be popular and successful in considering modern issues, but its very nature puts it somewhat at odds with the highly secularised and science driven vision of ourselves we find so admirable at the moment. It wants to circumvent linearity and linear solutions in favour of holism and mystery and circularity (to me it seems to want to but I am speaking out of a mere brush with it). That is its strength in good hands, also its weakness in poor ones.

MARJORIE ROMMEL, Publicist/Media Relations Consultant, City of Auburn, Washington; Teacher, Pacific Lutheran University (Poetry), Pierce College (Fiction/Biography), Highline College (Creative Writing), Auburn, WA
mrommel@qwest.net

Yes. I believe literary magical realism provides the bridge between observable fact and experiential truth, and therefore may be the single most relevant and useful narrative form for the 21st Century.

GARRETT ROWLAN, substitute teacher, US
growlan@jps.net

Yes: See answer #1.

ANDY SAWYER, librarian and lecturer, Liverpool, England
a.p.sawyer@liverpool.ac.uk

All forms of fantasy are relevant to the 21st Century, which is a fantasy century which has already been written about at length.

TAMARA KAYE SELLMAN, editor and publisher/MARGIN

Naturally I think it's relevant. Literature evolves; I think magical realism joins slipstream and speculative fiction as an example of an evolution of main genres (sci fi and fantasy) into subgenres which have broken from traditional genre tropes. This happens out of cultural necessity and is organic to any artistic movement. These subgenres aren't meant to replace, by the way, but to supplement or expand genres.

Magical realism, for instance, cleaves to truthtelling (it's the heightened mundaneity and the unspoken realism in a magical realist story that carries the weight of the narrative, not the so-called 'magical' elements) without relying on world-building (the traditional territory of sci fi and fantasy writing).

I find it peculiar that certain classicists of the traditional sci fi and fantasy realms work so hard to reject what seems to me to be a natural progression of genre (or to assume it's no different than what they've been doing all along). To hear them tell it, magical realism is the red-headed stepchild of the imaginative writing movement. I suspect something a little more personal behind that declaration, though -- sci fi and fantasy writers have always had difficulty breaking into literary and mainstream markets, whereas magical realism writing seems to straddle genre, literary and mainstream worlds at once. One can't ignore the element of competition here.

But it's really not about that. It's about readers. Magical realism makes sense to people who aren't otherwise receptive to imaginative and/or high concept writing.

I see a place for all variations of imaginative writing, and choose to dismiss attempts by folks to denigrate alternative forms. Which also says something about how I view literature in the 21st Century, I suppose -- I see literature as being a vehicle for change, for understanding. We're living in a time when building bridges and being creatively compassionate are requisite for positive change. World-building has its place, but so does truthtelling, and that's why I think magical realism has got its work cut out for it in the 21st Century. Sure, there will be really poorly done magical realism, but there will also be magical realism done to perfection. It's that writing we hope to embrace and to shine the spotlight on in the coming years.

BARBARA STEINHAUSER, writer, Parker, CO

It's particularly poignant in the 21st Century as people shape their individual world views in the midst of globalization and materialism.

ISAAC SWEENEY, full-time journalist, full-time grad student (English, creative writing concentration), Harrisburg, VA
lovefaithhopedreams@hotmail.com

I enjoy it more than any other. There is a freedom in writing in that style. The power of imagination can step in front of plot, characters, etc. to prove a point or make a claim. Reading it is great, too. The shock factor of something unexpected. Just reading right over the spider-woman who sits in the bar, then thinking afterwards 'that's a spider-woman.' The style makes me care about spider-woman and all of the characters. By the end of the work, the reader's imagination is so expanded that nothing is unexpected -- what could be more useful in life?

Go To Poll Question #5

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