Magical Realism

Abstract

In a conversation with novelist Cormac McCarthy, filmmaker Ethan Coen asks McCarthy whether he ever rejects ideas because they are too outrageous. McCarthy replies: “I don't know, you're somewhat constrained in writing a novel, I think. Like, I'm not a fan of some of the Latin American writers, magical realism. You know, it's hard enough to get people to believe what you're telling them without making it impossible. It has to be vaguely plausible” (L. Grossman, 2007, “What Happened When,”Time, 29 Oct.). This quotation neatly catches an equivalence that has come to exist between the most commercially successful works of Latin American literature and magical realism, a concept contested by Latin American writers since it was first imported from German art criticism in the late 1920s. A concept that was for a time (mostly in the 1960s and 1970s) used to sell some forms of Latin American writing is now a straitjacket, resented by most Latin American writers, because it constrains a vast literary tradition. The term “magical realism” was first used by FranzRoh (1890–1965) in 1929 to describe certain currents in German art after expressionism. It was used early by Arturo Uslar Pietri and Miguel Ángel Asturias, and then vigorously challenged by Alejo Carpentier. In 1949 he coined a competing term,lo real maravilloso(the marvelous real), in several essays and prologues, as a way in which the Latin American writer, in contradistinction to the surrealists, can find the marvelous in the real. While not as influential, Carpentier's term is set out somewhat more clearly. Magical realism became a dominant critical term through Angel Flores's “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction” (1955) and Luis Leal's 1967 essay of the same name, in which Leal argues with Flores about what the term means and whether Franz Kafka is crucial as an influence. The corpus of both Flores and Leal includes such writers as Jorge Luis Borges and Ernesto Sábato, though they are no longer thought of in this regard.