Magical Realism News
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Good morning. I'm back at work after about a week off for the birth of Emerson. I haven't been keeping up with anything but that which I can hold in my lap. Whats new in the world? I see that the Raelian's have 'cloned' a human. In the all the fuss to come, lets try to keep in mind that the supposed clone is just a little baby. My entire outlook on life has changed in the last week. I used to mouth that pregnant woman and babies were the most important thing in the entire world, but now I believe it! Seeing the miracle of child birth firsthand was an intense and uplifting experience. ()
Don Quixote voted best book ever: "A world panel of writers chose Don Quixote, the tale of hopeless quest, as the best book in history." ()
Q: What is magic realism? A: "Magic Realism is an American style of art with Surrealist overtones. The art is deeply rooted in everyday reality, but has overtones of fantasy or wonder." ()
Demand for Garcia Marquez memoir spurs second printing in Mexico: "The first volume of the memoirs of Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez sold out in Mexico only two weeks after it appeared, forcing the publisher to put out a larger edition to meet the demand. Publishing house Diana said Tuesday that it began to distribute 100,000 copies of a second printing of "Vivir para contarla" (Live to Tell It) - double the initial run - this past weekend." ()
A Poet Finds His Past Is Just Where He Left It: "The Business of Fancydancing," the directorial debut of the novelist and screenwriter Sherman Alexie, is an often affecting, low-budget melodrama that is occasionally sabotaged by its economy of means: the image quality is sometimes so poor that it's like watching the pixel breakup on digital cable. But although the film is initially clumsy and a little hard to follow, Mr. Alexie takes his time in setting his characters in play, and the visual clunkiness becomes secondary to the eloquent emotional desolation." ()
Theoretical Grrrl: "Kathy Acker was a novelist with little interest in making up a story. She always said that she plagiarized, but she messed with whatever she pirated. She rewrote Shakespeare, Dickens, and Cervantes. Her Don Quixote needs an abortion. Her Romeo believes only in nothingness." ()
Isabel Allende: "Let's first begin by defining 'Magical Realism'. Magical Realism is a genre that combines realitiy and surreality onto the same plane. Many people confuse this genre with Science Fiction so let me give you a quick example that highlights the difference between the two: 'She ascended to heaven'. That's science fiction because the phenomenon of a person rising to heaven is entirely extraordinary. 'She ascended to heaven wrapped a flickering flame of silk sheets'. Now that's magical realism because the silk sheets offer a mysterious explanation as to why and how this woman is floating to heaven. With such vivid imagery and tangible reality, what WAS extraordinary now seems to be much more plausible, although the explanation for it is illogical and strange. Magical realism, therefore, is a perfect device for expressing a reality that is rich and complex. Personally, however, I don't like how critics came up with this term because I believe that magical occurences in everyday life is not so implausible so to assign a special term for is is quite discouraging." ()
Gina Ochsner is the Oregon Book Awards winner: "'I was gonna be a high school teacher,' she said. 'I got the certificate in English. Then I went to a high school and discovered how much time and work was involved. So I thought I’d go and live a little life first.' That’s what appears to be typical Ochsner — a wry sense of humor tempered with rare insight. Her humor, in fact, is spontaneous, infectious, often disarming. Sometimes, you wonder if she’s serious. Ochsner has heroes among writers, especially the practitioners of magical realism. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco and Ursula K. Le Guin. " ()
Why Gabriel Garcia Marquez would never get a job with PBS--and other truths of nonfiction film: "I think most people who go to see a documentary expect to see a TV documentary, with talking heads and archival footage--a PBS-type thing. As a result, we as documentary filmmakers feel this pressure not only to make it obvious what we think about our subjects, but to try to prove something definitive through the process of creating the film. Put it this way: Gabriel Garcia Marquez would never get a job with PBS." ()