I’m a cheap drunk. One glass of wine and my face becomes numb, my mind wanders. This is especially true in an airplane, which is where I wrote this, hovering over the Atlantic halfway between London and New York. In between films, I’ve been reading my book, Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, and I’ve become perplexed and fascinated.
It’s not quite kosher to write a review before you’ve finished a book, but this is not actually a review. Rather, it is a musing about something I’ve wondered about for a long time: why am I so drawn to “magic realism” and why can’t I seem to write it myself? Isabel Allende, Robertson Davies, Mikhail Bulgakov and now Murakami. I love the way these authors carry me along without a hesitation into their worlds of inconsistencies and illusions. But I am forced to ask the question, why can’t I do it, too?
I don’t think it is a problem of technique. I would never compare myself with such great writers, but I can see the way they accomplish their task. I can see the stitches within the tapestries. I don’t even think it is a matter of a lack of imagination, although it might be partially due to that. No, I think it is more likely to have to do with some innate need in me to create reality. My fiction is always firmly set in a “real” location, with “real” buildings, “real” streets, “plausible” meteorological phenomena. The characters I create always find themselves placed in a specific time against, or sometimes reacting to, “real” historical events. Laws of physics always hold true. Cats do not talk. People do not disappear from one place only to inexplicably appear in another. In other words, although I create new people and new lives, their world stubbornly remains our world. Believe me, this is not consciously done by choice. I just can’t seem to do otherwise, even though I may wish to. And I believe this has something to say about me.
Alas, I’m not drunk enough to be able to figure out what that something is. Is it fear? Anger? Maybe it’s that other part of me, the part that could have led me into business or law or some field centered firmly in reason. I don’t know, but I’m willing to listen to suggestions. And I’m thinking maybe sometime, it might be a good idea to hide myself away, not let anyone know, and try to suspend reality and write up some magic of my own.
And speaking of magic…my mother turns 80 today. It doesn’t get more real than that. Happy birthday, Mom!
It’s all magic to one degree or another. To be able to conjure even the most ‘real’ of scenes using words alone is a wonderful thing.
Graeme’s point is good. He’s right, I think.
I don’t get drawn to magical realism but I loved Kafka on the Shore. I would never have read it had it not been for book group.
Happy birthday Sue’s Mum/Mom.
Thanks for this one mile high musing, if that’s not magical what is? And how do telephones work? I’ve never understood. I have the opposite problem, I can’t help but write magical realism, but always aware of that fine line between the quotidian and fantastical, and how to keep the reader suspending disbelief.
Pascale
I agree with Graeme…your characters may be grounded in ‘real’ life but they are works of your imagination…
I hope you Mum had a wonderful birthday
C x
I like the cover of that book. I can imagine you being a cheap drunk because you are so TINY! I’ve given you an award over on my Chez Aspie blog.
oooo ….Isabelle Allende is one of my favourites! Love her.
We all write what is right for the time. Perhaps your time of magic will come, who knows?