by Ted Gioia
On January 8, 1981, while living in exile in
Venezuela, Isabel Allende received a phone call
telling her that her grandfather was dying. She
began writing a letter to him, which gradually
morphed into a fictionalized account of the
tumultuous recent history
of her native country Chile.
"In 1981, in Caracas, I put a
sheet of paper in my type-
writer and wrote the first
sentence of The House of
the Spirits," Allende later
recalled. "At that moment
I didn't know for whom I
was doing it, or from whom.
In fact, I assumed that no
one would ever read it except
my mother, who reads everything I write. I was not
even conscious that I was writing a novel." Her
efforts to publish the book in Latin America met
with rejection, but after The House of the Spirits was
released in Spain in 1982, it became a global
bestseller and a critical success.
Allende's family had been at the focal point of the
conflicts that polarized Chile—and the global
community—during the preceding decade.
Salvador Allende, often described by the author as
her "uncle" but actually her first cousin once
removed, had won the 1970 election to become
Chile’s President. With 36% of the vote, Allende
narrowly defeated former President Jorge
Allesandri (who received 35% of the ballots) in a
fiercely contested three-way race—thus becoming
the first Marxist to win a democratic election for
head of state in South America. Three years later,
his administration was removed by a CIA-
supported coup, which ushered in a 17-year period
of military control.
This interlude in Chilean history has been seized by
many who aim to draw larger lessons—about
everything from the scope of US imperialism to the
efficacy of Chicago-school economics. Both Left
and Right engaged in ideological warfare to
appropriate and interpret this story, although the
heat of the debate has been softened somewhat by
subsequent events—notably the end of the Cold
War and the return of democracy to Chile. Even
so, the passion of Allende's fictionalized account
has lost none of its intensity, and her novel stands
out as one of the most frequently read works of
Latin American fiction during the last half of the
twentieth century.
In Allende’s novel, the country that provides the
setting for the conflict is not mentioned by name.
The character based on Salvador Allende is referred
to simply as the "Candidate" and, later, as the
"President." Pablo Neruda appears under the guise
of "the Poet," and other characters represent
various real world personages, while much of the
unfolding political drama follows closely the actual
historical events of the era.
Yet Allende attempts a far bolder transformation
here than the usual masquerade of the roman à clef.
She borrows the fanciful trappings of magical
realism to impart a mythical and mystical tone to
her narrative. Only a short while before this book
appeared, an author of Allende's ideological
persuasions dealing with a historical novel of this
scope would probably have relied on the tenets of
socialist realism. "Only the love of life gives the
artist his unreserved truthfulness towards
everything that he perceives and reproduces,"
Marxist literary critic Georg Lukács had declared
back in the 1930s, advocating a scrupulous realism
that was destined to become a dominant attitude
among the more politicized fiction writers of the
middle decades of the century. Allende follows, in
contrast, the admonition of Neruda, who once
proclaimed: "Poets who are not realist are dead. But
poets who are only realist are dead also." Following
in the footsteps of Márquez, Rushdie, and others
pioneers of modern magical realism, Allende shows
in these pages that a writer can impart a powerful
fabulistic quality to even a historical novel by
mixing elements of gritty realism with large
helpings of the fantastic. The technique is not a
new one—Homer did the same in the Iliad and the
Odyssey—but in the midst of a century that suffered
perhaps from an excess of realism, broadcast live
into homes for the first time via radio and
television, authors only gradually rediscovered that
a bold legend could be as persuasive, perhaps even
as up-to-date, as the latest headline.
The House of the Spirits is a multifamily and
multigenerational tale whose timeline is roughly
coterminous with the 90-year life of Esteban
Trueba, an adventurer, businessman and politician
who sometimes takes over the novel as first-person
narrator. The century long span here may remind
readers of Gabriel Garcia Márquez's One Hundred
Years of Solitude, whose influence looms over
Allende's work. But she also had a more personal
reason for this expansive chronology—her
grandfather, whose final days spurred Allende to
start this book, lived to the ripe age of 99.
At the outset of The House of the Spirits, Trueba falls
in love with the beautiful Rosa, whose green hair
and bewitching appearance seem more appropriate
for a mermaid than a woman. Esteban extracts a
promise of marriage, but only on the condition that,
before any wedding takes place, he will have proven
himself capable of supporting her in some degree of
wealth and comfort. Inspired by confidence in his
future, Trueba seeks his fortune as a gold
prospector. When Rosa dies, the victim of an
inadvertent poisoning, Trueba is overcome with
grief. In despair, he travels to a remote area of the
country where he turns his energies to rebuilding a
family farm, long in ruins. His successes eventually
brings him back to the city, where he marries Rosa’s
younger sister, the eccentric and sibylline Clara.
Clara, whose spirit and presence dominate Allende's
novel, had already foreseen the proposal even
before Trueba’s arrival. Her clairvoyance is
accompanied by other gifts—she can move objects
without touching them, commune with the dead
and extraterrestrials, and float her chair across the
floor with no apparent source of motion. She is
incapable of matching the love of her mercurial
husband, whose passion for Clara rises in
proportion to her distraction and emotional
distance. But she provides a powerful,
countervailing presence in this patriarchal
household, and inspires by example the next two
generation of women—led by her daughter Blanca
and granddaughter Alba. These women espouse
compassion, charity and idealism—sharply
contrasting with Esteban’s ruthless pragmatism.
The family prospers financially, even as dissent
simmers beneath the surface. Trueba’s hot temper
brings him into constant conflict with the rest of
his family, but his intense drive and ambition help
propel his political career. After the election of the
leftist President, Trueba gives support to the
military factions that eventually overthrow the
government, but is embittered when the new
authoritarian regime turns on its own supporters.
The divisions in his own family are now echoed in
the larger turmoil of the times, and events take a life
of their own beyond the now elderly patriarch’s
ability to shape or influence.
The House of the Spirits is a sweeping, expansive
work—one that would be impressive for any writer,
but especially for a first-time novelist tackling such
large themes. Not everything works here; at
moments the book shifts gears, lapsing for a spell
into the conventionality of a telenovela or the one-
dimensionality of political sloganeering. But these
passages never last long, and Allende soon manages
to insert a compelling dose of drama and vitality
into the onrushing events and personages of her
fictionalized Chile.
This work operates at many levels. It is historical
and personal, fantastical and political, passionate
and eerily placid, sociological and metaphysical.
With so much content squeezed into her novel,
Allende runs the risk of losing steam at the end,
especially with a 90-year-old narrator taking stock
of a much diminished society and equally decimated
family. But our author rises to the demands of the
final pages, bringing this moving story to an
inspired conclusion….and one that transports the
reader full circle back to the innocence of opening
paragraph.
Ted Gioia writes on music, books and popular culture. His most
recent book is The Birth (and Death) of the Cool.
On January 8, 1981, while living in exile in
Venezuela, Isabel Allende received a phone call
telling her that her grandfather was dying. She
began writing a letter to him, which gradually
morphed into a fictionalized account of the
tumultuous recent history
of her native country Chile.
"In 1981, in Caracas, I put a
sheet of paper in my type-
writer and wrote the first
sentence of The House of
the Spirits," Allende later
recalled. "At that moment
I didn't know for whom I
was doing it, or from whom.
In fact, I assumed that no
one would ever read it except
my mother, who reads everything I write. I was not
even conscious that I was writing a novel." Her
efforts to publish the book in Latin America met
with rejection, but after The House of the Spirits was
released in Spain in 1982, it became a global
bestseller and a critical success.
Allende's family had been at the focal point of the
conflicts that polarized Chile—and the global
community—during the preceding decade.
Salvador Allende, often described by the author as
her "uncle" but actually her first cousin once
removed, had won the 1970 election to become
Chile’s President. With 36% of the vote, Allende
narrowly defeated former President Jorge
Allesandri (who received 35% of the ballots) in a
fiercely contested three-way race—thus becoming
the first Marxist to win a democratic election for
head of state in South America. Three years later,
his administration was removed by a CIA-
supported coup, which ushered in a 17-year period
of military control.
This interlude in Chilean history has been seized by
many who aim to draw larger lessons—about
everything from the scope of US imperialism to the
efficacy of Chicago-school economics. Both Left
and Right engaged in ideological warfare to
appropriate and interpret this story, although the
heat of the debate has been softened somewhat by
subsequent events—notably the end of the Cold
War and the return of democracy to Chile. Even
so, the passion of Allende's fictionalized account
has lost none of its intensity, and her novel stands
out as one of the most frequently read works of
Latin American fiction during the last half of the
twentieth century.
In Allende’s novel, the country that provides the
setting for the conflict is not mentioned by name.
The character based on Salvador Allende is referred
to simply as the "Candidate" and, later, as the
"President." Pablo Neruda appears under the guise
of "the Poet," and other characters represent
various real world personages, while much of the
unfolding political drama follows closely the actual
historical events of the era.
Yet Allende attempts a far bolder transformation
here than the usual masquerade of the roman à clef.
She borrows the fanciful trappings of magical
realism to impart a mythical and mystical tone to
her narrative. Only a short while before this book
appeared, an author of Allende's ideological
persuasions dealing with a historical novel of this
scope would probably have relied on the tenets of
socialist realism. "Only the love of life gives the
artist his unreserved truthfulness towards
everything that he perceives and reproduces,"
Marxist literary critic Georg Lukács had declared
back in the 1930s, advocating a scrupulous realism
that was destined to become a dominant attitude
among the more politicized fiction writers of the
middle decades of the century. Allende follows, in
contrast, the admonition of Neruda, who once
proclaimed: "Poets who are not realist are dead. But
poets who are only realist are dead also." Following
in the footsteps of Márquez, Rushdie, and others
pioneers of modern magical realism, Allende shows
in these pages that a writer can impart a powerful
fabulistic quality to even a historical novel by
mixing elements of gritty realism with large
helpings of the fantastic. The technique is not a
new one—Homer did the same in the Iliad and the
Odyssey—but in the midst of a century that suffered
perhaps from an excess of realism, broadcast live
into homes for the first time via radio and
television, authors only gradually rediscovered that
a bold legend could be as persuasive, perhaps even
as up-to-date, as the latest headline.
The House of the Spirits is a multifamily and
multigenerational tale whose timeline is roughly
coterminous with the 90-year life of Esteban
Trueba, an adventurer, businessman and politician
who sometimes takes over the novel as first-person
narrator. The century long span here may remind
readers of Gabriel Garcia Márquez's One Hundred
Years of Solitude, whose influence looms over
Allende's work. But she also had a more personal
reason for this expansive chronology—her
grandfather, whose final days spurred Allende to
start this book, lived to the ripe age of 99.
At the outset of The House of the Spirits, Trueba falls
in love with the beautiful Rosa, whose green hair
and bewitching appearance seem more appropriate
for a mermaid than a woman. Esteban extracts a
promise of marriage, but only on the condition that,
before any wedding takes place, he will have proven
himself capable of supporting her in some degree of
wealth and comfort. Inspired by confidence in his
future, Trueba seeks his fortune as a gold
prospector. When Rosa dies, the victim of an
inadvertent poisoning, Trueba is overcome with
grief. In despair, he travels to a remote area of the
country where he turns his energies to rebuilding a
family farm, long in ruins. His successes eventually
brings him back to the city, where he marries Rosa’s
younger sister, the eccentric and sibylline Clara.
Clara, whose spirit and presence dominate Allende's
novel, had already foreseen the proposal even
before Trueba’s arrival. Her clairvoyance is
accompanied by other gifts—she can move objects
without touching them, commune with the dead
and extraterrestrials, and float her chair across the
floor with no apparent source of motion. She is
incapable of matching the love of her mercurial
husband, whose passion for Clara rises in
proportion to her distraction and emotional
distance. But she provides a powerful,
countervailing presence in this patriarchal
household, and inspires by example the next two
generation of women—led by her daughter Blanca
and granddaughter Alba. These women espouse
compassion, charity and idealism—sharply
contrasting with Esteban’s ruthless pragmatism.
The family prospers financially, even as dissent
simmers beneath the surface. Trueba’s hot temper
brings him into constant conflict with the rest of
his family, but his intense drive and ambition help
propel his political career. After the election of the
leftist President, Trueba gives support to the
military factions that eventually overthrow the
government, but is embittered when the new
authoritarian regime turns on its own supporters.
The divisions in his own family are now echoed in
the larger turmoil of the times, and events take a life
of their own beyond the now elderly patriarch’s
ability to shape or influence.
The House of the Spirits is a sweeping, expansive
work—one that would be impressive for any writer,
but especially for a first-time novelist tackling such
large themes. Not everything works here; at
moments the book shifts gears, lapsing for a spell
into the conventionality of a telenovela or the one-
dimensionality of political sloganeering. But these
passages never last long, and Allende soon manages
to insert a compelling dose of drama and vitality
into the onrushing events and personages of her
fictionalized Chile.
This work operates at many levels. It is historical
and personal, fantastical and political, passionate
and eerily placid, sociological and metaphysical.
With so much content squeezed into her novel,
Allende runs the risk of losing steam at the end,
especially with a 90-year-old narrator taking stock
of a much diminished society and equally decimated
family. But our author rises to the demands of the
final pages, bringing this moving story to an
inspired conclusion….and one that transports the
reader full circle back to the innocence of opening
paragraph.
Ted Gioia writes on music, books and popular culture. His most
recent book is The Birth (and Death) of the Cool.
| The Year of Magical Reading |
| THE YEAR OF MAGICAL READING The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende |
Click on image to purchase
Click on image to purchase
Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to reviews)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Saramago, José
Blindness
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Verne, Jules:
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules:
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Ted Gioia's web site
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
Jospeh Peschel
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction and its
sister sites may receive review copies and
promotional materials from publishers,
authors, publicists or other parties.
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to reviews)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Saramago, José
Blindness
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Verne, Jules:
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules:
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Ted Gioia's web site
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
Jospeh Peschel
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction and its
sister sites may receive review copies and
promotional materials from publishers,
authors, publicists or other parties.
Welcome to my year of magical
reading! Each week during the course
of 2012, I will explore an important
work of fiction that incorporates
elements of magic, fantasy or the
surreal. My choices will cross
conventional boundary lines of genre,
style and historical period—indeed, one
of my intentions in this project is to
show how the conventional labels
applied to these works have become
constraining, deadening and misleading.
In its earliest days, storytelling almost
always partook of the magical. Only in
recent years have we segregated works
arising from this venerable tradition
into publishing industry categories such
as "magical realism" or "paranormal"
or "fantasy" or some other 'genre'
pigeonhole. These labels are not without
their value, but too often they have
blinded us to the rich and
multidimensional heritage beyond category
that these works share.
This larger heritage is mimicked in our
individual lives: most of us first
experienced the joys of narrative fiction
through stories of myth and magic, the
fanciful and phantasmagorical; but only
a very few retain into adulthood this
sense of the kind of enchantment
possible only through storytelling. As
such, revisiting this stream of fiction
from a mature, literate perspective both
broadens our horizons and allows us to
recapture some of that magic in our
imaginative lives.
The Year of Magical Reading:
Week 1: Midnight's Children by Salman
Rushdie
Week 2: The House of the Spirits by
Isabel Allende
Week 3: The Witches of Eastwick by
John Updike
Week 4: Magic for Beginners by Kelly
Link
Week 5: The Tin Drum by Günter
Grass
Week 6: The Golden Ass by Apuleius
Week 7: The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht
Week 8: One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez
reading! Each week during the course
of 2012, I will explore an important
work of fiction that incorporates
elements of magic, fantasy or the
surreal. My choices will cross
conventional boundary lines of genre,
style and historical period—indeed, one
of my intentions in this project is to
show how the conventional labels
applied to these works have become
constraining, deadening and misleading.
In its earliest days, storytelling almost
always partook of the magical. Only in
recent years have we segregated works
arising from this venerable tradition
into publishing industry categories such
as "magical realism" or "paranormal"
or "fantasy" or some other 'genre'
pigeonhole. These labels are not without
their value, but too often they have
blinded us to the rich and
multidimensional heritage beyond category
that these works share.
This larger heritage is mimicked in our
individual lives: most of us first
experienced the joys of narrative fiction
through stories of myth and magic, the
fanciful and phantasmagorical; but only
a very few retain into adulthood this
sense of the kind of enchantment
possible only through storytelling. As
such, revisiting this stream of fiction
from a mature, literate perspective both
broadens our horizons and allows us to
recapture some of that magic in our
imaginative lives.
The Year of Magical Reading:
Week 1: Midnight's Children by Salman
Rushdie
Week 2: The House of the Spirits by
Isabel Allende
Week 3: The Witches of Eastwick by
John Updike
Week 4: Magic for Beginners by Kelly
Link
Week 5: The Tin Drum by Günter
Grass
Week 6: The Golden Ass by Apuleius
Week 7: The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht
Week 8: One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez