More Magic Realism Folks

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Bruce Holland Rogers

A lot of my stories these days are short-shorts for my subscribers at www.shortshortshort.com, and those stories are all over the place as far as genre is concerned. Some of them might qualify as Magical Realism, but I define MR very narrowly. For me, Magical Realism is that art that represents a living belief system. That is, fantasy is about the impossible, but Magical Realism is about aspects of reality that much of the world believes to be impossible. A ghost story can be fantasy or magical realism depending upon how much the author believes (or seems to believe) in ghosts.

I call my short-short story "Silver Paper" a literary story, and I consider it to be realistic. In it, a mother-in-law seems to have an uncanny sense of her son-in-law's bad behavior. She seems to know before he does that he's about to embark on an affair, and she seems to signal her disapproval. The result is that the affair doesn't happen. This is an example of the way I sometimes think the world actually operates. The mother-in-law may be at a nexus of real insight and power, or it may only seem that way to the son-in-law. I really believe in the ambiguity expressed in the story, and for me, that makes it realistic...and Magical Realism.

Bruce Holland Rogers

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