What Is Magical Realism?

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Critical works mentioned in the video:
Chabon - "Trickster in a Suit of Light" (from Maps & Legends), arguing that literary fiction is a genre just as fantasy, science fiction or horror. James Wood's How Fiction Works argues the opposite point - that literary fiction is somewhat "superior" to these other forms.
Eco - The Role of the Reader
Fowler - Kinds of Literature
McHale - Postmodernist Fiction

Fictional works mentioned in the video. The one with an * before them would be good examples of magical realism, if you've never read any:
*Allende - The House of the Spirits
Brautigan - The Hawkline Monster
Brautigan - In Watermelon Sugar
Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
*Cortazar - "House Taken Over" from Blow-Up & Other Stories
Finney - The Body Snatchers
Flaubert - Madame Bovary
Grossman - The Magicians
*Kafka - The Metamorphosis
King - It
Lovecraft - "At the Mountains of Madness" & The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
*Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Rowling - Harry Potter
*Rushdie - Midnight's Children
Stoker - Dracula
Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings
Wallace - Infinite Jest
Wyndham - The Kraken Wakes

Is The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath realist or not? That's debatable; lots of irrational stuff happens, but it's all supposed to be happening in a dream, and one might read the book as a very mimetic/realist treaty on the feeling of inhabiting dreams.
(You see how tricky these things are?)

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