Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the fine line between sanity and madness gotten finer? George Price

G A B R I E L G A R C Í A M Á R Q U E Z A N D M A G I C R E A L I S M

"Magic Real ism" (el real ismo magical ) was a term f i rst coined in 1949 by the Cuban novel ist Alejo Carpent ier to descr ibe the matter-of- fact combinat ion of the fantast ic and everyday in Lat in American f ict ion. About the same t ime i t was also used by European cr i t ics to descr ibe a simi lar t rend in postwar German f ic t ion exempl i f ied by novels l ike Gunter

Grass 's  The Tin Drum   (1959) . (German art cr i t ic Franz Roh had employed the

same term in 1925, but he  appl ied i t on ly to pain t ing.) Magic Real ism has

now become the standard name for a major t rend in contemporary f ic t ion that

s t retches f rom Lat in American works l ike Gabr ie l García Márquez 's  One Hundred Years of Sol i tude   (1967) tonor teamericana  novels l ike Mark

Helpr in 's  Winter 's Ta le (1983) and Asian works l ike Salman

Rushdie 's  Midnight Chi ldren   (1981) . In a l l cases the term refers to the

tendency among contemporary f ic t ion wr i ters to mix the magical and

mundane in an overal l context of real is t ic narra t ion.

The possibi l i t ies of storytel l ing wi l l a lways hover between the opposing poles of ver is imi l i tude and myth, factual i ty and fabulat ion, real ism and romance. I f mid-century cr i t ics ( l ike F. R. Leavis, V. S. Pr i tchett , F. W. Dupee, I rv ing Howe, and Lionel Tr i l l ing) almost exclusively favored the real ist mode, their emphasis ref lected their generat ion's understandable fascinat ion with the immediate past . They st i l l l ived in the shadow of what Leavis cal led the "Great Tradi t ion" of the psychological and social novel . This t radi t ion encompassed ( to expand Leavis 's Anglophi l ic l is t a bi t ) Jane Austen, George El iot , Henry James, Edi th Wharton, Joseph Conrad, Virgin ia Wool f , D. H. Lawrence, Wi l la Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and ear ly James Joyce. As the real ist ic novel conf ident ly cont inued in the f i rst decades of the century, i t was al l too easy to imagine that th is part icular l ine of development had decis ively superseded the older pre-novel ist ic modes of storytel l ing. These London, Oxford, and New York cr i t ics would hardly have imagined that a radical ly d i f ferent k ind of f ic t ion was being developed beyond their ken

in places l ike Argent ina, Colombia, and Peru. By the t ime García Márquez and his fe l low members of "e l boom" in Lat in-American f ict ion came to matur i ty, the reemergence of the fantast ic her i tage in f ict ion seemed near ly as revolut ionary as the region's pol i t ics.

Al l of the main features of Lat in American Magic Real ism can be found in García Márquez's story, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," which appeared in his 1972 volume  The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heart less Grandmother . (The Engl ish translat ion also appeared in 1972 as part of  Leaf Storm and Other Stor ies . Since Leaf Storm  was or ig inal ly publ ished in Spanish in 1955, the translat ion volume has led some American edi tors and cr i t ics to misdate "A Very Old Man wi th Enormous Wings," which is not an ear ly work but wr i t ten soon after García Márquez's  magnum opus ,  One Hundred Years of Sol i tude . )

As a young law student , García Márquez read Kafka's  The Metamorphosis . I t proved a decis ive encounter, and the inf luence is not hard to observe in the ear ly stor ies, which so often present b izarre incidents unfolding in ordinary c i rcumstances. I f Kafka reinvented the fable by placing i t in the modern quot id ian world, García Márquez reset i t in the unfamil iar landscape of the Third World. I f Kafka made spir i tual issues more myster ious by surrounding them with bureaucrat ic procedure, h is Colombian fo l lower changed our percept ion of Lat in America by insist ing that in th is New World v is ionary romantic ism was merely reportage. García Márquez also had another crucial mentor c loser at hand—the Argent inean master, Jorge Luis Borges.

Only th i r ty years García Márquez's senior, Borges had quiet ly redrawn the imaginat ive boundaries of Lat in American f ict ion. Almost s ingle-handedly he had also rehabi l i tated the fantast ic ta le for h igh-art f ic t ion. Removing rel igion and the supernatural f rom any f ixed ideology, he employed the mythology of Chr ist iani ty, Judaism, Is lam, and Confucianism as metaphysical f igures. Signi f icantal ly, Borges expressed his sophist icated f ict ions in popular rather than exper imental forms—the fable, the detect ive story, the supernatural tale, the gaucho

legend. He was the f i rst great post-modernist storytel ler , and he found an eager apprent ice in García Márquez, who developed these innovat ive not ions in di f ferent and usual ly more expansive forms.

The plot of García Márquez's story is easi ly summarized. At the end of a three-day rainstorm Pelayo discovers an old man wi th enormous wings ly ing face down in the mud of his courtyard. He immediately returns wi th his wi fe El isenda to examine the bald, near ly toothless man who seems barely al ive. They try to converse, but no one understands anything the winged ancient says. Af ter consul t ing wi th a neighbor who ident i f ies the man as an angel, Pelayo drags the f i l thy, passive creature into a chicken coop. Soon people v is i t—fi rst to mock and tease the winged capt ive, then to seek miracles The local pr iest t r ies to determine i f the myster ious pr isoner is t ruly an angel or merely some diabol ic t r ick. He not ices the old man's stench and his parasi te- infested wings, but wr i tes to the bishop and eventual ly Rome for a verdict . (Rome seeks addi t ional information but never makes a decis ion—a very Kafkaesque si tuat ion.)

Soon Pelayo and his wife begin charging admission to see their angel . The crowds grow unt i l they draw other carnival at tract ions. One vis i t ing sideshow features a young woman who was t ransformed into a tarantula the size of a ram with the head of a maiden. Since the spider woman eagerly ta lks to customers—unl ike the si lent, near ly immobi le angel—she begins to draw the audience away. By now, however, Pelayo and his wi fe have earned enough to bui ld a f ine two-story mansion. Several years pass. Their chi ld, who was a newborn at the story 's opening, is now old enough start school. The feeble angel drags himsel f around their property great ly to El isenda's annoyance. He also looses his last bedraggled fathers. That winter the old man almost dies of fever, but by spr ing his feathers begin to grow back. One day, as El isenda watches from the ki tchen, the old man clumsi ly takes f l ight and f laps away across the sea.

The plot of García Márquez's story—the magical e lements aside—is posi t ively drab. The ending so conspicuously lacks any overt narrat ive ingenui ty as to seem ant ic l imact ic. The f latness of the plot gives the

story an odd qual i ty—as impersonal as a newspaper art ic le, and as episodic as a legend. This feel ing of detachment is heightened by the ta le's omniscient narrator who reports the odd events wi th deadpan object iv i ty. The story 's part icular power comes from i ts extraordinary detai ls, which are seldom drab and often dazzl ing. A motley procession of people and th ings (ranging from an ordinary par ish pr iest to an enchanted tarantula woman) parade by in such profusion that the reader never knows what to expect next—the myster ious, the mundane, or the magic? That distract ing but d isor ient ing effect is crucial to the exper ience of Magic Real ism and to a certa in extent , i t is the element that most c lear ly d i f ferent iates i t f rom i ts predecessors. Gogol , Kafka, and Singer may have created simi lar modes of f ic t ion, but they never lavished so many fabulous detai ls wi th such prof l igate nonchalance.

"A Very Old Man wi th Enormous Wings" seemingly invi tes al l sorts of symbol ic and even al legor ical readings, but García Márquez constant ly undercuts or f rustrates any easy interpretat ion. I f th is bedraggled, s ickly creature tru ly represents the descent of the miraculous into the everyday world, he does not f i t the preconcept ions of anyone in th is world—priest, pet i t ioner, or even paying sideshow customer. This putat ive angel not only remains uninspir ing and unknowable, but s l ight ly repuls ive. No one in the story ever successful ly communicates wi th him. I f he speaks the language of the div ine, we cannot understand a word of i t . He arr ives, stays, and leaves wi thout explanat ion or apparent purposes. I f the story is to be read symbol ical ly, a l l one can ult imately say is that the winged old man embodies both the impenetrable myster ies of th is world and the next one. Whatever he tru ly is—mortal or supernatural—he exists beyond our comprehension. We can project our own assumpt ions on the blank screen of h is h istory, but his essence remains forever invis ible. When he f l ies away, we know nothing important about h im with more certainty than when he arr ived. © 1998

Dana Gio ia F i rs t pub l ished in  Sniper Log ic   (No . 6 /1998)

Who decides where we draw that fine line between sanity and insanity? Between reality and fantasy? If reality is based upon perception, then everyone perceives his or her own little reality.Can we say that our reality is any more real than someone else’s? Who decides what reality is? If we say that reality is what the majority of people accept as real, then in a sense there is no true reality but only a series of accepted norms. What if the majority is wrong about our perceptions and our vision of reality is completely false? Then those who we judge insane are really those who are sane and we are living in a fantasy.

No one can be completely sane. One hundred percent sanity would force a person to deal with this world in all its uncut, raw form without any of our built-in escape mechanisms. Sensory overload and mass confusion would soon result, forcing the person over the brink into complete insanity. Therefore, Sanity-Insanity cannot be measured upon a linear continuum but rather is truly circular in nature, with the Difference between complete sanity and insanity separated by only the slimmest of margins, yet there is the whole area of the rest of the circle representing the varying degrees of sanity-insanity. Taken to its logical (?) conclusion then, all of us are insane in varying degrees. Each person has different facets of their personality that deals with life’s daily ups and downs. We compartmentalize our feelings and emotions into each of these variations on our personality, yet we retain enough sanity to realize that these personalities cannot be separated from the whole. Those suffering from multiple personality disorder cannot retain enough sanity to hold these facets together and the seam is torn and the versions of the personality become personalities unto themselves.

Somewhere along this circular continuum that defines sanity-insanity is a line that society has proscribed as the “acceptable” line of sanity. If the True line of sanity lies at the point described earlier where one hundred percent sanity meets one hundred percent insanity, then society’s acceptable line is one hundred eighty degrees opposite of this true line. That is, we draw a line somewhere where our senses tell us someone has gone too far towards insanity on this circular continuum. If society’s vision of sanity-insanity is the exact opposite of what is real, then everyone is society is actually delusional…