Magical-realism arrives when a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel comes in the mail

I love getting books in the mail. I love getting any sort of personal mail. Most of what I get are come-ons for credit cards and new windows. Also annoying pseudo-personal letters from people who want to buy my house for cash. Those letters have slowed down of late. The economy is a fickle thing. 

But books -- I love those. My friend Bob in Independence, Mo., sent me a hardcover copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "In Evil Hour." Bob is an old college roommate and over the years we've shared our love for Garcia Marquez, notably his masterpiece "One Hundred Years of Solitude." I reread it every few years to once again fall in love with the language and the story. Style, too, as "Solitude" is the poster child for magical-realism which gets talked about a lot but is tough to duplicate in novel-writing. 

The MasterClass web site describes it this way:

Within a work of magical realism, the world is still grounded in the real world, but fantastical elements are considered normal in this world. Like fairy tales, magical realism novels and short stories blur the line between fantasy and reality.

Magical-realist writer Aimee Bender describes it this way in the March issue of The Writer:

One definite characteristic of this genre, says Bender, is that a magical element is interwoven with ordinary realism. “The magic is proportional – that is, it fits with the world; it doesn’t distort but adds layers and imagery to deepen what is already happening.”

She goes on to say that the master Garcia Marquez often said he only describes the world as he sees it. Realism, in other words. Latin-American writers Jorge Luis Borges and Isabel Allende often pop up as examples. So does Salman Rushdie with roots in India, Haruki Murakami of Japan, and our own Toni Morrison. Many others, I am sure. Which brings me to this: shouldn't magic and mysticism exist in every fiction writer's toolkit? We are creative writers, after all. It would be a shame to not use all of the talents endowed upon us by our creator, whoever he, she, it or they may be. It's almost like forbidding the creator not to use the color blue when creating the universe. 

When researching Garcia Marquez for a blog post a dozen years ago, I came across some interesting info on the creation of "Solitude." He was tired of journalism in 1961 and traveled to Cuba and Mexico. His new passion was the cinema and he allegedly penned sections of "Solitude" as movies or scenes in movies. "Solitude" was first published in 1967 and the first American edition came out in 1970 translated by Gregory Rabassa. The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. Castro and Garcia Marquez met in Cuba in the late 1970s and the writer solicited editorial advice from Castro for his later books. Fidel read a lot and was pretty good with the details.

"In Evil Hour" was first published in 1962 and is sort of a preclude to "Solitude." The author was just getting warmed up. 

No "Solitude" moves have been made or are in the works, a stipulation by the author while he was alive. His son is filming a series based on the book that was slated to be released in 2020 but delayed by Covid. I could see it as a multi-part series on Netflix or Hulu. I saw an unauthorized stage play performed outdoors in Denver's Cheesman Park but don't remember the year. I sensed some confusion in the audience. Two hours on stage is not enough time for the great work.