Magical Mystery Tour

Josh Manchester at The Adventures of Chester takes a look at the literary form known as "magical realism" and compares it with the reality that foreign policy "realists" believe in. And, by Jove, it is simply magical.

Students of Latin American literature will be familiar with "magical realism," a technique of writing frequently associated with Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, the Nobel-prize winning Columbian novelist. Wikipedia notes some elements of magical realism, several of which are excerpted here:

* Contains fantastical elements
* The fantastic elements may be intrinsically plausible but are never explained
* Characters accept rather than question the logic of the magical element . . .
* Distorts time so that it is cyclical or so that it appears absent. Another technique is to collapse time in order to create a setting in which the present repeats or resembles the past
* Inverts cause and effect, for instance a character may suffer before a tragedy occurs
* Incorporates legend or folklore
* Mirrors past against present; astral against physical planes; or characters one against another . . .
* Open-ended conclusion leaves the reader to determine whether the magical and/or the mundane rendering of the plot is more truthful or in accord with the world as it is.

Read the whole thing, by the end the fantastic seems mundane, the magically improbable reasoning that have unfortunate real world consequences.