3/30/2023 0 Comments History macombo![]() While the ‘realist’ aspect of magical realism signals its relationship to reality past or present, the ‘magical’ component is not quite so obvious. At stake in these debates is the way fiction and non-fiction are woven together, held in tension, and then reconciled in some ways. Despite debates in literary circles about how exactly to define the genre and classify works therein, the brand of magical realism that Gabo employs certainly does seem to capture something quintessentially Latin American. With the novel’s almost immediate success and international popularity, magical realism became closely associated with a specifically Latin American literary style. One Hundred Years of Solitude has become perhaps the most canonical example of the genre magical realism. Perhaps of the fact that Gabo’s work does not classify easily, being neither strictly historical nor exclusively literary, rather, finding a home somewhere in between, is the key to its success this pandemic. If one thing has become clear, it is that at a time when our most banal and routine habits, not to mention our very immediate social and political lives have been abruptly interrupted, history just as much as literature, offers solace and reassures us that, this too, will pass. The practice of quarantine to mitigate the spread of disease, for example, has been available since at least the 14th Century. They can provide us with a tangible set of practices to be implemented, with appropriate modifications of course. ![]() As the old adage tells us, historical models often harbor lessons for the present. Perhaps it is merely a form of escapism, but surely reading whether it be history or literature, is also part of an endeavor to devise a plan of action. ![]() There is, for example, the existentialist take in Albert Camus’ The Plague (1947), or the fantastical, post-apocalyptic Stephen King novel The Stand (1978), two texts that figure prominently on lists of reading material that proliferated during the first couple months of confinement. But aside from these strictly historical sources, literature also provides a way of navigating the crisis. These all seem like intuitive choices given the context. The generalized sense of uncertainty, along with medical precarity, and increasingly visible economic disparities set the backdrop for the constant barrage of news and social media which relay relatively little information about how to go about adjusting to this ‘new normal.’ Trends indicate a recent surge in popularity in studying the history of the 1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic, or in reading Daniel Defoe’s 1772 A Journal of the Plague Year, or even Giovanni Boccaccio’s somewhat more obscure collection of short stories published under the title Decameron in 1353 during Europe’s Black Plague.
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