“Magic Realism” Mania And The Folly Of Categorizing Literature

-Essay-

BOGOTÁ — In the 1960s, when experimentation was the rage and the world seemed to have started afresh, the producer and dramatist Martin Esslin coined the term “theater of the absurd,” to refer to authors whose works depicted situations that defied the limits of reason or, more specifically, the logic of the theatre.

Esslin gave his category the most prestigious of lineages, identifying its roots in the works of authors like the philosopher Kirkegaard, Kafka, Shakespeare and even in the acting of Charlie Chaplin. The theater of the absurd became popular among readers of all levels, and to this day defies constant critique and skepticism, and is associated with a string of distinguished playwrights like Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Adamov, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter.

Sooner or later, however, every category must disappear. The act of categorizing literary works does more harm than good.

Esslin’s formulation (made in 1961) was mindful of the discussion of “the absurd” in Albert Camus’s novel The Myth of Sisyphus, written 20 years before, and allowed a study of common and relevant traits in the works of writers cited.

Yet the effect of categorization is to create uniformity where its presence is problematic. There may be comparable themes in the works of Becket and Ionesco, but the label suggests they follow a single, predominant idea. In fact, the differences may be greater, and not just in style or forms.

Uniformization through labeling may push readers to overlook the singularities of a writer’s body of works. When Esslin mentions so many past writers who had allowed “the absurd” into their creative processes, he is giving us a clue as to why his tag wasn’t quite right.

The theater of the absurd is thus neither a school or movement, nor a gang of post-war existentialists (to cite another label) using theater to escape or alleviate their modern angst. It is rather in a tradition going back to the Greeks, to those impish harlequins and to carnivalesque wonderment, all sheltered beneath a simpler yet grander heading: literature.

Mexican Theater to African-American Novel

Labels can also take regional, ethnic or communitarian forms. We have, for example, Mexican Theater or the African-American Novel.. They suggest a limit is reached, that an entire body of works has — somewhat tightly — been squeezed into a tag that will now isolate it from a wider, literary domain.

This reductionist labeling may be appropriate for works of protest, of which there are many here in Colombia (novels and especially our theater depicting the life of our nation with scant imagination), but hardly does justice to those works that can exploit their immediate setting and surroundings to explore the field of our perceptions.

Let me cite in this better category, among other works, the examples of two anthologies of poems, Suenan timbres (Bells Are Ringing) by Luis Vidales or Cantos populares de mi tierra (Popular Chants of My Land) by the Afro-Colombian Candelario Obeso. Giving a book with universal aspirations a national or “social” label is not so much about identification as an expression of disdain for creativity, if not freedom.

So, no, we shall not slot Beckett into Esslin’s neat little file then, but in the pantheon of “gargantuans” like Shakespeare and Rabelais.

The blessed obsession with tying works to some movement or trend may also entail stigmatization and general incomprehension. Thousands of readers will be wary of reading a book if they are already bored by and resentful of some category they feel must be understood.

Curse of Magic Realism

We might say this is all passé now, but far from it. Because labels are a rugged, hardy lot — even hibernating if need be to survive !

And there is one in this part of the world we keep regurgitating – Magic Realism – and about to reemerge with the Netflix channel’s imminent adaptation of the Gabriel García Márquez novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. It has neither sense nor substance but is used, abused and overused ad nauseam. Like some crass marketing ploy that began with his Catalan publisher Carmen Balcells, peddling the exotic, profitable, idea that García Márquez had a peculiarly Latin American imagination.

Yet with all the books sold in his name, does García Márquez need more promotion? Are his “magical” characters (like the elusive Remedios the Beauty), rooted in a particularly regional or “Latin American” tradition? Couldn’t we give “magic realism” a rest? It obfuscates García Márquez’s European and medieval inspirations and hidden links to works as diverse as 19th century phantasmal writing, Proust, the Bible and A Thousand and One Nights.

Ultimately, like other labels the “magic” epithet suddenly feels paltry: suggesting anything ethereal or unreal is some crazy trick or source of amusement, or bemusement, rather than what its author delivers: a fleeting image of beauty.