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Slipstream Literature

Magical realism

Originally posted by HBinjection
...mainstream fiction that incorporates fantastic elements.
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This sounds like you're referring to Magical Realism, which is a dashed hard sub-genre to write in, I think, much less to do so convincingly.

I suppose a lot of Faulkner's work would fall into this group, though the term would only be applied now.

One of the best modern proponents of the style that I've read would be Sara Maitland, an orthodox Christian feminist (how difficult is that?!). Her short story collection, A Book Of Spells is a brilliant example.

Elsewhere, I think Louis deBernieres' trilogy about his ficitonal South American community would comply with the definition, and Joanne Harris' works, especially Chocolat.

Tobytook
 
I've read a number of the books on the list, as well, and liked them. I first met Magic-realism through Garcia-Marquez' 100 Years of Solitude and Jorge Luis Borges (oddly missing from the list). As Tobytook says, I suppose that it is awfully hard to write well.
I would add, though, a few titles:

Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges
Short History of a Small Place - T.R. Pearson
The Beetle Leg - John Hawkes
Loop's Progress, Experiments with Life and Deaf, & Loop's End - Chuck Rosenthal

The last three (but especially the first two books of the trilogy) I particularly regard as modern masterpieces of the genre.
 
Maybe 100 Years of Solitude was missing from the list because he hasn't read it.

Also, I don't think Faulkner belongs on the list because his characters and themes are so tied to the time period of their setting. (Although I have only read The Hamlet and As I Lay Dying).

I think Sterling meant slipstream lit to have a very modern sensibility. Some books written before a lot of Faulkner's stuff fits better than Faulkner's in my opinion.

In fact, I'm not a very big fan of his. I've tried to read him, since he is considered by so many to be the greatest American Prose Writer ever, but I can't get into him.

Except for a short story I read in high school named A Rose for Emily.....

inextricable from the mattress......


gives me the shivers.
 
Actually 100 Years of Solitude is on the list. I was just surprised that Borges was not.
In any event, I have to say that Sterling's essay didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. Though, of course, I wouldn't do any better making such a subjective distinction.
BTW, ditto on Faulkner. I've tried with a couple of his but just can't get through them.
 
Faulkner Unappreciation Society

Not the most popular writer on the Forum, is he?

Well, I'd have to agree with the majority on this one, as he is a bit impenetrable (and, frankly, boring). But I do think the majority of his works belong in the specified "sub-genre" - for the same reason Toni Morrison's do. Evidence to support this would be the psychological wackiness and fantastical nature of the narratives in The Sound & The Fury and Light In August.

Another who might fall into the group is Iain Banks - not writing as Iain M Banks the sci-fi author, but his mainstream genre work. Check out The Crow Road (fabulous) and Espedair Street (equally fabulous) for elements of the fantastical and resolutely unreal in real-world situations.

Tobytook
 
What about House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allente? She paints a realistic picture of the world, but one that includes viewing spirits has a normal occurance, at least to a couple of characters.
 
Re: Magical realism

Originally posted by Tobytook
This sounds like you're referring to Magical Realism, which is a dashed hard sub-genre to write in, I think, much less to do so convincingly.
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Actually, my teachers always told me Magical Realism was a typically Belgian genre... and that no non-Belgian writer wrote a Magical Realistic novel?
 
Originally posted by funes
In any event, I have to say that Sterling's essay didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me.
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I think the essay is only half-serious. It's fun to play with literary criticism the same way it's fun to play with popular psychology.

There is some truth behind each discipline, but you really have to stretch that truth to make the kind of bold generalizations that will get you published.

He's poking fun at lit crit and embracing it at the same time. The truth is that most lit crit is nonsense. Most critics will twist and squeeze a work until they can wring something out of it that will advance their own political agenda.

Just look at any lit crit textbook. Chapters. Marxist criticism. Feminist criticism. Gay and lesbian criticism...

(The fact that the areas of criticism I just listed are usually associeated with leftist politics was accidental, I think. I can't think of any popularly recognized branch of criticism associated with the left. Can you? Curious...

What Sterling is trying to advance, I'm not sure. I suppose, from reading several of his essays, that he has futurist leanings, meaning he wants people to abandon past ideas and embrace the new. (I read about futurists in a book of art criticism. They were Italian painters and poets, [eventually the movement grew] who wanted to forget old modes of expression and old subject matter and only embrace the new, which at the time was industry, machines, growth, atheism.....)

I've lost direction...
 
You're prob'ly right about Sterling, HB, and I'm sure you are about Lit Crit. I haven't read the essay again, but I seem to remember that he seemed to be pushing for a sort of meta-fiction. That is, novels that are more about experiments with the act of writing than about a "plot".
Or rather, it seemed like what he was trying to say was that speculative fiction should not just be extrapolations in terms of ideas, but also experiments with the form of the novel (self-reference, etc.).
If there is anything that is harder to pull of than Magic-Realism, I would have to imagine that it is fiction which plays with the conventions of the act of writing.
Either way, the list has some great books on it.
 
That essay took some reading. The first impression I got was that Sterling doesn't think science fiction is what it used to be. His attempt to create a new genre, though, was a bit hard to grasp. I don't quite see how he defines 'Slipstream'.
Out of that list I have read Theraux's O-Zone and Hoban's Riddley Walker. Both are set in an unlikely future. I wouldn't call either of them fantasy based though. Both involve the use (or misuse) of future science. Neither involve everyday people, because they are both set in completely unfamiliar societies. Rather unappealing societies at that. I would be hesitant to call either of them 'mainstream fiction' as well as neither of the books struck me as an easy read.
 
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