Well Said: Ingrid Hill on magical realism

Novelist Ingrid Hill (author of Ursula, Under in my Top Novels list) on magical realism as “the devil’s trampoline”:

If tragedy is incomplete comedy—a dire trajectory, descending but never rising again—magical realism is comedy bounding off tragedy’s trampoline into another dimension. To get there, however, you have to be put through horror, a variant perhaps of the devil’s sausage machine, something nobody healthy seeks out. Folks who haven’t experienced the transmutation of evil to wondrousness think it’s impossible. It’s a version of the fridge magnet, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” taken to the nth degree. 

Read the rest of her essay—a teaser for her upcoming short story in Glimmer Train—in GT’s Bulletin 32.

01. September 2009 by Mindy
Categories: Well Said | 4 comments

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