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Magical Realism & Weird Fiction thread

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Didn't see a thread on this, so... Let's talk about some of your favorite Magical Realism or Weird fiction stories or writers or both.

I'll talk about why I love these genres to start this thread off

l LOVE the idea the weird, the unknown, of the unreality that sometimes enters our lives in inexplicable ways that can change us; sometimes we're conscious of these weird or magical encounters and at other times, we're not. I'd like to think there's this veil in our reality, that there's something more underneath, that we gain small peaks at times. I think that's just amazing to think about; there's something erotic, undefinable, grotesque about it, and the atmosphere it creates and the thrill which surrounds it. There's also something infinitely sad about it because we might never be privy to what is ultimately behind that veil. 

 

For those confused about what is weird, Thomas Ligotti does a nice job dividing the two (I think).
http://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/exclusive-interview-thomas-ligotti-on-weird-fiction

 

WFR: Do you see a difference between “horror” and “the weird” and even if so, is the difference important?

Ligotti: I think that if it weren’t for Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature, no one would ever have thought in terms of “the weird,” which is used copiously throughout his 1927 monograph. This is rather odd since the subject matter of the work is designated in its title as “supernatural horror.” On occasion I’ve thought in terms of the weird without being as invested in it as much as Lovecraft. I once wrote an essay titled “In the Night, In the Dark: A Note on the Appreciation of Weird Fiction.” Toward the end of this piece, I asserted: “By definition the weird story is based on an enigma that can never be dispelled.…” Semantics aside, the important thing to me in a so-called weird tale is an impenetrable mystery that generates the actions and manifestations in a narrative. A good example is Lovecraft’s favorite weird story “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood.” There’s nothing in the willows themselves that is responsible for the phenomena that menace the two men who stop on an island while boating down the Danube. The willows are only a symbol of some invisible, unknowable force that means no good to those who are unfortunate enough to be caught by bad weather in this atmospheric locale. This force is patently supernatural — or, given Blackwood’s view of nature, preternatural — but it need not be. In Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator can explain his motive for killing the “old man” only because there is something about one of his eyes that maddens him to murder. Again, there is an enigma at the heart of the story, a mystery that cannot be solved and that keeps the story alive. With horror stories, it’s the exact opposite: there must be a “legend” for the horrific goings-on and this legend must be revealed in the story or movie, even if the explanation is rather vague. Example: “Something must have gone wrong with the laboratory experiments they was doin’ on them monkeys that made ‘em so ferocious and 28 days later infected almost everyone and turned ‘em into those zombie things that run around like nobody’s business.” Horror legends are endlessly reusable and have a logical or pseudo-logical explanation. Weird narratives are usually one of a kind and leave an enigma behind them. That’s the difference I see between “horror” and “the weird.”

 

Jeff Vandermeer--Weird fiction writer/editor and one part of the Weird Fiction Review--wrote for the Atlantic about the power and attraction of the Weird:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/uncanny-fiction-beautiful-and-bizarre/381794/

 

Here, in what is actually our infancy of understanding the world—this era in which we think we are older than we are—it is cathartic to seek out and tell stories that do not seek to reconcile the illogical, the contradictory, and often instinctual way in which human beings perceive the world, but instead accentuate these elements as a way of showing us as we truly are. Unruly. Unruled. Superstitious. Absurd. Subject to a thousand destabilizing fears and hopes.

 
And for interested in Magical Realism, let me post SickNotes's comment from the Twin Peaks Episode 3 thread; SickNotes does a good job summarizing magical realism:

 

Sorry for the wall of text. There is a TL:DR at the bottom.

Magical Realism's first rule is that the plot has to have a mundane setting such as a small town like Twin Peaks. The second rule is that magical things have to go on in the background and the characters in the story simply have to accept the magical elements without question. A good example of this outside of Twin Peaks, from a culture with more instances of Magical Realism, is Like Water for Chocolate. I am talking about the movie here not the book, because I haven't read that. In Like Water for Chocolate, the narrator has a gift for cooking that has been passed down through the generations; however, she is not just able to cook exquisite meals, she is able to perform magic with her meals. If I remember correctly, she is able to do things like give her sister persistent flatulence and horrible breath or make a whole table full of people become sexually amorous. This is done so expertly that the viewer almost begins to believe in the magic of food. All this is set against the mundane story of a modestly poor family.

Now, one of the things that Magical Realism can't do and still be called Magical Realism is confined all the magical and inexplicable things in a dream sequence. Dream sequences are psychological in nature and are the realm of surrealism. Dali is a good example of surrealism and when you look at his paintings, many look like something you vaguely remember from a dream and physics are out the window. The first Matrix movie does a good job of playing with your understanding of the surreal because we are made to understand that all magical and arguably surreal elements are confined to the "dreaming" world. Nothing magical happens in the mundane/drab world of the people in the waking world. Then, in the second(?) Matrix movie Neo uses magic in the real world to subdue some squids that are about to attack them and things become irksome because it breaks the rules but the series doesn't really move toward Magical Realism in any way. This is the best example I could come up with on short notice.

In Like Water For Chocolate, the Magical Realism plays with the idea of food and its powers. It deals with the mythos of food and stretches the realities of what are possible with cooking. 

 

TL;DR: Magical realism is when inexplicable things happen in the real world, but don't really phase the characters.

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I genuinely don't think #twitterchillers get the attention they deserve.

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I read several Algernon Blackwood stories last year and really enjoyed them. I am sad to say I don't know of much other weird stuff - would those spooky Ray Bradbury ones count? Have always lived those (Illustrated Man etc).

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I read a Ray Bradbury collection recently and one story called The City creeped me out especially. It's only about 10 pages long so worth checking out. I read Richard Matheson's Hell House last year, and that's all about the visceral scare. Supernatural events occur with regularity and usually have a pleasing physicality to them. There's nothing very surprising about it, but it scratched an itch I had for a very blatant shocker. 

 

Last week I read Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, having recently enjoyed both the BBC version from the 80s and the modern one with Harry Potter getting shat up every five seconds. It was essentially a good read, *solid*, y'know, but (oddly, I thought) much tamer than either filmed version. If I were feeling charitable I'd say it were more subtle, but I just wanted more spooky bits.

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I know Gene Wolfe is more commonly associated with his science fiction / fantasy novels (such as the Book of the New Sun series) but he also writes some interesting weird fiction.  His novel Peace straddles the line between weird and horror and it's a fascinating read.  Be aware, though, that Wolfe's style takes some investment since he has a habit of crafting puzzles or riddles in his stories and often jumps sections of narrative or leaves significant ellipses for the reader to piece together.  Some people (myself included) really enjoy this but it can be frustrating for the unprepared.

 

I also have to recommend Kelly Link's collection of short stories Stranger Things Happen.  Her style is almost the opposite.  The diction and flow of narrative are really accessible but the stories quickly veer into Twin Peaks territory.  One of my favorite stories in that collection is "The Specialist's Hat" which can be read here:

 

http://www.kellylink.net/fiction/link-specialist.htm

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This is something I saw linked on Nick Breckon's twitter account recently (I can't quite remember by who).

 

It's not fiction, it's a real thing, but I thought I'd link it anyway because I found it creepy in a similar fashion to how I find real horror fiction creepy:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinterkaifeck

 

Specifically that paragraph ''The Crime''. I couldn't seem to stop thinking about it after I read it. 

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Bloody hell.

The autopsy also showed that the younger Cäzilia had been alive for several hours after the assault. Lying in the straw, next to the bodies of her grandparents and her mother, she had torn her hair out in tufts.

.

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Rad, thanks for starting a thread about this, I didn't even know the moniker Weird Fiction existed until I saw a blogpost by the developers of The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter yesterday, but it's totally a genre I love and I've noticed the short stories I occasionally write are all starting to fall into this category, where things start off normal but end up in a weird way that's not scary but just weird and eerie.

 

The Smiling Man and Terrorized For Two Hours are two exceptional real-life accounts from the Let's Not Meet subreddit. There are probably more gems in there but I haven't looked at it too much yet. Similarly, there's Ted's Caving Page (which is not real - spoilers). And I remember fondly the I Found A Digital Camera In The Woods thread on the GTAforums.

 

I don't know if anyone here watches True Detective but that seems to fall nicely into the same category with the mentions of this Yellow King figure. I actually didn't realize but someone pointed out that The King In Yellow is an actual real book filled with weird fiction short stories that presumably part of the TD story is based on. The mention of Black Stars seems to come from it too. You can grab it for free on the iBooks store.

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The Smiling Man and Terrorized For Two Hours are two exceptional real-life accounts from the Let's Not Meet subreddit. There are probably more gems in there but I haven't looked at it too much yet. Similarly, there's Ted's Caving Page (which is not real - spoilers). And I remember fondly the I Found A Digital Camera In The Woods thread on the GTAforums.

the-smile-man-willen-dafoe-creepy.gif

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The Smiling Man and Terrorized For Two Hours are two exceptional real-life accounts from the Let's Not Meet subreddit. There are probably more gems in there but I haven't looked at it too much yet. Similarly, there's Ted's Caving Page (which is not real - spoilers). And I remember fondly the I Found A Digital Camera In The Woods thread on the GTAforums.

 

The Internet has produced so much fucking terrific short horror/weird stuff.  Those may or may not be true, but they feel so true that it doesn't matter, which is what makes them so deliciously unnerving.  If true, that would give me nightmares for years. 

 

Edited to add: So I just burned like 30 minutes browsing through stories in Let's Not Meet.  One of the top ones is Violin Hill, which looks to be a descendant of the Smiling Man story. 

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Jesus that's a good one too. I'm always looking for experiences like that but I bet if that ever happened to me it would ruin my shit forever.

 

We used to have barbecues at a friend's house who lived in a small village with cow pastures all around, and his parent's house was suficiently large that the garden was huge and deep (and also dark). We used to sit around the fire there and imagine how fucked up it would be if something moved in the big tree above us, or if a cellphone started ringing in the back of the garden by the greenhouse. People can sure come up with some creepy stuff in the right atmosphere.

 

Also, dat gif.

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Clive Barker's "Books of Blood" (two short story collections, or six depending on how they're broken up) are both horror and weird. (I guess?) Very good, as are his earlier books. (Up to say Coldheart Canyon) I could suggest specific stories from the collection is anyone cares. Also interesting in that he is a gay man writing horror, which seems pretty rare, and doesn't fit neatly into "queer horror." (Which google tells me is a thing I didn't make up)

 

As far as creepy single stories, "Who Goes There?" the novella by John W. Campbell, Jr that The Thing was based on, is the only story I've read since childhood that kept me awake afterwards. The raw concept as presented in the novella is incredibly disturbing.

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Well, I was having trouble sleeping already. Guess I'm not sleeping at all tonight.

Fun (and slightly embarrassing) fact!

 

I've actually turned on my closet light the past two nights because I read those stories. I mean, I get spooked pretty easily, but I can usually logic it away because most of that is just a result of my overactive imagination combined with watching shit like the X-Files or some cheesy horror movie and I know that's not real. But reading those stories - especially Terrorized for Two Hours -  and knowing that that was a real person doing that to another real person is fucking terrifying. And even though I know the chances of that happening to me are basically zero, it still gives me the creeps times ten.

 

so hey yeah i'm a 26-year-old baby ):

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Here are some classic horror/weird fiction books to check out:

Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories by M. R. James

Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies by Clark Ashton Smith

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton

The Bishop of Hell & Other Stories by Marjorie Bowen

The White People and Other Weird Stories by Arthur Machen

In the Land of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales by Lord Dunsany

Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories by Algernon Blackwood

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft


I'll come back with more modern books and authors to check out

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Some more stories:

http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/frontier-death-song/

http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/shiva-open-your-eye/


Laird Barron is one of the best weird/horror writers right now. HIs writing is a mixture of McCarthy, Lovecraft, Chandler and the Alaskan landscape and atmosphere.

 

http://www.e-reading.bz/chapter.php/72065/7/Barker_-_Books_Of_Blood_Vol_1.html

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25628/25628-h/25628-h.htm

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If you had not checked out

 - the prequel video series for the Alan Wake game - you oughta. I just remembered it and damn it's really weird and good. Not exactly a book but it IS about a writer ;)

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Resurrecting this thread

Jeff Vandermeer--Weird fiction writer/editor and one part of the Weird Fiction Review--wrote for the Atlantic in the power and attraction of the Weird:

"Here, in what is actually our infancy of understanding the world—this era in which we think we are older than we are—it is cathartic to seek out and tell stories that do not seek to reconcile the illogical, the contradictory, and often instinctual way in which human beings perceive the world, but instead accentuate these elements as a way of showing us as we truly are. Unruly. Unruled. Superstitious. Absurd. Subject to a thousand destabilizing fears and hopes."

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/uncanny-fiction-beautiful-and-bizarre/381794/

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Updated my first post a bit.

 

Right now I'm re-reading The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories by Horacio Quiroga. Quiroga is a Argentina writer--some have thought of him as Latin America's Poe, but I think that's a bit too much-- whose short stories focus on the macabre, weird and magical. 

One of my favorite stories in this collection is The Dead Man, in which Quiroga crystallizes the final moments of a dying man; an intense and heartwrenching read because Quiroga shows how world around the man is unresponsive to him dying. Another favorite of mine is Juan Darien, Darien is a tiger/boy and because of his nature, is hated in his village. Then there's Drifting which we read about the final moments of a man trying to survive a venomous snake bite or The Pursued which delves into the theme of madness and we're left with more questions than answers. The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories contain some of Quiroga's best Weird and Magical and Poe-like stories. 

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Didn't see a thread on this, so... Let's talk about some of your favorite Magical Realism or Weird fiction stories or writers or both.

I'll talk about why I love these genres to start this thread off

l LOVE the idea the weird, the unknown, of the unreality that sometimes enters our lives in inexplicable ways that can change us; sometimes we're conscious of these weird or magical encounters and at other times, we're not. I'd like to think there's this veil in our reality, that there's something more underneath, that we gain small peaks at times. I think that's just amazing to think about; there's something erotic, undefinable, grotesque about it, and the atmosphere it creates and the thrill which surrounds it. There's also something infinitely sad about it because we might never be privy to what is ultimately behind that veil. 

 

For those confused about what is weird, Thomas Ligotti does a nice job dividing the two (I think).

http://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/exclusive-interview-thomas-ligotti-on-weird-fiction

 

 

Jeff Vandermeer--Weird fiction writer/editor and one part of the Weird Fiction Review--wrote for the Atlantic about the power and attraction of the Weird:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/uncanny-fiction-beautiful-and-bizarre/381794/

 

 

And for interested in Magical Realism, let me post SickNotes's comment from the Twin Peaks Episode 3 thread; SickNotes does a good job summarizing magical realism:

I'll not be able to copy paste from the book buut I can mention The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which I consider to be one of my best reads in magical realism. In fact I came across the term in that book only. I like the final battle scene in it, which game me hard time initially to digest it untill I came to know it was supposed to be that way as it is magic realism!

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