Parrots & Magical Realism

[Robin Landseadel]

On Feb 25, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Great Quail wrote:

> I do not understand why you posit "magic" as
> something removed from "threatening."

Good point.

>> I'd say that your 75% rule applies more to later
>> Pynchon than earlier---can't call the stuff that whizzes around in  
>> San
>> Narcisco magic, more like its threatening opposite.


> I confess, I am not sure what you mean here.

I may be confused and you may be right. This may come from a personal  
sense that "magic" carries positive connotations and that the energies  
swirling around Oedipa are so negative.

> Secondly, to address your "earlier" comment, "Gravity's Rainbow" and  
> "V."
> are very, very strange books and bear a lot in common with "M&D" and  
> "AtD,"
> as far as I can see.

Extending on the previous thought, there is a similar sense of dread,  
of "anti-magic" in "Gravity's Rainbow" and "V."  The tone lightens in  
"M&D" & "AtD."

> Even in "traditional" works of magical realism, the
> so-called "magic" can be very threatening indeed.
> For instance, see "Autumn of the Patriarch."

Will do. Sounds like you know more about magical realism than I do.  
Still, in my general cartography of TRP's landscapes, parrots seem to  
pop up at particular places in his novels.