One Hundred Years Of Magic Realism

I've been reading One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, which employs elements of magic realism in telling a fictionalized history of Latin America. I had a friend some years ago who wrote her dissertation on magic realism in French Caribbean literature, and I recall her having to explain the concept to me. I don't think I really got it until I saw the movie The Milagro Beanfield War, based on the John Nichols novel. It was real, but it was also magical, with a lot of politics thrown in.

The main reason I never went in for comments on this blog is that I hate censorship, but I hate political opportunists even more. I moderated a large discussion group for over five years, and after the first couple years, I turned on pre-moderation for all new members. In short, I censored their posts. While that got me some hate mail, it got me less hate mail than I used to get from the members who I was forced to ban from the group when they spun out of control and made the reading the list painful for everybody who isn't amused by bullying. I used to keep an eye on the membership list as these episodes began to develop, and it was sad to see members of the silent majority bailing out because one man's freedom is another man's (perhaps more often woman's) gross out.

However, I read somewhere recently that a blog with no comments is like subway with no graffiti so I'm willing to give it a go on the basis of magic realism. I'm hoping it will work something like this. A reader with a question or a comment will fill out whatever form Blogger provides, and I'll be magically notified that there's a comment awaiting moderation. If I think the comment adds to, rather than detracts from the post, I'll approve it. If it's not something I'd want to hear in my kitchen, I'll say the magic Abra Cadabra (which I'm convinced is from the Aramaic, meaning something like, "I will create with the word"), and both the comment and the commenter will go away and leave me alone.

Which is kind of ironic, when you think about it, since the sole reason for accepting comments is so my blog doesn't become known as two hundred plus posts of solitude, or something to that effect. I like to think that my writing on this blog is well founded in reality because I do correspond or talk with people about their publishing issues every day. As I replied to somebody who wrote me over the weekend to say that my writings made more sense than anything else about publishing he read on the web, I hope it's not just because I'm persuasive:-)

If if random comments from space turn out to be more realism than I can take, I'll turn them back off restore the blog's solitude. Just remember, magic doesn't hurt people, reality does.