Magical Realism, Tall Tales

[nancylebov]

In a recent discussion, I had a little to say about tall tales as a distinct but rare influence on modern fiction.

I agree (at least partially) with copperbadge that magical realism is fantasy without world-building. I'm not sure that the fantasy elements need to be symbolic, I think they can be included for the pleasure of strangeness.

However, in magical realism, the fantastic element might be at a realistic scale. If the authorial voice is getting extreme about the effect of the mermaid's beauty filling city districts and her tail walloping everything from sharks to sperm whales, we might be in tall tale country.

However, there's more to tall tales than exaggeration-- it isn't a straightforward grab at the emotions, it's taking pleasure in how wild the description can get.

So far, my list of tall tale fiction includes Lafferty, Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, and Helprin's A Winter's Tale. Any other suggestions?

Comments

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

When the "extended" edition came out, I realized that Stranger in a Strange Land was basically a tall tale at heart. So, of course, is "The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail" in Time Enough for Love.

Fried Green Tomatoes?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

What have you got in mind about Stranger?

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

The opening, "Once upon a time, there was a Martian named Smith," is significantly expanded in the "unabridged" version in a way that (to me) casts a tall-tale feeling over the whole thing.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a definite improvement in tone.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what the full context is here, but when I think of tall tales I think of stories with a very definite point - they signal that they are fiction in order to highlight their payload of truth, and that their truth is detachable from the context of the tale. They are purposeful and have a take-home message (although granted here I'm thinking of Gulliver's and Mandeville's and ibn Jubayr's Travels, more than "the fish that got away" type stories).

The magical realism I've read has derived its power from ambiguity - you're reading a more or less realist story and then an element of wonder interjects and you're not sure, for a while, if what you're reading is supposed to be taken metaphorically or literally or to reflect some altered state of consciousness of the characters or what, and the moment of "heightened reality" is generally the climax of the story, where intractable problems are resolved or recast. While the tall tales I can think of tend to signal their moment of break from reality, or of pushing the suspension of disbelief, and then proceed to a punchline that results from the break.

That said, on this schema I guess Like Water for Chocolate would be magical, not tall.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I actually don't think of Gulliver's Travels as a tall tale. It strikes me as having a stronger claim to be the first science fiction novel. It's more along the lines of sf as social commentary (as it often was in Soviet bloc countries, for example) than of hard sf, but it does have exact specifications for how tall the Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians are, how much they weigh, how much they eat, and so on—not just wildly exaggerated scale. Then there are those orbital statistics for the moons of Mars. . . .

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I'm reading Journey to the West, and the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, has a lot of folk tale hero about him. Especially when he acquires his magical iron rod which can expand to the diameter of a rice bowl or shrink to the size of an embroidery needle at his command, and which only he can lift. I compared him to a superhero, but he's more like Paul Bunyan than Superman.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Some Vonnegut.

[catlinye-maker.livejournal.com]

I suspect these are explicitly tall tales and you're looking for more subtle versions of same, but Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stories are tall tales, IMO.

[mneme]

I'm pretty sure at least one Raffery novel is tall tales-ish. Maybe Okla Hannali?

Also, Michael Chabon's Summerland. And there are tall tales stylistic elements in Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's "Songkiller" trilogy.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Okla Hannali and Space Chantey are the two Lafferty novels I'd say are the most overtly tall tales.

What I've found out from this discussion is that people mean very different things by tall tale.

[redrose3125.livejournal.com]

Clarke's Tales from the White Hart always struck me as tall tales.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Big Fish, a novel by Daniel Wallace made into a film by Tim Burton, is explicitly about tall tales.