27 november

Still, even as this review points out, the magical realism here is mostly realism. Rather than an old man with wings who shows up in the garden one day or any of the many miraculous occurrences in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the magic here is presumably money.

It’s an enchanting idea, though, right? You could just be going about your business, and someone could fly by your window. Or water could turn into apple cider when you poured it into a certain glass. Others may have bigger dreams, sure, but that kind of simple fantasy would do it for me. Poof! Apple cider.

Short of magical realism, we are usually left with fiction and reality. Sometimes fiction seeks to appear realistic, although it may be completely made up. Lies, we would normally call that. Sometimes reality gets tangled into fiction, like when the size of the fish gets extended in the re-telling, or the degree of completion of the homework gets slightly exaggerated under questioning. My favorite is the “And then I said” fictionalization, in which the speaker inserts dialogue that has been reprocessed through the “what I should have said but didn’t because I hadn’t thought of it yet although you weren’t there so you don’t know – it could have been true” filter. The teller comes off looking witty and quick in performance, although we should instead be praising his or her ability to revise.

Dialogue in television programs and movies – even those purported to be realistic – is generally sharp and thoughtful. Beyond the annoying catchphrases of certain characters and the culturally identifying slang markers of others, people onscreen are funnier and smarter and more profound than we can generally manage all at once. Funny. You don’t see a big backlash against this the way you see concerns over unrealistic standards of physical beauty being presented. “Stop the cleverness! Bring back – uh, something else!” the chants would ring out. Possibly “We’re not that funny and neither are you!” or even “You have no right to say what’s right to say!” A campaign to “Bring back mumbling!” has the same chance of success as the challengingly named “People On Sitcoms Have To Eat And Go To The Bathroom, Too, Right?” (POSHTEAGTTBTR, for short) campaign. Still. We need something to strive for.

The difference between fiction and lies is a tricky one. They are the same thing, after all. Right?

Try that out someday when you’re caught in a fib. “You’re lying!” “No, I’m not. I’m crafting fiction!”