Fountain of Knowledge

I suck at genre definitions. Sort of gave up when my kid tried to explain all the different kinds of heavy metal music to me. But here's what I've observed through reading:

There's a trend in literary fiction to make use of fantastical elements, even in ways that would be "illegal" in the regular fantasy genre. The first thing they tell you when you go to write fantasy is that your magic has to have rules, internal logic. In literary fiction, there's no such stricture--weird shit can just show up. Since weird shit shows up in everyday life, I guess it works, right?

At its best, this can be a poetic way of looking at the world, where things like archetypes are personified and allowed to speak for themselves. At worst, it's tangled and confusing. I little randomness goes a long way.

I've usually seen the term "magical realism" in connection with Latin American literature. It seems to have started in South America, but I've seen Mexican books lately that are described as magical realism. Personally, I don't see any difference between the work of these authors and others whose work isn't described with this term. It may simply be a matter of style, or convention.

When I don't know how to work something out in my writing, I rub my WWNGD bracelet! I thought his stuff was considered speculative fiction--in fact, that's where I first heard the term.