If you love the work ofKelly Link , you owe it to yourself to check out “ Six From Downtown , ” a collection of six vignettes about desperation and alienation by Philippine writerDean Francis Alfar . Plus , a poet excuse magic naturalism !
“ Six From business district ” decidedly remind me of Link at her best , with its pure , dreamlike imagery . But it ’s more brutal , with a innkeeper of images include a man fish for mermaids ( and then grilling them ) , and another gentleman’s gentleman ferment as an exotic professional dancer and showing off his avaricious tail ( and then using it to strangle a customer ) . The exotic social dancer section is also evocative of Geek Love byKatherine Dunn , for obvious reasons . And in the last section , a human race comes home to bump his wife ’s upper half has fly aside . Again :
Before 5AM , I ride a third cab home to the condo . I turn back to see if my married woman is back but she is n’t . The lower one-half of her body is still standing where she entrust it , next to the window , wearing only the floral patterned panties I do n’t like very much . I look out the windowpane of our 33rd floor social unit and see the grey skies slowly change hues .
I have it off she ’ll fly back . She ’s on her way of life home .
I realize that I am desperately hungry , that everything in my organization since midnight has been smoke and inebriant .
They ’re trying to have a baby , without much success , and you sense that they ’re not going to have much in the time to come , either .
I found “ Six From Downtown ” via poetBarbara Jane Reyes , who offers it up as an example of the burgeon battlefield ofPhilippine speculative fable . ( For more on SF in the Philippines , agree outthis summation by Charles A. Tan . ) Reyes also offers a really provocative explanation of exactly what people mean by “ magical realism ” — they have in mind aboriginal superstitious notion , filtered through a fog of exoticness :
I ’ve been thinking that wizard realism is that thing you call ethnic literature when you do n’t know what to do with their “ folk ” notion still live and manifesting themselves in the modern sidereal day . You do n’t recognize why those old beliefs still exist , and why the mythical and spiritual are so incorporated or blend into their daily New lives .
It resist schematic logic in modern , secular society , to still believe , but more so , it defy conventional system of logic in modern , secular societies for those former beliefs and mythological immortal to manifest themselves in our innovative daily lives . Advanced as we remember we are , we decide that such conventionally unaccountable phenomenon are the province of the superstitious , feebleminded , third world , naive . We hear their testimony of encounters with the fantastic with an aura of question , and we approximate them . In high literature , these stories become exoticized , objectified , hence , sorcerous naive realism . In poesy , perhaps it ’s also objectified and othered as the mythopoetic .
Top image byKevin LaPena . [ “ Six From Downtown ” by Dean Francis Alfar , viaBarbara Jane Reyes ]
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