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Fwd: Was VN a proto-magical realist?
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Reading VN's early stories (I posted some thoughts quite a while back
now, to which DN added his comments), I am still quite amazed at how
much magical/supernatural content there is in them (mostly from the
20s). Some are even more like prose meditations than standard stories
('Sounds', 'The Wood-Sprite'). A lot of them have twists, as in 'Details
of a Sunset', where, as I see it, the narrator has a soon-to-be-fatal
accident and imagines he has gone home to see his fiancée, but we learn
that he is in hospital and he soon dies from his injuries. There is also
the hilarious and wicked 'Revenge', in which a husband sets out to take
revenge on his unfaithful wife and it arrives in a rather unexpected
way. And the delightfully creepy 'Wingstroke', with the appearance of an
'angel' in a hotel room. You wonder what works VN would have written if
he had continued in this proto-realist vein.
Brian Howell
----- End forwarded message -----
now, to which DN added his comments), I am still quite amazed at how
much magical/supernatural content there is in them (mostly from the
20s). Some are even more like prose meditations than standard stories
('Sounds', 'The Wood-Sprite'). A lot of them have twists, as in 'Details
of a Sunset', where, as I see it, the narrator has a soon-to-be-fatal
accident and imagines he has gone home to see his fiancée, but we learn
that he is in hospital and he soon dies from his injuries. There is also
the hilarious and wicked 'Revenge', in which a husband sets out to take
revenge on his unfaithful wife and it arrives in a rather unexpected
way. And the delightfully creepy 'Wingstroke', with the appearance of an
'angel' in a hotel room. You wonder what works VN would have written if
he had continued in this proto-realist vein.
Brian Howell
----- End forwarded message -----