Varieties of the Fantastic in Fiction

“Eisenheim the Illusionist” although it comes off an objection nonfiction, but has hints of the playful and fantastic. I see this in small details such as the fact that he is a mysterious magician. It is also interesting to point out that this sort of fantastic element of illusion happening to a magician-type character which […]

Read Full Post »

Being a collection which examines, through the lens of the fantastic, a myriad of issues which plague women today, Her Body and Other Parties would be incomplete without a story discussing body image and disordered eating. What was interesting to me was the choice made to approach this issue with a protagonist being an older woman, […]

Read Full Post »

As always, Millhauser toyed with genre in writing “In the Reign of Harad IV.” It finds itself in the category of “Impossible Architecture,” as opposed to “Heretical Histories,” despite my (and others’) initial assumption that it had taken place in the far past. I had assumed this because of its references to a king who […]

Read Full Post »

When I was reading this story, I was interested in how the fantastic corresponded with the fashion designer creating clothes. I couldn’t find anything that was actually impossible, though there were several things unlikely to happen. The story was strange, in true Millhauser fashion. One of the things that was strange was the overall fashion […]

Read Full Post »

The eighth and final installation of Carmen Machado‘s Her Body and Other Parties, “Difficult at Parties,” follows the protagonist recovering from the trauma of sexual assault, as she tires to re-discover and invent a new sexual norm after her rape.   I’ll admit this was a difficult read, as Machado’s collection of stories “use fiction to […]

Read Full Post »

I do not hate the rich. I aspire to be rich The Semplica Girl Diaries is about a father who strives to give his children all that he can, with the emphasis of finances being access to this success. The male narrator, who never gives a name, describes their financial situation as middle class. It […]

Read Full Post »

Many times throughout the story the narrator mentions he feels like he is writing for another generation. He expresses that he wants his writing to be used to show what daily life is like during this time period. At the beginning he jokes about the readers not knowing about basic things like windows, cats or […]

Read Full Post »

In the story, the narrator does not use a lot of clear language. There is an uneducated air around the sound of the writing, though it is possible that he could be writing as much as possible in the 20 minutes he sets aside for writing a day. “Damn it. Plan will not work. Cannot […]

Read Full Post »

The first two paragraphs do not write with “I.” There is only the diary format to show us that this is told from the first person. One example of this is, “Anyway, what the heck, am not planning on writing encyclopedia, if any future person is reading person is reading this, if you want to […]

Read Full Post »

In George Saunders “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” he wanted to use these diaries in his character’s journal to be read by future generations to show what people went through during the past time.  He was using his platform to allow people to learn from previous people’s struggles and decision making that put them in this […]

Read Full Post »

In Steven Millhauser’s Eisenheim the Illusionist, I think that he is trying to convey that magic is a form of art.  Something like magic has to be heavily argued for as it is something that only people that go to the show can talk about.  It isn’t something physical that can be put on the […]

Read Full Post »

I found this piece enticing, nonetheless. It follows the fashion trends in women’s clothing and centers around one designer in particular who revolutionizes the fashion industry. I started to ask myself the reason behind the desire women possessed to disappear. Continuing throughout the story, I noticed that the dresses became more elaborate; going the extra yard as even […]

Read Full Post »

I’ve noticed that Millhauser writes a lot of stories about artists fighting to be understood by the world at large. Is he okay? Has anyone checked on him? Harlan Crane’s story in “A Precursor to Cinema” runs in the same cycles: Harlan does something fantastic. Newspapers criticize or ignore him. He has to find a […]

Read Full Post »

The first sentence of Steven Millhauser’s “A Change in Fashion” states, “After the Age of Revelation came the Age of Concealment.” This is said so matter-of-factly that I didn’t even question it. It almost sounds like the opening line to an analytical historical paper. The description of the fashion reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale, in which […]

Read Full Post »

In Steven Millhauser’s A Precursor of the Cinema, he is writing in a time that is trying to create a new machine to create being alone all day working on their artwork.  Millhauser is showing the invention phase is trying to show that he is allowing things to be done more quickly, instead of requiring […]

Read Full Post »

In reading “A Change in Fashion” I struggled to find the fantastic thanks to Lady Gaga. Could it be that women have gotten tired of being looked at as sexual objects that are judged by their looks and body? I doubt it since some women have always had a dislike of that issue. Possibly the […]

Read Full Post »

When thinking about what to write in this post, I struggled to recognize the source of fantastic in Steven Millhauser’s “Change in Fashion.” While the formulation and expansion of the dress was meant to achieve a purpose, I argue that the motivation of this dress isn’t far off from modern fashion. With the goal of […]

Read Full Post »

One Hundred Years of Solitude focuses more on the men of the story.  They are the ones that go out, get married, make bad decisions, join wars etc etc. However I found women to be the most interesting characters of whole story. Especially seeing what qualities were considered to be the most “virtuous”. Marquez uses […]

Read Full Post »

In my opinion, Melquiades was one of the most important characters of the book. The fantastic components of the story often involved him and there were many things he seemed to know about that the other citizens didn’t.  He was the one to introduce the inventions to Jose Arcadio Buendia and start his fascination with […]

Read Full Post »

We first meet the character of Pilar Ternera on page 25 of the novel. Around that time a merry, foul-mouthed, provocative woman came to the house to help with the chores, and she knew how to read the future in cards. Initially, Pilar took on the role of seductress: she sleeps with Jose Acardio, a […]

Read Full Post »

The concept of mental health in this book was a constantly present theme, particularly in the beginning of the book. There are times, however, when the mental health turns into a fantastic element. The ‘insomnia plague’ was the first major thing I noticed. The people were all concerned about catching a sickness that would cause […]

Read Full Post »

In One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the story is written in a way that shows the time that is being written about.   Marquez is showing this in his writing by having the men be the ones that go to war and doing all of the masculine things and making things […]

Read Full Post »

When I began to see and read the posts about Covid-19, I believed, just as most of us reasoned, that this virus was not something to become panicked about, as an overwhelming amount of sickness and mass death couldn’t be the cause of a virus that was being compared to having a cold. The beginning […]

Read Full Post »

I saw a post today warning people against reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 classic “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This confused me, as I believe the only people ever to be in danger of reading that story are high school juniors, and I’m pretty sure all of them are busy finding new and better ways to avoid […]

Read Full Post »

The past few weeks have been unforgettable as a sickness that frightens many has rapidly spread across the United States. It is unlike anything I have seen in my lifetime. So much so, as a matter of fact, that it almost doesn’t seem real. The fantastic aspect of this begins with the public panic part […]

Read Full Post »