Magical Realism and Lazy Writing

This week’s The Hindu has an article by Tabish Khair about “The Laziness of Magical Realism” that touches on his belief that writers are using elements of magical realism as “shortcuts to narratability.”

He doesn’t quite come out and directly say this, but the sentiment behind the piece is that magical realism (that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Salman Rushdie) was a non-European, interesting tradition, that has been co-opted by lesser writers and has mutated into something laughable. And I totally agree. That’s partially why I like the Crack authors so much.