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> Kafkaeque Is there a name for the genre of writing that gets so, so close to magical realism without actually incorporating literal magic? Because this story
by summermusic 2y ago
> Kafkaeque
Is there a name for the genre of writing that gets so, so close to magical realism without actually incorporating literal magic? Because this story is the epitome of it.
- madmountaingoat 2y agoMagical realism. The edges of any "genre" is going to be very fuzzy.
- lamp_book 2y agoYeah maybe more specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastique and some of the examples are not explicitly supernatural.
- ajmurmann 2y agoKafkaesqueness doesn't require magical realism. It's about a sense of being powerless in the overwhelming and opaque machinations of a larger system, usually a bureaucracy.
- kulahan 2y agoI find that it brings a lot of context into view when I remind people Kafka read his stories to crowds with a dry sense of humor. Consider The Burrow - there’s certainly something funny about trying so hard to perfect your bunker that you end up not using it.
- Gormo 2y agoI didn't get any sense of magical realism from this story. It seemed to delve a lot into the internal thoughts and reflections of someone dealing with the absurdity of the outside world, so Kafkaesque seems the best description.