Is there a word for the not-fantasy-but-odd genre?
June 27, 2022 5:14 PM
You’ve got speculative fiction, you’ve got fantasy. What do you call fiction that is kind of fantastical—nothing impossible or magical, yet also not regular fiction? I mean the opposite of kitchen sink realism but without being supernatural. Like what about whimsical Wes Anderson movies?
There’s magical realism, and I think that’s what the question is getting at, but I think of Wes Anderson as kind of a mannerist.
posted by kevinbelt at 5:17 PM on June 27, 2022
posted by kevinbelt at 5:17 PM on June 27, 2022
I'm very fond of this 2020 essay by Lincoln Michel which proposes categorizing fiction along two axes: mimetic—fantastic and naturalistic—expressionist. So stuff like Wes Anderson movies and Oscar Wilde plays and Agatha Christie novels would be in the "stylized" quadrant. They're not "realistic," but their lack of overt fantasy or sci-fi elements mean they're not "speculative" or "fabulist" either.
posted by clair-de-lune at 5:33 PM on June 27, 2022
posted by clair-de-lune at 5:33 PM on June 27, 2022
It's an older term, but that sort of thing has sometimes been called "Weird Fiction".
posted by Hatashran at 5:35 PM on June 27, 2022
posted by Hatashran at 5:35 PM on June 27, 2022
I agree that "magical realism" is probably what you want, but you might find the term "slipstream" useful also. It's more recent than "weird fiction" but still slightly dated; coined by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling in the 1980s, it was getting bandied about a lot in the first decade of the millennium, when people like Kelly Link, George Saunders, Jonathan Lethem, and Haruki Murakami were all becoming prominent. (Prior to Sterling's coining, one might point to someone like Angela Carter.)
posted by snarkout at 5:54 PM on June 27, 2022
posted by snarkout at 5:54 PM on June 27, 2022
Alternate history falls into this category. (Counterfactual history appears to be another category. Huh.) So, for example, The Years of Rice and Salt, which imagines a Europe destroyed by plague and conflicts between Muslim and Chinese empires. It's a very different world, and in that sense fantastic, but not magical.
posted by SPrintF at 6:07 PM on June 27, 2022
posted by SPrintF at 6:07 PM on June 27, 2022
I call it low key magical realism. A little offbeat, but no one’s actually flying, or at least not much.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:17 PM on June 27, 2022
posted by betweenthebars at 6:17 PM on June 27, 2022
Not that I have a name for it, but Robertson Davies would fit the same mold, right?
posted by LizardBreath at 6:34 PM on June 27, 2022
posted by LizardBreath at 6:34 PM on June 27, 2022
Yep. He’s a bit of a gadfly with his influences, but his personal style is basically the dictionary definition of “mannered”.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 7:05 PM on June 27, 2022
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 7:05 PM on June 27, 2022
I don't understand why people are saying magical realism. That includes magic, and unless I'm forgetting something major, Wes Anderson's work does not.
posted by FencingGal at 7:12 PM on June 27, 2022
posted by FencingGal at 7:12 PM on June 27, 2022
Sometimes I use the word "uncanny" for this, especially if it's more on the creepy than whimsical side.
posted by sigmagalator at 8:38 PM on June 27, 2022
posted by sigmagalator at 8:38 PM on June 27, 2022
Magic realism is a pretty controversial term, for example, is it cultural appropriation to use it outside of its original context of Latin American literature, and how it relates to the genre fiction /literary fiction divide. This article gives a good overview.
posted by Zumbador at 11:04 PM on June 27, 2022
posted by Zumbador at 11:04 PM on June 27, 2022
I call it whatever Michael Ondaatje wrote.
posted by oldnumberseven at 2:46 AM on June 28, 2022
posted by oldnumberseven at 2:46 AM on June 28, 2022
There are a lot of works of fiction with a tone lying somewhere between quirky and fanciful, but I'm not aware of a larger generic term for this style.
posted by Morpeth at 4:34 AM on June 28, 2022
posted by Morpeth at 4:34 AM on June 28, 2022
A subset of what you're looking for might be 'Gothic'. It's common in the English cultural scene, where it overlaps with 'folk horror'.
posted by glasseyes at 7:07 AM on June 28, 2022
posted by glasseyes at 7:07 AM on June 28, 2022
I don't know that this is an accepted term, but I'd call it "Hyper-stylized."
posted by Ragged Richard at 8:21 AM on June 28, 2022
posted by Ragged Richard at 8:21 AM on June 28, 2022
This sounds like the New Weird literary movement. Jeff Vandermeer was a big part of it from the start, he's probably the most well-known of the authors.
posted by ananci at 10:09 AM on June 28, 2022
posted by ananci at 10:09 AM on June 28, 2022
Absurdist.
posted by vitabellosi at 2:56 AM on June 30, 2022
posted by vitabellosi at 2:56 AM on June 30, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by The otter lady at 5:15 PM on June 27, 2022