Candice writes:
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Yeah, I fall (or don't) along the same lines, but wonder about your
reading of "fabulation" as a category term implying "fable" and thereby
implicated in the allegorical or one-dimensional narrative. Isn't the
fabulation meant to suggest the _fabula_, in the old Russian Formalist
sense to which narratology still appeals, and closer to magical realism
than to the classic fable?
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That's certainly an encouraging thought. I read Scholes's book some years
ago (can't remember the title) so can't be sure exactly what he said. I did
think it was great to have a term that combined magical realism and
metafiction - to me, the two most exciting directions in contemporary
fiction, and clearly related in some way - but I just wasn't sure about the
term itself. There is, I think, a tendency for fabulation to be used for
drumming in simple political messages - eg, when an Indian character in
Midnight's Children finds himself turning white after adopting the customs
of the departed British, or when the dictator in Autumn of the Patriarch
sells the sea off to the Americans in parcels. (The metafictional equivalent
is where the author seems to be saying: this is only a novel, don't worry
about it - what really matters is what I'm now going to tell you about
Issues of the Day.) The fabulation that works for me is more mysterious than
that - Jose Buendia speaking Latin or the yellow flowers that fall on the
town when he dies. What I love about those flowers, come to think of it, is
that Garcia Marquez has absolutely no need to put them there. They're like a
present from the book to the reader. And that's the charm of the
supernatural to those who, like me, don't actually believe in it - it adds
something to the reality we've already got.
Best wishes
Matthew
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