Magical Realism and Multiple Personality: A Character’s Telepathy is based on Co-Consciousness of the Author’s Alternate Personalities

In my post of May 20, 2014 (search “magical realism”), I quoted Gabriel Garcia Marquez as rejecting the label of magical realism. He explained that what people call magical realism is just the way he thinks.

Why would he think that way? Because great novelists have multiple personality.  And one way of describing multiple personality is to say that it is magical thinking by a person who is grounded in reality.

For example, suppose that a character in a “magical realism” novel is telepathic; that is, he can read another character’s mind. Well, that is routine in multiple personality—when one identity reads another identity’s mind—only instead of “telepathy,” it is called “co-consciousness.”

Why, then, don’t all great novelists write magical realism novels? Literary fashion and self-control.