How well does Magical Realism age?

This post will pick up the Widows of Eastwick but a post on Tracks will be coming soon because I am over half way through the book and have a lot of thoughts on it. But for now I'd like to stick with the Widows of Eastwick and explore the book in terms of Magical Realism. It is particularly interesting to me because at this point in their lives, the women have come to regard their foray into witchcraft as a foolish preoccupation of their youth. Maybe that characterization is a little harsh, but they do not believe in the power in the same way they did when they were recent divorcees.

In the first novel, the women attempt to downplay the role their hex played on Jenny Gabriel's fate by questioning the magic which they had stood by previously. They reasoned that Jenny died due to a natural manifestation of terminal cancer. It was purely coincidental it was only after they placed a hex on Jenny that she began to show symptoms of the disease. So it is no surprise the women continued to distance themselves from witchcraft from that point forward. Lexa herself does not feel the same connection to nature she once did and at the start of the novel she disparages the importance she placed on both nature and witchcraft in her youth. Sukie and Jane feel similarly and make comments to that effect at various points at the novel. Yet when the do finally take a trip together it is to return to Eastwick and get back in touch with their "witchy-roots". Still, it is only Lexa who takes it seriously when they decide to try to erect a cone of power for the first time in thirty+ years. The other two dally on their way back from Jane's hospital visit and are not fully invested in the process which Lexa has so painstakingly set up. The magic is reluctant in this novel when it was abundant in the previous one. There are no transformations of tennis balls or love charms at all. Yet when the women do erect the cone of power, the magic is more undeniable than in any other instance. Sukie's former lover's hand begins to regenerate, Joe Marino's Daughter conceives a baby and Jane dies in a violent fashion. Yet there is a medical explanation for Jane's death not to mention her advanced age. It is a constant conflict and is left unresolved by Updike as to what is actually taking place, how much is magic and how much is scientific.

This conflict is embodied by Darryl Van Horne's replacement, Chris Gabriel. The scene in which Chris is originally summoned by Gretta Neff is a very magical scene and yet when it is later explained by Chris, it was nothing more than a phone call. It is similar to the attacks which Chris makes on Jane and then Lexa. His electron shooter springs from work he did with Darryl and alludes to the devil's work from the original novel, yet Chris himself admits that he doesn't think it works. The discomfort which Jane felt that was originally attributed to Chris could have very well been just her aged body failing her.

So my question is, do these plausible or semi-plausible explanations for the magical elements remove the novel from being considered Magical Realism? If it doesn't, would it be considered more Magically Real or less than the first novel? I believe the novel still can be considered Magical Realism. Updike's characters' propensity to search for logical answers for the magical elements is reflective of the western mindset. It is that propensity which is at the heart of many Latin American author's belief that White America cannot write within the genre. Yet in my opinion, Updike accomplishes just that. By allowing his characters to question what is actually happening, he creates a realistic western reaction to magic. But moments like the regeneration of Sukie's former lover's hand or Jane's death at the price moment she drew her tarot card, suggest that the magic is real and it is more than just a coincidence. So there is the natural questioning of anything which does not follow logic and accepted reality, but the narrative suggests that these moments are actually taking place. The result is a viable form of Magical Realism written by a White American. For the second question, I feel that the second novel is actually more Magically Real than the first. The first novel may contain more actual instances of magic, but it ends with the women trying to undermine the reality of that magic to help alleviate their own guilt of Jenny Gabriel. In this novel, they take the opposite road as they try to get back in touch with the power they once enjoyed. Of course the attempt to distance themselves from that power yet again after Jane's death, but the events that follow (the pregnancy and healing of the hand), provide an affirmation which cannot be denied.

Switching gears, I did enjoy the Witches of Eastwick more. This novel wrapped up a few loose ends from the first, but it tended to meander a little more. It took the first two thirds of the book for the women to even get back to Eastwick. It also covered a greater amount of time through the course of the narrative. Months turn into years before the story gets from start to end. I think those gaps disrupt the flow of the novel. The continuity of time in the first one created a different energy level. In the Widows of Eastwick, the energy ebbs and flows as different story lines reach their full arc before a new one begins. I did enjoy both though and they are worth a read.

Maleficia Revisited

The Widows of Eastwick is John Updike's follow up to the Witches of Eastwick almost a quarter century later. It is set in 2008 (the year the book was published) which makes it almost forty years later than the setting of the first book. At this point the three women live in different parts of the country and their second husbands are either dead or die shortly after the beginning of the novel. The women are all in their 70s and yet still as lively as ever. The novel begins by reintroducing us to Lexa in her new life as a widow in the South-West. The novel start by joining Lexa on a trip Canada. By beginning with Lexa alone, Updike is able to demonstrate how her mentality about life has changed over time. She has lost touch with nature, sees the witchcraft of her younger years as somewhat of a fad and still carries the guilt of what they did to Jenny Gabriel. After the trip the women begin to get back into contact but Sukie's husband is still alive. So Lexa and Jane decide to take a trip together to Egypt. Again, Updike sets up the situation to show the evolution of his characters and how their interaction has changed because of those developments. Finally Sukie's husband passes away and the three women decide to take a trip together.

Where else would the three women go but back to Eastwick of course. They rent a condo in the old Van Horne mansion or more specifically the room which had once been the hot tub room. They immediately are confronted with their past when Lexa runs into the wife of her old lover, Joe Marino. The women also see Gretta Neff, the wife of one of Jane's lovers when they go to a local concert and Sukie meets one of her old lovers when she returns to Dock Street. Their reasons for returning are partly to get back in touch with a part of their lives when the three were connected and they were enjoying themselves, partly to make up for past wrongs and partly to stir up more mischeif.

It is an incredible literary experiment. Such a large amount of time has past and Updike is at such a point in his life that these women are drastically different and yet retain the essence of the earlier characters. It is also incredible how topical this book is. It really nails the post 9/11 hysteria that gripped this country. Writing from the standpoint of an old women who lived through some very momentous times in this country and being written by a man who actually did live through those times, creates a very interesting perspective from which to view recent events. A lot of American hostility toward to Arab world was relflected in Jane and Lexa's attitudes towards Egypt during their trip. It was a very clear picture of the atmosphere that exists throughout most of this country. It was also interesting to see the treatment of sex. Lexa claimed to have lost interest in the physical aspect of sex, but the treatment in this book is far more explicit than when they were in their sexual primes. Especially for Sukie, who does not feel that same absence of a sexual appetite. Her past and current sexual activity is dealt with in some detail when it was skirted with more general description in the Witches of Eastwick. Maybe it is just a relfection of our societies increased acceptance of more explicit sexuality and a greater exposure to sex in general, but it is definitely a noticible shift from how it was previously portrayed.

There is one passage in the book which is incredibly important to my reading of the Witches of Eastwick. The passage is an exchange between Lexa and her eldest daughter who stayed in Eastwick to marry and raise a family,
"Girls your age just can't realize how few opportunities there were for women when I was young. Our job was to make babies and buy American consumer goods. If we fell off the marriage bandwagon, there was nothing much left for us but to ride a broomstick and cook up spells. Don't look so shocked, it was power: Everybody needs power. Otherwise the world eats you up."
"What about children? Isn't having them and loving them power enough for most women?"
"'In sorrow thou shalt bring forth cildren,'" Alexandra quoted, the quotation being fresh in her memory, "'and thy desire shall be to they husband, and he shall rule over thee.' Isn't that utterly disgusting?"

This passage sums up my impression of what Updike was trying to accomplish in the Witches of Eastwick. I felt as though Updike was trying to capture the essence of individual feminism during that time period. Women were given another option towards having control in their own life and an absolution when it came to traditional moral responsibility. As a result, our society went through some what of a tumult because the traditional familial model with women in a position of subordination was rejected. But that was not a bad thing, it was a necessary development. I am going to leave this post here, but I think I will come back to this idea as well as give a few more impressions about this book in my next post. Hopefully my many readers will be able to hold their collective breath in anticipation.

Updike's the Witches of Eastwick

This was my first foray into Updike, so I jumped in without exactly knowing what to expect. Instead of doing the English major sort of thing and doing some preliminary research, I delved into the book so I could form my own reactions and opinions. It turned out to be something other than anything I was expecting. Of course now that I have done some research on Updike and am a little more familiar with his writing style, it should have been exactly what I expected. True to form, the Witches of Eastwick is a highly descriptive, luridly detailed novel that delves deeply into personal relationships. The plot centers around the lives of three divorcees, Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart, and Sukie Rougement, in the Rhode Island town of Eastwick. As is suggested by the title, all three women have developed supernatural powers after their divorces. The three friends have been enjoying the empowerment of their liberated, post divorce lives as they take whatever pleasures they desire, after all "being a divorcee in a small town is a little like playing Monopoly; eventually you land on all the properties" (Updike, 25). Yet there is apparently diminishing return in that sort of life as they become increasingly bored. Enter Darryl Van Horne, a brusque New York city business man and inventor. He buys a long abandoned mansion just outside of town and provides the shake-up that the three witches had been looking for. Alexandra and Jane both harbor desires to make this man their own as they trade their Thursday evening gatherings with each other for a steamier get together in Van Horne's hot tub.

The town and the women are given another shake-up when a murder-suicide takes place. That event prompts the introduction of another character into the witches' lives, as the grown children of the deceased return to town. The witches take young Jenny under their wing and invite her and her brother to their gathering with Van Horne. Things do not exactly go as planned for the women as Jenny usurps the position coveted by Lexa and Jane as the sole object of Van Horne's affections. As the women emerge from the fog of being under Van Horne's influence, they have choices to make about how they want to react to their new situation. I'll end my synopsis there and let any readers of the blog find out what happens from there on their own. That should be enough of a refresher for anyone who has read the book and enough context for anyone who has not.

I really enjoyed and am intrigued by this book. I have read and heard many responses that dismiss this book as either not the best from Updike or lacking depth as a novel in general. These impressions do not give this work enough credit. It is said that this novel was written in part as a response to Updike's critics to show that he can write from a woman's perspective and does not hate women as was suggested. If that is the case, then it would make sense that this novel is not quite as strong as some of his other work because he is writing from a vantage point that he is not quite comfortable with. I cannot understand how readers could not recognize the depth of this novel though. I believe that most readers write it off because of large role that sex plays, but if you can get beyond that there is a wealth of insights and intriguing possibilities in this novel. As my professor pointed out, there are a million paper topics contained in this book. My favorite possibility to pursue, and one that I am currently pursuing in a paper, is the feminist angle. Given Updike's previous unflattering depiction of women and his current witches' preoccupation with the carnal, critics were quick to respond negatively from a feminist vantage point, but I believe that is an overreaction to the surface elements of the novel as well as an unfair carry over of preconceptions about Updike. Despite the three's seeming obsession with sex and the control Darryl Van Horne is able to exert over them, these are strong women who have a lot of influence over their environment in a time when women were just starting to take control over their own lives. They obviously are flawed characters and still carry the effects of previous conceptions about the limitations of gender even while being on the front line of the sexual revolution. Yet they still are on that front line. They did divorce their husbands and they have turned their attentions inward, breaking the cycle of always putting themselves secondary to the men in their lives. As a result they develop not only supernatural powers but also power over their own lives as they recognize what it is they desire and pursue that. Much of that power and desire manifests itself in sex, but that is somewhat logical since it was sexual desire that was denied to them for so long and it is through sex which they can manipulate other men in the community. It is particularly interesting to me to explore what it is which the women actually gain from their sexual escapades and what their primary motivators are. I believe that by analyzing the needs they are trying to meet as well as the result of their actions in relation to sex reveals a very feminist stance in the novel.

There are plenty of other incredibly intriguing ideas to pursue though. I am embarrassed to admit that I did not consciously recognize Darryl Van Horne as a Satan figure until it was pointed out in my later research. That being the case, his eventual involvement with the Unitarian church and more specifically the sermon he delivered is a damning assertion against that denomination and raises some very interesting question about religion and Updike's views on it. In that same vein, the local newspaper is named the Word an allusion to the bible and is edited by Clyde Gabriel, the angel who announced the coming of Christ. Yet it is for this newspaper that Sukie writes her weekly gossip column about local affairs and is far from a literately prestigious periodical. It is also within the Unitarian church which where a woman gains the only recognized position of power in the form of Brenda assuming the role of minister. It is a convoluted variety of messages that is incredibly interesting to wade through.

There is also another angle which my professor pursued in his own published work on the book. He drew the comparisons between Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter and Updike's work. Professor Plath saw the Witches of Eastwick as a modern reimagining of Hawthorne's Colonial New England. The witches become central to the novel instead of being on the periphery as they are in the Scarlet Lette and adultery becomes more everyday in Updike's vision. It that line of analysis is interesting to you then I encourage you to look up the article Giving the Devil His Due by James Plath.

This book is very rich in really fascinating detail and in my second time through it, more and more stands out to me. It is worth the read just for some of the quotes. The prose is fantastic and as I write my paper I will probably use the blog to explore some more ideas that I have. If not though, expect the next post to concern Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato.

Magical Realism

I am going to have to put Dickens on hold for awhile as I start my final semester of college. I do intend to continue the blog and use it as a place to log thoughts about the books I am reading for my senior seminar, which is the only literature course I have this semester. The senior seminar is titled American Magical Realism and we are reading books by Updike, Tim O'Brien, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison and W.P. Kinsella. We have already read the Witches of Eastwick by Updike and now will be moving on to Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien. Before I get into the novels though, I want to briefly talk about what Magical Realism is as a point of reference.

Magical Realism's roots begin in German and Eastern European literature in the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It is characterized by the presence of something(s) amazing or magical in an otherwise ordinary situation and the fantastic element is usually treated as a matter of course by the characters and narrator. That is about as simple of a definition as I can give but since there is not a truly agreed upon definition, it does not encompass everything. It is important to note that if the Magical elements mount up to the point that the book clearly does not take place in this world or becomes fantasy (ie. Lord of the Rings) then it is not Magical Realism. From my own experiences, a good indicator is if an event takes place in an otherwise realistic novel that has you questioning whether or not that actually happened or was a figment of a characters imagination or symbolic language for another event, then it could be Magical Realism. The key is that in Magical Realism, the fantastic event actually took place and while it may be symbolic, it is a part of the reality of the novel. My popular culture analogy was the TV show, Family Guy, in particular Stewie's ability to talk. In the first few seasons everyone was confused as to whether or not the family could hear what he was saying or it was just an internal monologue that was made external for our benefit. Of course my professor did not exactly get or appreciate the reference, but I think it is a fairly decent example.

From its roots in Germany, Magical Realism was then claimed and developed as a distinctly Latin American literary form. Its development in Latin America added an element of faith to the Magical Real. In a culture that is more religious and more accepting of events the Western World labels impossible, Magical Realism was a perfect fit and became tied to an emerging cultural identity in Literature. It is no coincidence that the growth of Magical Realism took place during a time period in which Latin America was struggling to find their own identity and voice in the global community. We read several short stories in the beginning of the class to give us an ideal of what is and is not Magical realism. My favorite was the Handsomest Drowned Man in the World by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it is short and worth a read if you are interested in an example. (Click on the title to get to the story online).

That cultural investment makes it a difficult form to break into if you are an outsider and yet there is enough American literature which can be classified as Magical Realism I am taking a class on it. From my brief introduction to Latin American Magical Realism in the short stories I mentioned earlier and North American Magical Realism in Updike, there is a marked difference in style. At least in Updike, the tone is much more cynical and irreverent than the more mystical and religious tone of the Latin American work. Of course, Updike is more irreverent and cynical than most, but I believe the lack of true mysticism in American culture makes it impossible to believably replicate the Latin American treatment of magical events. It will be interesting when we get to Erdrich and Morrison since the Native American and African American traditions feature mysticism much more prominently and are far more conducive to this sort of style.

I'll keep this post focused on Magical Realism in general and in the next post I'll give a brief synopsis of the Witches of Eastwick as well as some thoughts and reactions to the novel. It is going to be a great semester and the class has been really exciting so far. I would definitely recommend the novel if you enjoy Updike. If you are easily offended by salacious Literature, I would avoid it because sex is a central theme in the novel. If you can get beyond that though, it is worth it because there is an incredible amount of depth and very interesting thoughts and insights on a variety of subjects.