The Reader Travels

Like Amy Tan herself, her main characters are Americans. They lack any insights into the spiritual world because their land is shiny and new, whitewashed and sometimes superficial. It is only back in the old country that we see spirits come to life, in a land with centuries of custom, tradition and ancestors who watch over their families on earth.

I’d like to keep traveling west from China, all the way to England, another place with a long, long history and their own connections to the new world of America. Although Henry James pre-dates magical realism, I can’t help but think of his novella The Turn of the Screw, when we talk about the fuzzy borders between the “real” and the spiritual.

Many a college literature course asks students to answer the question, is James’s ghost real, or is it simply a product of a disturbed mind? It’s funny to watch the different film adaptations of the book to see which took the ghost angle, and which was from the crazy school.

I like to think James’s ghosts were real, and here’s why. James was born in the US, but moved to England and claimed it as his home. An anglophile to the core, James would have rejected the shiny newness of his birthplace and embraced the fact that more people take their ghosts seriously in old England.

Who knew Henry James was a magical realist?

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 9th, 2007 at 7:15 am and is filed under UK and Ireland, US and Canada, magical realism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.