Who Says No to Magic?—Jillian Grant Shoichet
Writing and reading are acts of magic. The writer takes an image from her mind and converts it to text on a page; the reader consumes that text and recreates an image in her mind. This alchemical process is repeated over and over, never quite the same, never quite predictable, but always magical.
But in our modern world, if we can explain why or how something works, we don’t tend to call it magical. We can explain the neurological processes involved in the acquisition of language and literacy; we can explain the practical skills involved in the process of bookmaking. By explaining things, we demystify them. We tend to ascribe the term “magic” only to the sorts of phenomena that defy explanation.
But isn’t explanation the only real difference between science and sorcery? We can explain science, but we can’t explain magic.
Yet a wonder of the natural world that has a scientific explanation is no less magical than an event for which we don’t yet have a scientific explanation.
Because I conceive of writing and reading as forms of magic, I am always surprised when a reader engages in what is essentially a magical process but insists on reading only “realistic” texts. Only books with “real” characters, “real” plots, “real” predicaments. No hocus pocus. No fairy dust. No elves.
Because that, apparently, is the line between real and unreal: whether something has an elf or not.
My sister is one of those real-only readers. I’d read Lewis Caroll, Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Tad Williams, Anne McCaffrey, Jane Yolen, David Eddings. I’d read about painful interpersonal relationships, moments of great courage and inspiration, the searing knife-wound of grief – all intense human experiences. But because these experiences didn’t happen in a world that was solely, recognizably, humanly pedestrian, my sister wasn’t interested. Nope: If she got a whiff of orc or a hint of prophecy, she walked away.
Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary: that’s where she drew the line. Bridge to Terabithia was also acceptable because the magic happened in the characters’ heads. A Summer to Die was a favourite because the girl succumbs to a real-life cancer instead of an evil wizard’s ire. My sister liked book characters to experience trauma, but only if that trauma was rooted in circumstances that could be scientifically explained.
I am secretly pleased that my daughter likes books with magic. When my parents ask her what she is reading lately, and she recounts the high points of her current favourite series, my parents listen and nod and then inevitably ask, Are you reading anything besides fantasy?
My instinct is to jump into the conversation, like the defensive mother I am, to shout, What’s wrong with fantasy? Perhaps I am still feeling protective of thirteen-year-old Jillian, who could never seem to adequately justify her reading choices to a family that generally preferred Hatchet to Harry Potter.
But in this conversation between my daughter and my parents, I hold back; if I’ve learned anything from reading books with magic, it’s that things aren’t always as they seem.
My daughter thinks about it for a moment, and then says, I prefer fantasy. Why would I want to read a book about real life? I have a real life. I don’t want to read about feelings and problems in a world that’s just like mine. The characters in my books have real feelings and real problems, but they have opportunities that I don’t have – that’s what makes me interested in them.
Listening to my daughter’s measured response, I understand something I hadn’t understood before. Magic in a book allows us to challenge our understanding of the human experience. We’ve all known love and loss, happiness and sorrow. But when a fictional character experiences one of those real-life events in a magical environment, she is released from the shackles of the reader’s real-life expectations. She doesn’t have to respond the way we would respond because her environment is different.
As the character’s reader, I have the opportunity to respond with her – to go and be and do completely differently from how I would go and be and do in my own real-world life.
That’s the magic: As a reader, I don’t just consume a text and recreate an image in my mind; I become the text. If a character inhabits a magical world, then I do, too.
Who wouldn’t want that?
