Can fantasy literature have a Hemingway, Fitzgerald, or McCarthy?
Slightly off-topic, but recently I’ve read an article (german) which made a good point that he’s not. The argument is that fantasy requires realism as a counterpoint. There has to be an established reality, in which the fantastic can intrude. But Borges, as the argument procedes, never refers to reality, only to literature and literary patterns. So he can’t write fantasy, as there is no difference between imaginary and real significats. This would go fine with Umberto Eco’s interpretation of Borges, i.e. that his significats are not objects but ideas. Borges said it in another way: fantastical literature is a tautology, all literature is fantastical. I think Borges Texts are even better than fantastic, they’re magical – in the sense of his essay Partial Magic in the Quixote. This leads me to my favourite fantasy or – as I should say now – magical book, Already Dead by Denis Johnson. Every fantastical interpretation of the events by the characters is neither established as true nor as f
