Why I Turned Away From Realism and Began to Write Surreal Fiction

My writing has taken an unexpected turn in the last few years. I’ve begun to incorporate elements of the surreal—what some might term fantastical or magical realist—into what would otherwise be realistic novels. My 2018 novel, Weather Woman, for example, tells the story of a woman who discovers she has the power to change the weather; she must then navigate her way in a world where no one believes this is possible. Where did this rogue desire to employ surrealism or fantasy come from?

My earliest reading enjoyment as a child came from a variety of different kinds of books. Some were “realistic” such as The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, or The River by Rumer Godden, but others were delightfully fantastical. Half Magic (Edward Eager), A Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L’Engle), and The Trouble with Jenny’s Ear (Oliver Butterworth) come to mind. I didn’t discriminate on the basis of genre back then—I was a happily omnivorous reader.

But school changed that. What was considered serious fiction, the fiction we studied and wrote about in middle school and high school, was mostly realistic fiction: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Updike, Cheever. I developed a certain view of the aesthetic components that went into what was considered “good” literature. That aesthetic included a devotion to portraying the world as we experience it on a daily basis, alongside a respect for causality and linearity.

In college I was an avid student of the theater. I performed in plays, read plays, wrote plays. I respected the realistic work of playwrights Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Henrik Ibsen, but it was the absurdist works of Beckett, Sartre, Albee, Buchner, and others, that really excited me, along with the surrealist plays of playwrights like Strindberg and Cocteau. The possibilities for my own writing widened with this exposure, and I found myself writing plays that grew out of that excitement. My first play, Mergatroid, was about two women who raised ten “neuter” children.

My enchantment with theater led me to pursue a career in film where the prospects for earning a living were more viable. As a screenwriter in Hollywood, I had to squelch my zaniest impulses. Unless you are writing superhero movies or movies for children, Hollywood takes a dim view of the non-realistic.

When I departed from film to devote myself to the writing of fiction (where I felt I had always belonged), my circuitous writing path had bequeathed different kinds of guidance. Which wisdom would I heed? I began by writing realistic fiction, the kind I’d been schooled to believe was the only serious work. My first two published novels fit squarely into that genre, a genre I have not entirely abandoned.

But recently, for several years now, this rogue and irresistible impulse has cropped up, the urge to play with fantastical (surreal? supernatural? magical?) elements. The powerful work of writers like Toni Morrison and Aimee Bender, among many others, has given me permission to explore beyond the boundaries of strict realism. What I have discovered is that, in distorting aspects of what we know as “reality,” I can get closer to certain truths about human nature, and human thought, and the human condition.

I have come to think of surrealism/fantasy/the supernatural/magical realism as a kind of steroid, bulking things up and bringing certain perceptions into clearer relief. The distortions I create in a narrative can be thought of as tools that amplify the material, much as an astronomer employs a telescope, or a biologist uses a microscope.

We know when we look through a telescope or a microscope that what we are seeing is many times larger than what can be seen with the naked eye. But this distortion allows us to see mitochondria, ribosomes, vacuoles, or the composition of stars and craters on the moon. These tools bring us to a better understanding of how the cosmos works. Fantasy, likewise, can bring us to a deeper understanding of the human psyche.

I’ve been further emboldened by remembering that the use of magical elements in narrative is hardly new. Writers have been exploring and exploiting the fantastical for millennia. Check out the work of Homer or Shakespeare if you don’t believe me. The Odyssey is full of people shape-shifting and casting spells, and Shakespeare’s plays feature witches and ghosts, not to mention a man who has been turned into a donkey. So I encourage you, readers and writers, to expand your horizons and savor the many delights and insights that can be delivered when imagination is fully unleashed.

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Cai Emmons is the author of five books of fiction: the novels His MOTHER’S SON (winner of the Oregon Book Award), THE STYLIST, WEATHER WOMAN, and the forthcoming SINKING ISLANDS, as well as a collection of short stories, VANISHING, winner of the Leapfrog Press fiction contest. Emmons’s short work has appeared in such publications as Ms. Magazine, TriQuarterly, Narrative, Arts and Culture, The Santa Monica Review, LitHub, and Electric Literature, among others. Before turning to fiction she wrote plays and screenplays, and she has taught film and fiction at various universities, most recently the University of Oregon. She is now a full-time writer. 

Website www.caiemmons.com or www.caiemmonsauthor.com

VANISHING, Cai Emmons

The characters in these stories operate in a world in which their voices are not heard, and are navigating prickly paths, doing what they can to survive.

An attorney, mother of twin babies, is destabilized when her husband is away, and comes to doubt she has a right to her own house; a young artist thinks she knows the score when she moves from LA to New York, only to be forced to look past stereotypes to discover what really matters; a documentary filmmaker, rattled by her recent divorce, visits her oldest childhood friend, who is several years into debilitating dementia, and realizes how quickly shared history can vanish; a woman in her twenties who feels on the outside of everything forms a manipulative friendship with a mother aggrieved by her daughter’s recent death; and an office manager approaching middle age is taken aback when she realizes she isn’t central in the lives of her young male employees, whom she always thought adored her.

These five women’s lives speak to the difficulty of honing a strong identity in a culture that consistently devalues women.

Sophisticated and bright with promise…these stories elucidate incredibly difficult-to-articulate topics such as jealousy, self-hatred, unlikely connection and friendship.… If a writer’s job is to make the unseen visible, the stories in VANISHING are flashlights, illuminating the subtle, enormous tragedies we humans encounter every day.—Marie-Helene Bertino, author of 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas
Praise for Cai Emmons’ novels

Gripping. Brings home the power and terror of maternal love. —O Magazine

Emmons…has an eye for the grating intimacy of small-town life and a fine ear for suggestive metaphors.… Unusual and memorable. —The Economist

Lovely writing… Emmons’ emphasis is on her characters, and she draws them well. —Seattle Times

With family relations as twisted as a French braid and language as vivid as a platinum dye job, Emmons’ potent novel features magnetic characters and complex and compelling secrets. mdash;Booklist

A gift of a book, an affecting story of violence and forgiveness.—Bookpage

Accomplished playwright and filmmaker Emmons tests chilly waters in this ambitious, unsettling debut.—Publishers Weekly

Gorgeous writing throughout makes for an unusually affecting and memorable debut. —Kirkus Reviews

BUY THE BOOK HERE

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Category: On Writing