Thinking About Juxtapositions
Last week, I discussed the mystery of what makes a literary work, such as Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, or the Harry Potter series, resonate so powerfully with (by implication, many) readers that it becomes a bestseller.
Meanwhile, away back on November 1, I posted on the Supernatural Underground about the wealth of fantasy worlds that have spun my reading wheels.
When considering both posts together, I started thinking about the importance of juxtapositions when it comes to stories that have made an impact or cut a swathe through the world. For example, Harry Potter takes the traditional “boarding school story” and juxtaposes it with magic, setting a magical world directly alongside our everyday reality. The result is, well, magical…
Similarly, Joanne Harris’s Chocolat combines magic, this time manifested through the chocolate of the title, with the French village life of A Year In Provence. Robin McKinley’s Sunshine managed a similar ‘marriage’ to good effect, only the baking and bakery-as-community hub were juxtaposed with vampires…
As for Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin, as mentioned on Supernatural Underground, it’s “a variant of Gangs of New York meets Westside Story”, with a dash of Narnia (i.e. the magical alongside the everyday, within a predominantly winter world) thrown in.
Again as noted in the Supernatural Underground post, the way in which the Alvin Maker series put together North American colonial history (albeit an alternate one) with folklore and eco-magic, also felt exciting and new when it first appeared, although “flintlock fantasy” has since become its own subgenre.
I do not assert that juxtaposition alone (i.e. of older storytelling traditions and genres into a new format) unravels the mystery discussed last week, but it does appear to be a relatively consistent element when storytelling is hailed as “new” and ‘fresh.” The effect is not unlike the confluence of two rivers, which by coming together create a strong and energetic current going forward. Other storytelling elements, such as a great plot and vibrant characters, definitely need to be present for a story to be successful, but a little genre-bending may sometimes help move things along.