I've been teaching One Hundred Years of Solitude this last couple of weeks, and I've been puzzled about a good way to introduce the idea of "magic realism" to my students. Is it mixing and matching mundane reality with the fantastic, like Jaime Hernandez. Or making a metaphor literal, as Kafka did to that poor insect, Gregor Samsa? Or is it that magic realism is simply the way things are? What could be more magical than a castle "poised above a sea of clouds that mute the city lights below . . . in the Swabian Alb range . . . an area that was once a reef in an ancient sea"?

On another topic, get a load of this "corpse-chewing ghoul" who's now in charge of national intelligence.