Fantasy just happens to be a more exaggerated departure from reality. Even realism is a constructed and imagined representation of reality, not reality per se. The peculiar thing about this marginalisation of fantasy is that all writing is “fantasy” to some extent. I encountered a similar hostility to fantasy while living in Finland, where I joined a book club of expatriate English-speakers and was cautioned at my first meeting that the club didn’t read “genre” books – which essentially meant that realism was “in”, but everything else – including fantasy - was “out”. (She was always trying to persuade my two brothers to let go of their dog-eared copies of American author David Eddings’ books and read something “proper”.) This idea was ingrained in me during childhood by my bibliophile mother, who was convinced that fantasy was “rubbish”. What’s important to point out here is that fantasy writing has come to be perceived as belonging to popular culture, and is therefore generally regarded as being of inferior quality to realism. (It’s interesting how this gendered perception of fantasy has gradually changed over time, because fantasy is more often than not associated with young men today – although their youth is evidently the important factor.)
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