Dear Alejo...

Dear Alejo,

Hello. I recently read your novel, Kingdom of this World. My favorite aspect of your book was your discussion of the cyclical nature of time, and how you used elements of magical realism to communicate your meaning. Because these were my favorite aspects of your novel, I have  a few questions pertaining to them. Firstly, I was wandering if magical realism is a generally more positive or negative force in this book. I noticed the connections you drew between sexual desire and grotesque violence, and I was wondering if magical realism and madness are tied in the same way. For example, when Soliman decides to venture drunkenly from the slaves quarters into the bowels of the mansion: "It was a cold, white, motionless world, but its shadows took on life and grew under the light of the lantern, as though those beings with unseeing eyes, who looked without looking, were moving about their midnight visitors" (158). In this scene, it seems as though you foreshadow Soliman's downfall in the hardened white bodies of the statues. Is magical realism supposed to serve as a sort of warning to Soliman? Or is it too late? In Ti Noel's case, it seems to be. When he returns to De Mezy's old plantation, he falls prey to the cyclical nature of time: "Ti Noel sat down on one of the cornerstones of the old mansion, now a stone like any other stone for those who did not remember" (106). Right after this realization, "He was talking to the ants"(106). The way you slid this sentence in right after this mention of cyclical time leads me to believe that you intended the cyclical nature of time to be Ti Noel's undoing, and his descent into the magically realistic side of the book. This leads me to my other question: Is Ti Noel's madness meant to be a metamorphoses into sanity, or is he just loosing his grip on reality? I do not usually associate madness with the godlike powers he attains. At the end of the book, you blend his madness into the brilliant statements of authorial consciousness: "He was leaving with the same inheritance he had received: a body of flesh to which things had been done. Now he understood that a man never knows for whom he suffers and hopes... for man always seeks a happiness far beyond that which is meted out to him" (179). Are you suggesting that Ti Noel has become the sanest person in this book, simply by realizing the patterns we are all subjected to? What good is realizing this if you cannot transcend it, even through other species? I enjoyed gaining the perspective I did from reading your book, and I wish you were still alive enough to answer these questions.

Your dutiful reader,
Erin Gregory