Title: Magical SurRealism
Review: Jeffrey Ford is one of the few writers in fantasy-scifi who writes about ideas instead of events. If you like the pity and catharsis of authors like Hawthorne and Melville, the decadent symbolism of Poe, or the logical precision and impassive sadness of Kafka, then I highly recommend Ford as he is their contemporary successor. Those who criticize the plot and characterizations of The Physiognomy and Memoranda do so from misapprehensions regarding the appropriate style and substance of the allegorical genre of fiction which is not to be evaluated by the same criteria as the psychological realist school. Not because it is inferior, but because it is alien and has different goals.
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