Tales - E.T.A. Hoffmann

What makes for interesting fantasy literature?
 
For me, writing or reading it, there is a clear answer: when it is set in a recognizably real world, grounded in the everyday. Everyday existence being, on the least reflection, absolutely astonishing. This is precisely what the wild-angled lenses of fantasy and science fiction can suggest.
 
The best writing in these genres is always talking about the real world and reflects an experience of it. Even Tolkien and Ursula Le Guin, whose tales take place in imaginary lands, made sure to create consistently believable worlds in which mature “human” stories play out, and characters must grapple with similar limits and laws of nature to our own. Magic, when available, is used sparingly by the wise because every action has a consequence and exceptional power is an exceptional responsibility.
 
E.T.A. Hoffman’s gothic stories are extravagantly imaginative treatments of mundane reality. In this, he is a precursor of the likes of Tim Powers and Neil Gaiman. His modern fairy tales take place in settings such as Hoffman’s early 19th century Dresden or Paris, which the author renders with deliberate faithfulness. Strange powers and creatures break through from an immanent,  parallel reality, bringing opportunity and mischief. It’s a rich seam to mine, one that has a compelling appeal for me.
 
Two centuries before Philip K. Dick and The Matrix, Hoffmann was positing the falseness of the familiar world and long before Freud, he was portraying split personalities/doppelgänger and individuals in dire conflict with repressed subconscious desires, battling with dreams. Fantasies presented as quite real might be psychological projections of dark, hidden urges and exasperation with humdrum quotidian existence.
 
In some stories Hoffman makes long narrative detours and plot construction can be weak, but don’t let that put you off. Go into Hoffman’s rousing urban tales and encounter the macabre and demonic, the sinister and the erotic: all, gentle reader, at a street near you.

E.T.A. Hoffmann