Exit Music: A Marvelous Future

Abstract

Thank you for reading my book. As you head for the exit, with the musicians playing a lively piece to help lighten your step, you might think about another northern connection that brings America together. Highway’s employment of music and other manifestations of culture have caused some readers to consider similarities between Kiss of the Fur Queen and the “magical realism” beloved in Latin American boom literature, a connection that also appeals to critics endeavoring a placement of literature deemed ethnic in North America. While sound literary reasons exist for pursuing these links, elements from different American nations can do more than provide facile justifications for previously marginalized authors. Another look at Alejo Carpentier’s foundational use of these terms in the Western Hemisphere provides insight into how cultural differences create an American whole conceivably exemplary on a global scale.

Then the traveller in the dark

Thanks you for your tiny spark!

He could not see which way to go

If you did not twinkle so.

Jane and Ann Taylor (31)