Today, when we call something surreal, we usually mean dreamlike. However, for the Surrealists, the realistic elements were just as important as the dreamlike ones, and the point was to blur the lines between the two in a painting, story, or poem. In fact, surrealism is often defined as an attempt to overcome the contradictions between dreams and reality and make them appear equally “normal.” Using images and metaphors, surrealist writers encouraged readers to consider new definitions of reality. The results are often bizarre stories that defy logic.

In this way, surrealism is somewhat like magical realism. However, while magical realism first establishes a world that seems entirely ordinary and then introduces a few magical elements, surrealist fiction often begins with something that seems clearly impossible—something that would happen only in a dream. The effect of a surrealist story is to challenge readers to think beyond the ordinary and consider what the illogical, impossible world of dreams can teach us about our everyday lives.

^{The Rainbow, by Salvadore Dali}

From the first paragraph, Jeff Martin’s story “Steeled” takes the reader on a strange ride outside the limits of the ordinary. Listen to the first paragraph of “Steeled” as you read along. Do you think this story will fall into the category of surrealism or magical realism? Why?

The car my father was eating when I was a child was a yellow 1976 Buick Skylark that he kept on blocks in the little garage that stood apart from the house. He had always been eating it, for as long as I could remember, and there were parts of it I’d never seen—the bumper and fender, for example, the wheels, the trunk lid, the grille, etc.—because he’d eaten them all years before I came along, back when it was just him and my mother living in the house and he was still working track maintenance for the railroad. But even by the time I was eight, there was still a lot of car left. A Skylark is a big meal, even for someone with my father’s appetite.