EFFICACY AND THE NUM FORMULA PT. 2

I should build on the formulations from Part 1 to clarify exactly what sort of freedom I've been describing.

Without doubt the intellectual ramifications of my NUM formula were spawned in reaction against Tzvetan Todorov's attempt to subsume all categories of fantasy under a conceptual umbrella he called "the real," which was very much in keeping with his Freudian leanings. In contrast, I assert that every literary phenomenality has its own unique nature, regardless of what one thinks about the configuration of one's lived experience.

All that said, the base purpose of fictional narrative is expressive, not intellectual, so the primary importance of the three phenomenalities is not their value as thought experiments, but as conjurations of the six forms of affect I last described in 2017's ONE PART ARTIFICE, TWO PARTS AFFECT:

THE NATURALISTIC-- antipathetic aspect FEAR, sympathetic aspect ADMIRATION

THE UNCANNY-- antipathetic aspect DREAD, sympathetic aspect FASCINATION

THE MARVELOUS-- antipathetic aspect TERROR, sympathetic aspect WONDER.

Being one mortal reader, I cannot know precisely what affects dominate the minds of other readers. However, I can use deductive reasoning to discern common ground. For instance, Todorov insists that because Poe's HOUSE OF USHER does not actually reveal any marvelous phenomena, its manifestation of the uncanny is subsumed by "the real." But if this was an accurate deduction that one could apply to other readers, why would cinematic versions of the story appear in practically every fantasy-film concordance? Are there any concordances of fantasy-films that go out of their way to emphasize only films of the marvelous; that keep only the sirens and the psychics but exclude all of the serial killers? I will go out on a limb and state that there are none, for the simple reason that the compilers of these works are not blinded by ideology as was Todorov. Even if none compilers of concordances would look with favor upon my overall system, the automatic association of Norman Bates with Odysseus demonstrates that the affects aligned with the uncanny are closer in spirit to those of the marvelous. 

There will still be disagreements. In MASKED MAVERICKS AND SUCH, I noted how Peter Green's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WEIRD WESTERNS did not subscribe to my belief that costumed heroes automatically had a "weird" vibe, though he would include any characters garbed in macabre attire (skulls; phantom-like clothing, etc.) But he unequivocally covered both truly marvelous westerns alongside those that only suggested marvelous phenomena-- and that in my opinion is enough to suggest his awareness of a fundamental "strangeness" linking those categories; a strangeness one cannot find even in westerns with odd content (say, 1942's REAP THE WILD WIND, best remembered these days as the film where John Wayne fights an octopus).

Playful, expressive freedom is the essence of what makes fictional narrative valuable to human beings, in contradistinction of the "work ethic" that dominates non-fiction, no matter the quality of the reporting involved in a given screed. Thus I will stipulate that efficacy in my system concerns "a free selection of causes" with respect to all the affective and cognitive aspects of fictional narrative, but that the affective ones are somewhat more consequential.