Partly in response to my current line of thought expressed in QUICK NUM NOTES, I re-examined the five essays I wrote about "the suspension of disbelief" as formulated by Samuel Coleridge and responded to by Stephen King. I concluded that quasi-series with the 2023 post STRENGTH TO ENGAGEMENT, but now I have some new refinements.
First of all, I failed to account for two different levels of engagement: one primary and "unearned," the other secondary and "earned." I pointed out in the course of the essays that a reader's receptiveness to the genres of fantasy does not depend exactly on "suspending disbelief." Some readers may be so invested in naive realism that they can never accept metaphenomenal subject matter in any way; they find it childish and would never, in line with Stephen King's dictum, even trouble to exert their mental muscles to engage. Yet I've encountered fans of the metaphenomenal who are just as naively realistic as any fantasy-hater, but who view their reading material as simple escapism from the rigors of real life. Other fantasy-readers may believe in one or more forms of the metaphenomenal in real life, ranging from psychic phenomena or the return of the Messiah, or they may be agnostic about such matters but open to real-world possibilities. Some may place credence in science fiction but not in magical fantasy, and so on. All of these forms of engagement proceed from individual taste, and so as far as the author of any given "meta" work is concerned, a given reader's willingness to engage is unearned, because the reader approaches the work with a certain degree of receptivity no matter how good or bad the work is.
The secondary level of engagement, though, is one that the author does have to earn. In QUICK NUM NOTES I asked the question, "how much crap did an author have to come up with to put across this involved a deception?" The question was directed to those Gothic authors who thought they were being more "realistic" by revealing that a purported ghost was just a guy in a bedsheet, when in truth there's not much (if any) real-world evidence for swindlers who dress up in bedsheets (and maybe more for real ghosts). A good storyteller like Conan Doyle can cobble together enough suggestive details as to make it seem logical that the villain of HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES would go through the trouble of painting a dog with phosphorescent paint to get across the effect of a ghost-hound. When an author manages to take the reader to the second level of engagement, the reader feels validated in investing in the far-fetched events of the narrative. A contrary example-- just to name the first that comes to mind-- is a dopey "weird western," HAUNTED RANCH, in which the plotters, as unimaginative as their creators, try to create the illusion of a haunting by simply projecting spooky sounds into the ranch-house.
The same basic rule pertains to marvelous phenomena. In this month's essay AMAZON ATROCITY, which offered an overview of Robert Kanigher's WONDER WOMAN tenure, I called attention to one story in which a fiery giant arises from the ground beneath Paradise Island-- yet the author neglects to give any rationale for the creature's appearance. I know that had I read this particular tale at age 10 I would have been offended by the author's implication that the kids reading this comic were too stupid to need explanations-- and I say this with a clear memory of another Kanigher story of the same period in which he pissed me off with his cavalier attitude toward storytelling.
Further, I gave a couple of examples of the barest justifications Kanigher might have employed to gain his readers' secondary engagement: "Is the Boiling Man a member of a subterranean race? An ancient Greek Titan confined to the underworld by the Olympians?" Both of these conceits could have been further expanded upon in line with either didactic or mythopoeic abstractions, and such abstractions might have made the story more interesting, thus encouraging readers to continue reading the heroine's adventures.
This idea of an author having to earn the reader's secondary engagement will play into a future essay on related matters.
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