STRENGTH TO ENGAGEMENT

In STRENGTH TO DREAM, THE SEQUEL, I summed up some previous arguments thusly:

I applied some of my observations to King's comments in his 1981 book DANSE MACABRE, concluding that what he and Coleridge called "disbelief" was more like "disengagement." 

Having made that fine point, though, I didn't follow through on the question of whether Stephen King's extrapolations from Coleridge re: the "muscular" nature of disbelief might apply equally to disengagement. Once more, just to keep track of what Coleridge originally said:

It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. 

Again I note that Coleridge does not define what he means by "suspension," though he certainly doesn't use any of King's muscular metaphors. If anything, when he speaks of "transferring from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth" in order to overcome some state of "disbelief," it sounds more like he's saying that he the author has to "charm" the disbeliever into putting aside his disbelief in favor of "poetic faith." It's not impossible that, since he's comparing his "endeavors" to those of his partner-in-poesy Wordsworth in a general way, Samuel T. may be covertly implying that Wordsworth's more grounded ruminations aren't capable of delving into "our inward nature," that they are only capable of giving "the charm of novelty to the things of every day."

Though both Coleridge and Stephen King were somewhat at odds with literary trends toward naturalism in their respective times, the kind of literature that Coleridge above calls "romantic" had made a modest comeback, and this is at least part of the reason that later critics lumped Coleridge, Wordsworth, and others into the category called "Romantic poets." In contrast, both during King's youth and his writing career, the general consensus in American literary culture was that Naturalism had essentially won the battle against Romanticism. This culture might admit to the existence of a handful of post-Renaissance literary works worthy of being called "good literature." But most "romantic" works, particularly those that involved metaphenomenal fantasy-content, were considered trash, and they generally appeared in such trashy media as pulp magazines, comic books, and kiddie television. (Fantasy-films arguably gained a greater stature than fantasy-works in other media during Stephen King's youth, but the possible reasons for this would comprise a separate essay.)

King's statements in DANSE MACABRE and the essay "Why I Chose Batman" show that he was fully invested in fantasy-fandom, though he, like many fans, formed his own non-academic criteria for what was good and what was bad. Yet I suggest that he was always conscious of the scorn of majority culture for many if not all of the fantasy-stories he favored. I also suggest that King didn't really have much of a rebuttal to naturalism except the idea that one's imagination might possess something like "muscles" that fantasy-fans regularly exercised while realism-fans did not. It's a stimulating idea but does not really speak to a deeper issue. It's true that realism-fans may dislike metaphenomenal fiction because they think it important that all fiction should emulate "the things of every day." But I've pointed out that most fantasy-fans don't literally "believe" that the fantastic content in their favored stories is real. Rather, they choose to engage with such content for reasons of aesthetic taste, not cognitive assessment. 

I think that when Coleridge speaks of how "suspension of disbelief" can foster "poetic faith" by way of the aforementioned "inward truth," he's a lot closer to stating that the human psyche draws equally upon both "inward truth" and what might as well be called "outward truth." In the second part of 2022's THE WHOLENESS OF HALF-TRUTHS, I related these categories to the Greek ideas of "the limitless and the limited."

I've already stated my own allegiance, but not without having noted that myth and literature are all about propounding "half-truths," responsive to both the truths we encounter through physical experience and truths we encounter through abstract contemplation.

Since both categories have relevance to the human condition as a whole, it is not so much that "realism-fans" disbelieve in fantasy-content as they do not engage with it as strongly as they do with realism-content, and the reverse formula would apply to "fantasy-fans." And of course there are those who can engage strongly with works in either category. Though I have a fascination with the complicated dynamics of how fantasy-content is expressed, I appreciate the rigor of a well-conceived "realism-work."

My theory of aesthetic engagement also speaks to reader-preference in terms of the two major categories of the uncanny and the marvelous. Possibly for the last time, here's King's statement as to why he "chose" Batman over Superman.

I remember the ads for the first SUPERMAN movie...the ones that said YOU'LL BELIEVE A MAN CAN FLY. Well, I didn't... But when Batman swung down into the Joker's hideout on a rope or stopped the Penguin from dropping Robin into a bucket of boiling hog-fat with a well-thrown Batarang, I believed. These were not likely things, I freely grant you that, but they were possible things.

I don't really credit that Young Stephen King liked these uncanny Bat-feats simply because they were more believable, and in part I dismiss this recollection because King had almost certainly allowed himself to "believe" in marvelous phenomena no more extraordinary than Superman in many other fantasy-works mentioned in DANSE MACABRE. I think the dynamic of the uncanny engaged him more than that did the dynamic of the marvelous, possibly because the former seemed to have a greater supply of what I've called "rigor." And given that King also WROTE quite a few stories with marvelous content-- some of which, rather improbably, tried to compete with the secondary-world mastery of J.R.R. Tolkien-- I think he could engage with the marvelous whenever he pleased, irrespective of his "belief" systems.

ADDENDUM: I may as well note that the reason I've gone so long about the use of the word "disbelief" is that I don't think anyone who knows what fiction is comes to it with the idea of "believing" in it, since the essence of fiction is that it is not factually true. One can accept a lot of fictional propositions and reject others, but always in the context of what I once called "relative meta-beliefs." Engagement or its lack, however, is crucial for anyone's appreciation of fictional narrative-- and it's anyone's guess whether I'll leave things at that pass for the near future.

 

STRENGTH TO DREAM, STRENGTH TO AWAKEN

 I borrowed the phrase "Strength to Dream" from Colin Wilson's book of that title, but only for the basic felicity of the phrase, not because I'm discussing any of Wilson's themes here. (I'm fairly sure I read it many years ago and have placed it on my to-be-reread list.)

I began thinking about the association of "strength" with "dreaming" thanks to the works of two famous writers who discussed how readers accept what I call metaphenomenal fiction. The first writer is Samuel T. Coleridge, whose most famous phrase in common parlance may not be anything from his poems, but from his autobiography, wherein he coined the phrase "suspension of disbelief." 

In this idea originated the plan of the LYRICAL BALLADS; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.

I confess that I have never read the full text of the bio, but I doubt that Coleridge uses the phrase again since none of the online references mention more than the one quote. The book concerns Coleridge's far-ranging theory of poetry, and so is not primarily about the ways fantasy-loving readers justify their preferences. In fact, the full context of "suspension of disbelief" is that Coleridge and William Wordsworth, in collaborating to produce various poems for their 1798 collection LYRICAL BALLADS, took two differing approaches to poetry, with Wordsworth favoring "things of every day" while Coleridge concentrated upon "shadows of imagination" that necessitated "poetic faith." Early in the history of this blog I described this literary dichotomy as one between works of "thematic realism" (Wordsworth) and "thematic escapism" (Coleridge), though in recent years I've inclined more toward an opposition between "verisimilitude" and "artifice," as in the last year's THE WHOLENESS OF HALF-TRUTHS PART 2:

"Verisimilitude" includes everything in a narrative allied to the limits of the physical continuum, while "artifice" includes everything in a narrative allied to the limitless nature of the continuum of abstract concepts. 

 

Coleridge did not develop the "suspension of disbelief" concept, but many later writers quoted it and gave their takes on the idea, among them the second writer I mentioned above: Stephen King. King's 1981 book DANSE MACABRE largely concerns his theories about the horror genre, just as Coleridge's biography concerned poetry. King mentions "suspension of disbelief" in Chapter 4, where he extrapolates a meaning of "strength" from Coleridge's "suspension" metaphor.

...I believe [Coleridge] knew that disbelief is not like a balloon, which may be suspended in air with a minimum of effort; it is like a lead weight, which has to be hoisted... and held up by main force...it takes a sophisticated and muscular intellectual act to believe, even for a little while, in Nyarlathotep, the Blind Faceless One, the Howler in the Night.

And then he validates many fantasy-fans by turning a pitying eye upon those persons who reject all metaphenomenal content as being unreal in terms of real experience:

They simply can't lift the weight of fantasy. The muscles of the imagination have grown too weak.

Though I like King's extrapolation of Coleridge, ultimately it's a little too simple. I agree that it can take a "muscular intellectual act" to engage with stories that represent, not "the things of every day," but "shadows of imagination" that rule our dreaming selves. It does take "strength to dream," though not all dreams are equal. It takes a muscular intellect to imagine Nyarlathotep, but not so much to imagine the Children of the Corn (just to take a shot at one of King's less fruitful dream-shadows). On the same page from which I've quoted, King cheats a little by bracketing Lovecraft the "Escapist" with "Realist" Arthur Hailey, writer of bestsellers like AIRPORT. A fairer comparison to Lovecraft would be a Realist of some depth, like Joseph Conrad, who famously sneered at ghost stories. In Part 2 of 2015's THE DOMAIN GAME, I contrasted Conrad with Tolkien:

What Joseph Conrad deems to be artistic freedom relates to the perceived rigor of the naturalistic, while J.R.R. Tolkien associates freedom with marvelous creations like green suns.

Coleridge's contrast between his chosen form of poetry and that of his colleague Wordsworth is also a much fairer one, and I find it interesting when he says that Wordsworth does not just sedulously reproduce the everyday things he sees, but that he gives them "the charm of novelty." It does take a "muscular intellectual act" to re-organize the things of common experience to make them into art, even art that may argue that it's silly to read fantasy-stories (say, Austen's NORTHANGER ABBEY). To pursue an opposition for the dream-metaphor I've introduced, the advocate of realism may often believe that he's "awakened" from the delusional dreams of religion or superstition. I of course relate these modes further to the categories of cognitive restraint and affective freedom, but at present these do not need further elaboration in this new context.

On a small side-note, the decade in which Wordsworth and Coleridge collaborated on the LYRICAL BALLADS-- said by some to have launched the English Romantic movement-- is also the decade in which the Gothic novel enjoyed its first major flowering with such authors as Radcliffe and Lewis, with a second but distinct outgrowth evolving in the next twenty-odd years with Mary Shelley, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Edgar Allan Poe. Though there had been scattered important metaphenomenal works throughout the 18th century, the 19th century would be conceived in the midst of ongoing arguments about the virtues of naturalistic fiction as against stories of fantasy, many of which are still argued about today, and which inform the warp and woof of modern fiction.

PRIDE OF PREJUDICE

          All moveables of wonder, from all parts,
          Are here--Albinos, painted Indians, Dwarfs,
          The Horse of knowledge, and the learned Pig,
          The Stone-eater, the man that swallows fire,
          Giants, Ventriloquists, the Invisible Girl,          
          The Bust that speaks and moves its goggling eyes,
          The Wax-work, Clock-work, all the marvellous craft
          Of modern Merlins, Wild Beasts, Puppet-shows,
          All out-o'-the-way, far-fetched, perverted things,
          All freaks of nature, all Promethean thoughts
          Of man, his dulness, madness, and their feats
          All jumbled up together, to compose
          A Parliament of Monsters. Tents and Booths
          Meanwhile, as if the whole were one vast mill,
          Are vomiting, receiving on all sides,                
          Men, Women, three-years' Children, Babes in arms.
         ---William Wordsworth, THE PRELUDE, Book 7.


What Wordsworth scathingly calls a "Parliament of Monsters" (including an "Invisible Girl" who apparently appeared long before H.G. Wells' "Invisible Man") was nothing more than the many attractions of the St. Bartholomew Fair in London.  Yet clearly to Wordsworth these "freaks of nature" signify something more. He's greatly affronted by the base appeal to the sensation-loving audience, to their love of "far-fetched, perverted things."  Although the archaic myth-figure of Prometheus often carried favorable connotations in Wordsworth's era, this poet is surely conferring no approval in speaking of such sights as "Promethean thoughts."  I would hazard that his invocation of the famous Titan is meant to suggest rebellion against the proper order of things, as also seen in the subtitle of a more famous work from the same era: FRANKENSTEIN, OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS.

Wordsworth was by no means original in decrying base appeals to sensationalism.  Socrates, insofar as he spoke through Plato's REPUBLIC, endorsed the state control of poetry, because it could set bad examples for youth.  Much of the history of literary criticism has been the history of validating "good literature" over "bad literature," with the implication that bad literature wasn't just formally bad, but existed as a snare and a trap for the unwary.

I am reminded of this salient fact by a particular excerpt from the post of comics-fan Synsidar, which I previously reprinted in OFF THE BEAT AGAIN:

There’s little effort made to write superheroes as people in stories for children, because the children don’t need the realistic details.

This is yet another permutation of that comics-fandom phenomenon I've called the Pedagogical Paradigm.  I coined the term with Gary Groth in mind in this essay.

Groth said of Will Eisner (among other things):

Eisner refused to take the [superhero] genre trappings seriously -- which was about the only intelligent way to approach a strip that was designed to imitate the look of comic books, which were at best semi-literate, yet appeal to the adult readership of newspapers.

I replied in part:

The Grothian superiority dance here also evokes the adult/juvenile distinction. Groth makes the assumption that Eisner's SPIRIT feature was superior because it (unlike all or most superhero strips in the juvenile-oriented comic books) chose to appeal to adults.
 

Of course not every individual who subscribes to the Pedagogical Paradigm follows it in the same manner.  Groth has said on many occasions that he regards the superhero genre as inherently for kids; that's why he approved of Eisner treating the genre in semi-serious fashion.  In contrast, as I understand Synsidar's frequently-repeated arguments on THE BEAT, he's convinced that by writing "superheroes as people"-- that is, with "realistic details"-- could garner an adult audience beyond the one that exists today.

On this issue, given that I've repeatedly expressed my view that the DM audience already comprises such an audience for "adult pulp" in the form of sueprheroes, I'm closer to Synsidar than to Groth, though both of them seem to be on a similar page as far as unilaterally condemning what's currently produced for the DM. Yet while the two writers are far apart on the Matter of the Superhero, they are alike in thinking that there's some intellectual "upgrade" that can be made to superheroes to make them intellectually respectable-- "realistic details" for Synsidar, an "unserious" approach to "genre trappings" for Groth.

At base, the two have in common a particular kind of "pride": a pride in one's own ability to discern what aspects of literature are best-- aspects which are almost always oriented upon some intellect-based comprehension of some given subject matter.  It could be argued that in so doing those guilty of this form of "pride" are guilty of Kant's pronouncement upon Leibniz, that of "intellectualizing phenomena."

I understand the appeal of this pride; I've felt it myself.  But I also take pride in my ability to see the many-faceted appeals of sensationalism in both genre-fiction and canonical literature.  The best writers do not, in my opinion, simply turn up their noses at sensation as do Groth and the poet Wordsworth.  They harness the power of the "Parliament of Monsters," without prejudice against the role it plays in their work.