The Great Irony Between the Author and his Readers

The reader exists in a nexus with the writer of fiction. Several theories have been proposed to explain the nature of this nexus. Samuel Coleridge was the first to use the phrase “suspension of disbelief.” The reader temporarily suspends his judgment regarding fantastical or non-realistic elements in order for pleasure or some other non-physical capital. The reader accepts that a wardrobe can really transport children to an alternate world and accepts that ghosts truly can appear to show someone the true meaning of Christmas.

In a radio interview Guillermo Del Toro was asked concerning the difference between directing a film and writing a book. Del Toro replied that there was an inherent difference between the forms. Whereas in film the events will always happen at the same pace and in the same way, a book allows the reader to become a co-director. He follows the guideline provided by the author and in his mind creates the world following the guidelines of his own imagination.

This is similar to the idea of “sub-creation” put forward by J.R.R. Tolkien in his article "On Fairy-Stories." This idea accepts that the writer becomes like a god as he creates the new and the reader as well who forms the same world again in his own mind. The reader chooses to believe the work based on its inner-consistency. Although certain elements may differ from the “primary world,” in the “secondary world” of literature the reader can accept them as true. Of course, the form is not universally appreciated. Tolkien writes,

“Fantasy, of course, starts out with an advantage: arresting strangeness. But that advantage has been turned against it, and has contributed to its disrepute. Many people dislike being “arrested.” They dislike any meddling with the Primary World, or such small glimpses of it as are familiar to them. They, therefore, stupidly and even maliciously confound Fantasy with Dreaming, in which there is no Art; and with mental disorders, in which there is not even control: with delusion and hallucination.”

Still others find a hard time restricting judgment, based on standards of the primary world. This is often seen among fundamentalist Christians who disregard such works as Harry Potter as inherently Satanic merely through its use of magic. This is not to say that the reader should not judge the work based on standards, even moral ones. Instead, there ought to be some amount of charity on the part of the reader who can accept a new world without bringing false standards of mistaken piety, accepting a story on its own definitions, its own merits. They may even find themselves drawn in to something beyond themselves.

In the same article Tolkien mentions that good fantasy (or even science fiction) is hard to create. He writes:

Fantasy has also an essential drawback: it is difficult to achieve. . . “the inner consistency of reality” is more difficult to produce, the more unlike are the images and the rearrangements of primary material to the actual arrangements of the Primary World. It is easier to produce this kind of “reality” with more “sober” material. Fantasy thus, too often, remains undeveloped; it is and has been used frivolously, or only half-seriously, or merely for decoration: it remains merely “fanciful.”

This statement, however, seems to be flawed, even wrong if I wanted to be more forceful. To adopt the language from the first theory, suspension of disbelief is required when the reader encounters something he realizes in inconsistent with the primary world. Works are not judged only by their internal consistency, but also on how well they fit in with the primary world where they are expected to.

Historical fiction often grapples with this problem. No matter how internally consistent the story may be, certain elements are supposed to correspond to the primary world. This is why it requires a great deal of research in order to produce a novel, which though it may be fiction, accurately reflects the world in which it is portrayed. Undoubtedly, certain mistakes will easily be missed by the general reader who cannot spot the discrepancies. The same text, however, when read by one experience in knowledge of the era could easily spot the discrepancies. The more familiar the reader is with the supposed context of the story, the easier the discrepancies are seen.

Tolkien’s statement errs because it mixes these two problems: internal-consistency on the one hand and consistency between the primary and secondary world on the other. Discrepancies found in historical fiction often have nothing to do with the first problem. Yes, spittoons may not have been used in sixteenth century England, but this does not mean the work is internally inconsistent. The writer of any fiction thus grapples with twin beasts.

The same struggle is often seen in science fiction. In a story that takes place in the near-future, authors find themselves struggling to produce a believable secondary world. Actions by various nations are often seen as patently ridiculous by many readers because they differ with how the reader views the world. Again, this does not fail the test of internal consistency, but, it does fail the second test. It fails to match elements in the secondary world which ought to be consistent with the primary world.

Like the scholar of sixteenth-century England reading a book on Queen Elizabeth, inconsistencies between the primary and secondary world are evident based on the amount of knowledge the reader supposes he has of the context. Here is found the great irony of the suspension of disbelief. In general, it is actually easier to suspend judgment as the story becomes more fantastical in nature, more divorced from reality. The further divorced from the reader’s knowledge or experience, the easier the tale becomes to write. Suddenly, the reader stops looking for connections between the primary and secondary world, and instead only focuses, even if merely at a subconscious level, on just the internal consistency of the work. By divorcing the story from reality, the writer encounters only one hobgoblin where before there was two. And, as any adventurer who had made his way through the blood forests of Grishnaw would know, fighting one hobgoblin alone is always easier than facing two.