Most commercial fiction relies on the reader's belief in the spiritual power of goodness

Between 2012 and 2014, I was enrolled in a graduate program for fiction-writing, even though my background and my subject-matter made me a fairly poor fit for this kind of program. I was a science fiction writer—already publishing in many of the most well-known journals in the field—but I attended a very traditional MFA program. The faculty of this program generally did not talk about the publishing world at all. But, to the extent that they did, the advice was to keep studying, keep honing our craft, keep submitting to literary journals, and hope we'd someday come to the attention of literary agents who'd place our novels at some high-brow literary press like FSG or Knopf. The subtext was that if we were 'good enough', then we’d achieve publication, awards, professorships and other accolades that were roughly proportionate to our merits.

The students and faculty in this program understood that commercial fiction existed, but they simply paid no attention the stuff. Commercial fiction was no more an influence on their writing than was, say, reality TV or the music of Taylor Swift.

The most famous author at this program was a short, pot-bellied man, with wild white hair and the world's tiniest spectacles. And all of his writing advice was deliciously mystical, about opening yourself up to the spiritual interior of the language and letting history operate through you.

This writer, needless to say, was extremely unpopular with most of the students, who had much more practical goals in mind. They wanted to be validated and helped along by this writer. They wanted to be told they were geniuses, and then introduced to agents in New York who could place their short stories in The New Yorker.

My classmates would sit around at the bar after workshop and talk shit about this professor: "He told me that my character was fundamentally dishonest. Dude, it's a character! I invented him! It's all fiction! How can it be dishonest?"

For my part, I got along well with this professor, because he liked the classics, and I liked the classics. We'd get drinks and discuss Euripides (but never my writing).

Meanwhile, I was writing my science-fiction stories. And one week I produced a story I was very proud of. It was about a chosen-one hero, modeled on Luke Skywalker, who fortifies himself spiritually for several years, and then finally gets ready to attack the enemy fortress. But during his initial assault he’s caught by a stray laser-beam and dies. Ultimately, the war is only won after a long, grinding guerrilla conflict in which legions of anonymous people expend their lives in minor, nameless conflicts against faceless storm-troopers. It's all economics, right? Eventually the regime becomes economically unsustainable, and it collapses.

This story was a huge hit with my writing workshop. Everyone was astonished by my subversion of genre tropes. They felt like I'd really transcended the genre, really achieved something startling and new.

Finally, the moment came for this professor, this famous author, to give their opinion, and he paused for a long while. He steepled his fingers, took a breath, and then he started talking to us about a Christian novel he'd once read.

"The Promise of Heaven," he said. "Have any of you read this novel? It's quite popular. Have you heard of it?"

One person, Jacob, confessed to knowing about the book.

"Do you want to take a stab at summarizing this novel, Jacob?" our professor said.

"Uhh yeah, it's a kind of Christian book that my mom really loves, where, you know, people face a lot of adversity, but are redeemed by faith. I think it's about some foster kids."

"Jacob," our professor said. "Thank you for that attempt. Let me see if I can add anything to it. The Promise of Heaven is about two girls, Minerva and Athena, who are in foster care and are quite mistreated. Through the guidance of an older friend, Minerva finds Christ, and she's taught that their suffering will be redeemed in Heaven. Eventually, Minerva is rescued from her neglectful foster parents, but she continues to suffer a number of trials that genuinely test her faith in Christ's message. However, she stays true to Christ's teachings, as she understands them, and ultimately she finds herself with a job, a husband, and children. Meanwhile Athena falls astray, starts to steal, goes to prison and finds herself bitter and alone…but the interesting thing about this book, and its treatment of the subject matter, is that…”

The professor rambled for some length about the novel, and I could feel a certain tension arise in the room. My classmates had been complaining privately for a while that this professor was old and self-important and long-winded and wasn't the most respectful steward of our classroom time.

The thing about our program was that the students tended to be overtly respectful of the professors. Inside the classroom, there was no calling out. There weren't raised voices or circulated petitions or online complaints or even weepy office-hour sessions. But within these bands of decorum, the students varied in their willingness to speak up in class. Some of us (myself included) would allow professors to say whatever they wanted, unchallenged. While other students would push back.

"But okay," said one of my classmates, Linden. "Are you saying this Christian book is a good book?"

"I think that this really gets to the heart of the question that…” He rambled on for some more time, trying to find his mental footing.

"Come on," she said. "These two girls are in foster care, and because one of them believes in Christ she gets good things, the one who doesn't believe—she goes to jail, she gets punished by...by the fabric of reality."

"These are all questions that are present in the book itself, which is really quite good. But, essentially yes. The point of this book is that goodness matters…and…”

"But that's...that's...that's not art. That's ideology!"

I could feel my professor snap into the present moment. This questioning had forced his tired brain to try and articulate some kind of point, and now he fully turned his attention towards Linden for the first time.

"No...it is a worldview,” he said. “This worldview is reflected in the book. The author believes certain moral principles govern the universe. And those same principles govern her novel as well."

"But...but...that's not...you're saying if one of us came in with a story like that, you'd be happy?"

"I would be extremely happy," he said. "Because it showed that you sincerely believed that in this universe, where we live, good things come to good people. And that is a precious belief. It is a precious belief to maintain into adulthood. Naomi doesn't believe that anymore, I think. Am I correct?"

"Yeah," I said. "You're right. Not really."

"Well I believe it," said the one Christian in the class, Jacob. "And that's not how I write."

"That's between you and your God, Jacob," said our professor. "And yes, what we do, in this classroom, doesn't often traffic in moral certainties, because we are working in a certain literary tradition that tends to corrode and question those certainties. But this is about Naomi's story. And what she's done, essentially, is a minstrel show. She's produced a mockery of a science-fiction story, for all of you to laugh at. How silly, to believe that goodness might animate a human heart and might triumph in the end. How absurd."

"Wait so is everything good then?" said Linden. "If something is popular, then is it good?"

"My job as a professor is to help you kids express your vision. And the vision of this novel, The Promise of Heaven, was to console people who were going through difficult times. I think it achieved that vision. It certainly consoled me."

---

Several years ago, I came across this exact book, The Promise of Heaven, and I decided to read it. And like my professor I really enjoyed it! But I also struggled to explain what was good about it. Everyone seemed so dismissive of this book. They'd say it was written in a treacly or sentimental way. But that wasn't true. The writing was plain and unpretentious. It has a simple message—good things happen for those who believe in Christ’s message—but isn’t that what Tolstoy believed as well?

This book is about two kids in foster care. And these kids, Minerva and Athena, are in a big, chaotic home, with a terrible couple who only want them for the money. They barely feed the kids, and the kids have to scrounge at the other houses on the street, looking for food. Sometimes they get fed, but more often they get shooed off. In one scene, these girls intrude on a backyard barbecue: they ask for food, and the mom welcomes them, gives them big plates, offers them whatever they want.

But when Minerva and Athena come back again the next day asking for more food, this mom says, 'Where are your parents? Can I talk to them?' The mom goes to the foster parents and has a long conversation with them, expressing concern.

Afterwards, the foster parents whip the girls with a belt and tell them not to bother the neighbors.

These kids are about eight years old. Their favorite person in the world is their foster parents' oldest biological daughter, Juno. This biological kid has all the good things in life: a car, a boyfriend, nice clothes, a credit card. One day, the girls hear Juno fighting with her parents, saying, I can't bring anyone back here to this! Look at this place! Look at what you're doing! I won't be a part of this!

When Juno is in town, these girls sleep in her room, even though it makes the other kids jealous. Because the other kids are, to be honest, very roughed-up by this life. They steal, they get angry and violent. They're bad. Juno doesn't feel safe around them. She only feels safe with Minerva and Athena. So that night, as they're sleeping in her room, with the other kids scratching at the door, Minerva finally says, "Are you going to leave us?"

And Juno says, "No, never. I will come back for you. I will get you out of here.”

“Stop that,” Athena says. “Stop saying that. It won’t ever happen.”

“It will,” Juno says. “I’ve been praying for it, trying to make it work. I just need to graduate, and I can get a job and…”

Athena has a fight with her, and Juno starts trying to tell her about Jesus Christ. In college, Juno has found the Lord, and now she really wants these girls to hear about him too. She gives them each a Bible she’s bought for them, directs them to the passages in the Gospel that she’s underlined.

“This book is for you. It’s about you. Christ died for you. He won’t abandon you.”

Athena doesn’t want to hear it. She rages and fights all night and finally storms away. But Minerva takes the Bible to heart and starts to read it.

Over the next several years, there are various adventures, various episodes, but Juno eventually comes back from college, tells them she’s got an apartment, and she’s ready to take them.

Except there's a problem. Athena has been caught stealing. She gets taken away, put into juvenile hall. And only Minerva gets to go into the promised land.

For the next hundred pages, Minerva adjusts to a settled life, to her new school, deals with the guilt of feeling like she's ruined Juno's life. But she grows up, she becomes good, and she becomes a social worker, in order to help other kids like herself.

Minerva goes to work for CPS, and she realizes that there is an incentive to ignore bad placements, because if you take kids away, then where will they go? There are these foster parents who will take anyone, take all the problem kids, no questions asked, and everyone knows there’s something fishy about it, because who could possibly be happy in a house with twelve kids that have behavioral and emotional difficulties? But these parents never complain. They just cash their checks. The system relies on parents like these. Minerva files complaints, but she gets reprimanded by her bosses for causing trouble.

She prays, night after night, asking for guidance. Surely God cannot allow this injustice to persist.

Juno is sick now, bed-bound, hardly able to work. She has no husband, no kids, because during her twenties she was raising Minerva. Juno is looking forward to death, confident that Heaven is waiting for her.

"Do you still believe in Heaven?" Juno says one night.

"Of course."

"Then why are you upset? God put you on this Earth. God gave you a knowledge of justice. God has put you in an evil place, a place that doesn't understand what is right. That is exactly where you need to be. You are doing God's work right now."

So Minerva does her job. She tries to interest reporters, judges, and police in what's happening with one of these terrible foster families. It takes years, but eventually they are brought to justice. After Juno dies, Minerva keeps busy taking care of other people who need her. Eventually, a good man comes, who sees her goodness. And they get married and have children of their own.

Then Athena comes back. After juvenile detention, she’d committed a string of crimes, cycling in and out of lock-up. And now she’s unable to work, addicted to alcohol and drugs. She comes into Minerva’s home as a terrible, foul mess, spewing venom, attacking goodness itself.

Taking care of Athena is the final test of Minnie’s faith in God. It sounds good, in the abstract, to care for an old friend. But Athena cuts right to the core of everyone around her, exposing their insecurities.

"You never fostered anyone yourself, Minnie," she says. "And why? Because you know we can be hellions. You know we're evil. You know this terrible system, it's designed to contain us, to house us away out of sight. You'll enable that system, but you don't want to bring it home with you."

Minerva has to set boundaries with Athena, put her in the basement, not let her upstairs. The family is always haunted by this terrible, drunken woman in the basement, screaming through the night. Her husband threatens many times to take the kids and leave.

It goes on for two years. It is a nightmare that Minnie has brought into their house, into their nice family, and they plead with her to somehow reject Athena. And when she is on the verge of cracking, the verge of telling Athena to find somewhere new to live, she goes downstairs, and she finds Athena on her knees, trying to pray.

After that everything is good. Everything is well. Athena recovers her health. She gets work as a teacher. She even finds love. Turns out, it's never too late.

---

Afterword

This novel, The Promise of Heaven, does not exist. But throughout American history there've been a huge number of best-selling books with overtly Christian themes. I just finished reading a 19th-century novel, The Lamplighter, that is extremely similar to this book I made up! This book, The Lamplighter, which any of you could go read, was a best-selling novel in 1854. It sold 70,000 copies in its first year! That is wild! In comparison, The Scarlet Letter came out in 1850 and was considered a huge success, but it sold less than 10,000 copies in its first year.

The Lamplighter was heavily derided by critics when it came out, but it remained continuously in print until 1920. People liked this book! It's about an orphan girl named Gertie who is mistreated by the woman who cares for her. And when this woman shuts her out in the cold, leaving her to die, Gertie is rescued by a lamplighter who is himself poor and doesn't have much. But he takes her back to his little rented room, and he makes things work, along with the help of his landlady, Mrs. Sullivan, and her father, Mr. Cooper.

Because this girl, Gertie, is fundamentally good, she attracts the attention of benefactors who look after her. A lot of the drama of the book surrounds one of these men, Mr. Graham, who is well-meaning, but somewhat shallow, and who wants to monopolize her time. He eventually gets upset because she insists on absenting herself in order to nurse the ailing Mrs. Sullivan and Mr. Cooper. He breaks with her, withdrawing his support.

The sections where Gertie gets challenged by other people are the best part of the book. This book needed a few more villains. Gertie is obviously good; she will always do what's right. Okay, great, so...let's give her a little bit more tribulation! Let's make the people around her a little bit worse. In this book, people like Mr. Graham are a bit too quick to reform, too quick to come to their senses.

But so what? Lots of books have problems. The heart of this book is still very good.

I'm not saying you should go out and read it, but, honestly...I don't know if this is a bad book! Whenever people talk about this book or this style of fiction, they say it's overtly sentimental, very unreadable. But I did not find it unreadable. The sentimental parts were the best parts! I wish there'd been more sentiment! For instance, at some point the lamplighter has a stroke, and Gertie goes from being his ward to his caretaker. The passages that reflect on this juxtaposition are, to me, extremely affecting.¹

What’s bad about the book is that it’s so trite. I imagine that many people who grew up in the 1830’s and 1840’s would’ve been over-exposed to the sentiments that animate this book—”Be good, believe in Christ, and good things will happen”. Even if you actually believe that to be true, I imagine reading it in novel form could be tedious after a while.

And that’s why Uncle Tom's Cabin was so much more successful and long-lasting than The Lamplighter—UTC had the same Christian worldview, but Stowe was willing to do more to challenge and complicate that world-view. Like, in The Lamplighter, this poor foundling could retain her faith even though she was mistreated by her caretaker. Well, Uncle Tom’s Cabin asks…”What about these other people, who really exist, who are also the victims of a cruel, oppressive, and dehumanizing social system? Can they retain their faith that goodness matters?”

At least in the world of Uncle Tom's Cabin, they certainly can.²

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When it comes to American literature, there’s such a dichotomy between popular literature like Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Little Women or The Lamplighter, which is usually written by women and takes for granted the truth of the Christian world-view, and the canonical great novels, like Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn, which are usually written by men and often have anti-Christian themes. It really does feel like the two halves of our literature have been constituted in opposition to each other in some way.³

Both halves, Christian and anti-Christian, seem to draw strength from this dichotomy, just like literary and commercial fiction draw strength from their opposition to each other.

But, to me, it goes without saying that anyone who is capable of writing a book like The Lamplighter or Uncle Tom's Cabin should certainly do it!

Although it’s rare nowadays for an avowedly Christian novel to achieve bestseller status, however I think the moral intuitions that underpin The Lamplighter are the same intuitions that underpin a lot of contemporary commercial fiction: goodness matters; goodness has power; good things happen to good people.

That’s why romantic heroines get the guy: they are deserving, they are good. That’s why criminals are foiled in mysteries and thrillers; they are bad, so the universe punishes them. That’s why a farm-boy can topple an evil empire: he is good, and that’s why he prevails. These stories are all underpinned by the notion that goodness has a spiritual power, which is rewarded by the universe itself.

That’s a principle which most people seem to believe, more or less, and they enjoy reading fiction which affirms and strengthens that belief.

I also believe that the universe rewards those who are good (in Heaven, if nowhere else), which is probably why I enjoyed reading The Lamplighter.

It seems silly to try and create some aesthetic principle by which The Lamplighter is a bad novel. Because it’s so clearly not a bad novel. Whatever good art ought to do, this book does. That doesn’t mean Moby-Dick is bad, even though it does something that’s quite different. I understand that if you’re trying to nurture and preserve Moby-Dick, then you need to situate it as being superior to The Lamplighter, because The Lamplighter is a thing that doesn’t necessarily need preserving—its appeal is immediate and obvious. Nobody would ever read Moby-Dick unless there was some implicit promise that it was superior The Lamplighter.

I’m sure if I was living in 1854, trying to make a living as a writer, I would’ve detested The Lamplighter too. What’s great about reading old books, however, is that we don’t need to buy into these age-old literary squabbles, which means it’s possible, at the remove of many years, to see that this vein of fiction had quite a bit of merit after all.

1. Here’s an example of the writing in The Lamplighter. It’s about the old age of this good-hearted lamplighter, Trueman Flint,

True is no longer the brave, strong, sturdy protector of the lonely child. True has had a paralytic stroke. His strength is gone, his power even to walk alone. He sits all day in his arm-chair, or on the old settle, when he is not out walking with Gerty. The blow suddenly struck down the robust man, and left him feeble as a child. And the little orphan girl who, in her weakness, her loneliness, and her poverty, found in him a father and a mother, she now is all the world to him—his staff, his comfort, and his hope. During four or five years that he has cherished the frail blossom, she has been gaining strength for the time when he should be the leaning, she the sustaining power; and when the time came, she was ready to respond to the call. With the simplicity of a child, but a woman's firmness; with the stature of a child, but a woman's capacity; the earnestness of a child, but a woman's perseverance—from morning till night, the faithful little nurse and housekeeper labours untiringly in the service of her first, her best friend. Ever at his side, ever attending to his wants, and yet most wonderfully accomplishing many things which he never sees her do, she seems, indeed, to the fond old man, what he once prophesied she would become—God's embodied blessing to his latter years, cheering his pathway to the grave.

Do we not think most contemporary fiction would be much-improved by sentiments like these? We act like these sentiments are boring and passe, but…are they? Have we read this kind of thing often before? Sentiment seems like such a bogeyman: often-derided, but little-seen. Even contemporary fantasy novels rarely have passages as open-hearted as the above.

2. I wrote more about Uncle Tom’s Cabin here.

3. Nathaniel Hawthorne hated The Lamplighter. He wrote to his publisher, saying: “America is now given over to a mob of d___d scribbling women” and “I should have not chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash–and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of the Lamplighter, and other books neither better nor worse–worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the 100,000.” [source]