For a number of reasons, I decided to read the entire “Left Behind” series. I’d always been curious in a morbid sort of way, much like the NASCAR fan who watches only for the wrecks. And since I’ve got some time on my hands these days, and since I’ve got a library card, I figured now was just as good a time as any to read them. I’m reading them in order and I’m about halfway through Apollyon.
Please keep the discussion appropriate for CS. I’m not Christian, so I have no interest in discussing the theology involved.
The “Left Behind” series is about the return of Jesus as described in Revelation, something that is not part of mainstream Judaism. It’s noteworthy only because I’m not exactly the target audience.
I tried watching one of the movies and turned it off after five minutes. Technically I’m Catholic, insofar as they never officially kicked me out or anything, but I’d have barfed had I kept watching.
Why would you want to waste your time on something like that? I could understand if it had been beautifully written or was reputed by people you admire to contain profound wisdom. I had rather watch water evaporate.
Yeah. I don’t think the series was ever noted for its literary merits, but the writing is genuinely awful. In fact, as a writer myself, that was my primary motivation for reading it – to see how something that had a reputation for such lousy writing could sell so well.
levdrakon, I have not seen the movies, but I am seeing Kirk Cameron as Williams. In my mind, he doesn’t really fit the character at all. Cameron strikes me as a bit of a pipsqueak, something Williams could not be given his exploits.
Having been unable to read more than a few paragraphs of that… text (calling it a book would be giving it too much respect) I have to ask if you had any kind of regiment that allowed you to build up your resistance to awful writing?
That one’s easy: marketing. There’s an audience out there that will buy just about any tripe if it speaks to their fundamentalist Christian world view. The series started at a point when there was very little else in the market for that audience and was sold to them.
As I posted upthread, it’s mostly for the morbid interest in bad writing. People watch bad movies, I’m reading bad books. My preferred taste in reading tends to be much better than that.
I’m also interested in learning about the worldview of Tim LaHaye, who strikes me as being very paranoid. I am somewhat familiar with the rather, ah, retrogressive views of his wife Beverly. Know thine enemy and all that.
I understand that, and it’s definitely “message” fiction. But I wonder how many people bought it because they are fundamentalist Christian and how many bought it out of curiosity. I do know that each book’s sales went down as the series progressed, so I think there’s an argument to be made that a good number of buyers of the first book were merely curious as opposed to being true believers.
As for my stomach for bad writing, it comes naturally. While I generally read higher-end fiction and serious nonfiction, the occasional foray into the realm of the truly awful makes me appreciate the good stuff that much more.
What’s the question about that? It’s always seemed quite simple to me, and can be summed up in two words: Captive audience. It’s my impression that the Left Behind books were marketed towards the teen/young adult/adventure market. And not even directly towards them, but rather towards their parents: “Here’s a book similar to those other evil, secular fantasies that are so popular that’s based on ahem good Bible lore! Your children (and adult children) can read it with no risk to their souls!”
I grant I’m being incredibly cynical. As for selling 65 million copies - with sixteen books in the series, it’s no longer quite so stunning an accomplishment. Still an impressive one in an industry where a release is a commercial success for selling 30,000 copies in hardcover, but that number grossly overstates the number of people reading the books. Assuming equal sales of the books (I grant that’s an unwarranted assumption) and that each copy of the series sold represents a single reader (even more unlikely, but still useful for the math I’m about to go through.) that’s just over four million individuals who’ve been buying this series.
A healthy accomplishment, but not the same sort of depth of penetration into American society that the numbers 65 millions copies might imply if it were just one book, like the first Harry Potter book.
Bah, not only did I miss that Just Some Guy beat me to the same explaination of the sales for this series, but I missed the edit window because my connection went FUBAR.
My understanding is that LB’s success wasn’t so much about marketing to a captive audience as it was about bringing Christian fiction into the mainstream. In addition to the books’ “primary” sales that are accounted for, libraries and churches bought copies to circulate and I occasionally see them available secondhand. Someone is reading these books and there are too many out there to be solely the province of fundamentalists.
That said, there is good, well-written Christian fiction out there. It’s just not as popular for whatever reason.
You may be right - though the only place I’ve ever seen such books was in Christian book stores. (Well, more accurately, perhaps - the only place I’d ever noticed them was there.) I’ll admit, too, that I’m a bit skeptical of the idea of anyone being attracted to Christianity by tribulation theology. Of course, as a mostly non-practicing Catholic, the whole focus on Revelation by some sects strikes me as more than a little odd.
As for the well-written Christian fiction, part of the problem with that is that some of the best fiction I see that I’d consider “Christian” isn’t marketed as such. And what little else I’ve seen is almost universally marketed as children’s fiction.
Almost certainly not true. I’ve never seen any sign that the books were marketed at any audience except adults. In addition, there are separate series for kids and graphic novels for teens. Perhaps you’re getting those confused with the main series, but they’re additional proof that the books are directed toward adults.
There is no intent to penetrate into American society. The books are designed to appeal to an audience that feels totally alienated from the mainstream American culture. As such, the size of the audience is even more staggering than the numbers already are. Harry Potter is an unreproducible phenomenon. Take someone like Stephen King, who may consider himself lucky if a book of his sells 4 million copies. That’s barely over a percent of the population, maybe two percent of adults. Then look at the size of the fundamentalist population, which can’t possibly be over 50 million. Even by your minimalist standards, that implies that 8% of that population is buying each book, and probably 16% of the adults doing so. That doesn’t count pass-along reading, which is normally larger than the original, or library reading. Unbelievable. One segment of the population that already considers themselves outsiders and many in the mainstream devils are immersed in a series of books that are at the least anti-mainstream, anti-Semitic, and anti-rational. Unbelievably frightening.
And the books are everywhere. Not just in Christian bookstores but in Wal-Marts, supermarket checkouts, mainstream bookstores, airport bookstalls, and everywhere else. Everywhere. So there are certainly additional readers besides the fundamentalist community, even those are almost certainly in a minority.
This is absolutely a marketing juggernaut that in total rivals Harry Potter with about one millionth the publicity. You cannot put it to one side. It is culturally far more important and will have far more long-lasting consequences.
A Canticle for Liebowitz has a name that makes it seem about as Catholic as it actually is. And it’s a really good book. (But I don’t know that it was specifically marketed as Christian, so it may not be a good answer.)
Isn’t that a lot of bad reading to plow through? I read the one because many people (whom I now know to have horrible taste and are never ever, ever to be trusted again about anything) said they liked it.
But I barely made it through the first one - it was just that awful. I can’t imagine that it got better as they started churning them out with even less editing.
