In a recent essay, [John Gardner] deplores the "shoddy morality of much of our fiction" and insists that "instruction is art's most basic function, whether or not it ought to be." Hence, a great responsibility rests on the artist to "seek positive moral values, provide models of goodness." "Fiction," Gardner says, "should spellbind and inspire, though it should not lie."

Unlike Flannery O'Connor who was trying mainly to convince a hard-headed audience that the redemption of Jesus Christ is real, John Gardner prefers to seek out human models of goodness and suggest that they too have redemptive powers…. It is as if Gardner believes that by writing about redemption he can somehow make it real because whatever values we celebrate in our arts will be celebrated in society. And he argues that because "art doesn't imitate life, art makes people do things,… if we celebrate bad values in...