Henrietta Buckmaster sold her first story at age twelve, four years before she became a Christian Scientist. She is the author of fifteen books—fiction and non fiction—ranging from a novel and a biography of the Apostle Paul to a definitive history of the antislavery movement in the United States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her books have been translated into a number of languages. Her home is in New York City.

Why do you write fiction? It shakes up my thinking.

Why might a Christian Scientist, whose God is Truth, and whose great interest is spiritual healing, want to read purely fictional accounts of life?

If that's all one is looking for, that's all he's going to find. But right now let's have our terms clear. I'm a Christian Scientist and then a novelist. I want to serve what I believe. A Christian Scientist is obviously moving out from a different point of view about reality. As a writer, I am concerned with the parable of mankind.

Does God appear in your novels as an essential factor?

I wrote a novel one time that was a religious book club choice. There was not a mention of God or of religion. And when I asked the director of the book club why the book had been chosen, he said, "It's the first novel I've read in ten years that is permeated with the Christian spirit."

How do you plan a novel? Outline? Unfoldment?

I plan a novel by a rousing round of prayer! For light! Of course I use the discipline of an outline, but nothing rigid. Above all, I dispense with the notion that I am a creator. Not only as a Christian Scientist must I do this, but as an artist. This belief that artists have some special prerogative has harried them forever. I have to see as clearly as possible that I am expressing the activity of Mind, nothing else. I am aware that I am dealing in parables and metaphors. This is very humbling—one seldom sees this as clearly as he should. When I am working with a difficult scene, I never push at it intellectually. I pray. Once I had to cut a nonfiction manuscript—my history of the antislavery movement— eighty thousand words. This is book length. I was in tears. My husband said, "There's no intellectual way of handling this. You need revelation." And he quoted Mrs. Eddy, "'Was not this a revelation instead of a creation?'" ^{Science and Health, p. 504;} As I turned the manuscript, page by page, I knew Yes or No to each page. I've never had such an extraordinary experience. Within two weeks the eighty thousand words had been moved out of the book. And none of it was lost. What was cut was used later.

Writers, painters, poets, physicists move at a highly intuitive level. I think for a writer this intuitive process is composed of many things. Sensibility, discernment, willingness to leave well-trodden paths, patience, curiosity, discipline, love. If one is a Christian Scientist, these qualities take on new dimensions. (See Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, p. 128:4.)

In your novels, you don't take the Sunny-Jim approach. What about this matter of exploring depths of human experience?

The questions that interest me do not necessarily have simple answers. Know thyself is seldom an easy task. In one of her poems, Mrs. Eddy speaks of

In Science and Health she says, "Science enables one to read the human mind, but not as a clairvoyant" ^{Science and Health, p. 87;} and also, "Our Master read mortal mind on a scientific basis, that of the omnipresence of Mind." ^{p. 94;} These are guidelines for me.

I'm convinced that where evil appears to be there is Truth demanding to be heard. Or, as Mrs. Eddy says, "Thought is borrowed from a higher source than matter, and by reversal, errors serve as waymarks to the one Mind, in which all error disappears in celestial Truth." ^{p. 267;} This is what I am trying to bring out in a black scene. We are told that God is All-in-all. I accept this literally. What appears as a disastrous experience often becomes that trumpet call we might not hear in any other way. Do I really know that God is All-in-all? This takes courage. I've always loved the lowercase a of the second "all."

Jesus said, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." ^{Matt. 7:1;} And for a writer this is one of the most important counsels that I know. It does not mean that we surrender our values; it does mean that we don't judge why another person is at a particular point in his unfolding experience. Maybe this is the only way he can learn it at the moment, given his terms of reference, his education, his set of values. "Judge righteous judgment" ^{John 7:24;} because "the Lord looketh on the heart." ^{I Sam. 16:7.} Right here I'd like to speak of Jesus' parables. They are perfections of art because he never tied them up neatly at the end. You are always left to explore a bit further. Let your conscience be your guide!

What snags do you run into in writing a novel?

My latest novel offered me problems I had never faced before— problems of knowing. It brought me an immense unfolding as a Christian Scientist. It gave me a deep concern for the things we shall be facing for another generation. (I say "concern" not in a negative way but in the sense of enormous expectation.) The research involved an accumulation of facts outside my scope of education. Problems of economics, of technology, of political and idealistic thinking on war and peace. I had to know that Mind has no secrets. At one point I stopped my research because I was becoming surfeited. I had to maintain that, as a reflection of Mind, I had understanding. Unless I'd proved this, I wouldn't have known how to use my facts.

What synonyms of God become important to you at such a time?

Principle—when things get complicated, when there is a fine line of choice, a subtle operation which I have to work my way through. Truth—when there's a need for precision or for distinction in character. One has to understand that God, Truth, is expressed in myriad manifestations. As for Love, I have to treat with great love those characters I most dislike.

I was interested in the comment of a practitioner when I started work on my present book. She said, "In this book there are no villains." At first I bridled a little. I thought, "Oh, you're trying to smooth this all out." But she meant literally there are no villains. There are states of consciousness—some more unbearable than others!—and it is within those states of consciousness that one is trying to draw certain conclusions. I have to treat each character as though I were a practitioner. I must be wise in his behalf, see what is really troubling him, what disguise he is wearing. This means that I can't sit in judgment and say, "That poor fool." I have to try to understand how he is moving through his life. This goes beyond mechanical inventiveness. It means one is exploring, with his most sensitive equipment, the why's and how's and who's of being, even if one does not say so in the book.

Is Christian Science, in any way, a handicap to the novelist?

Not Christian Science—not ever. But I had to learn—and it wasn't easy—that what I, a young writer, thought of as a handicap was really a narrow cultural attitude. Many young writers and artists who are Christian Scientists rebel against the wrong thing. They would do well to stick with the freedom of Christian Science and drop their cultural blinders, not vice versa.

With Christian Science, one grows in his appreciation of other cultures, races, nations, and customs, even when they may differ greatly from the one in which he was raised. Cultural biases not only prevent one from writing an effective novel; they can also make it unnecessarily hard for him to communicate Christian Science to races and nations that do not share his cultural heritage.

We're living in a new world, changing at the speed of sound. New nations and all races are demanding that their identities be fully respected. Everywhere young people are challenging the basis of social demands. Our points of view are being scoured. It's not a comfortable experience, but I feel it's a good one. We, as Christian Scientists, must be precise and humble in seeing the difference between spiritual facts and cherished cultural beliefs.

At what point does a novel fail?

When it has too narrow a view, I think, or communicates merely a fashionable honesty. When it lacks heart and generosity.

I see a world of difference between a Franz Kafka and a William Burroughs, between the extremity of human sensibility and nihilism. A Kafka with his skin flayed is crying out at delusions in our society. A Burroughs, on the other hand, feels that life is corruption and has no purpose but disintegration. This is a cult of nothingness. Kafka, with all his pain, invites answers. A friend said to me once that, as Christian Scientists, we should be haunted by questions. I think also we've got to confront our stereotypes of thinking—the stereotypes of both good and evil. We can't accept an answer which only skims across the surface of things. As for me, a writer, I am caught in the sheer wonder and miracle of the understanding of life—the approach to the center of being.

Will there be among Christian Scientists great communicators of their vision of reality—and can we look forward to Christian Science producing some of the greatest artists the world has ever known?

What else makes any sense? Christian Scientists who are artists must surely be standing at a frontier. And communication seems to me the great requirement of the next century.

A tremendous spiritual potential lies in the arts. We are still trying to master the first steps. How often one falls short is part of the learning. I see far more than I perform. But I'm confident the arts must be used, with deeper and wider purpose, in the service of Life.