The other day, sitting at the local Barnes & Noble café in the mall (yes, I live in the suburbs), I caught sight of a display that I hadn’t seen the last time I was there. It was an entire bookcase full of “Chicken Soup for the ______ Soul” titles. Somewhere in the recesses of my memory, I knew that the original Chicken Soup book had been a big deal, but not being much of a self-help book buyer, I didn’t pay much attention. But this display of over a dozen titles took me a bit by surprise in their strange variety:

Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul
for the Military Wife’s Soul
for the Nurse’s Soul
for the Horse Lover’s Soul
for the Jewish Soul
for the Recovering Soul
for the Preteen Soul, 2
for the Teenage Soul
for the Teenage Soul, III
for the Pet Lover’s Soul
for the Golden Soul
for the Nature Lover’s Soul
for the Cat and Dog Lover’s Soul
for the Woman’s Soul
for the Father and Daughter Soul
for the Volunteer’s Soul
for the NASCAR Soul

So many Souls in need of Soup. The redundancies in many of the titles and the bizarre juxtaposition of group identities begged for a good joke or two. I couldn’t quite bring myself to pick up a volume, but later, my curiosity got the better of me and I went online. Apparently, since the 1993 publication of the original title, which became a phenomenal bestseller, the Chicken Soup brand has grown exponentially. There’s an elaborate web site with news of the latest titles not found at the B&N—65 titles and counting, over 80 million copies sold.

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Something else I didn’t know before going to the web site is that although the books are technically “authored” by Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen, motivational speakers and self-help gurus, the ideas for the inspirational stories or the stories themselves are solicited from the millions of readers who buy these books. The web site allows readers to submit stories or ideas for new titles, and even to join focus groups (the “test center”) to give feedback on projects currently in development. And not only are there the expected licensed products associated with the registered trademark (including pet food and music compilations), there are now travel guides and a healthy living series under the brand. In short, the whole thing is a marketing juggernaut. And just to give the inspirational kick to the story of how it all started, the web site points out that the original manuscript was rejected by over 140 publishers before being picked up by a publisher who “caught the spirit.” Follow your dreams, people, follow your dreams.

The “Story Guidelines” link makes explicit what a glance at the titles suggests—a successful Chicken Soup story “is an inspirational, true story about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It is a story that opens the heart and rekindles the spirit. It is a simple, inter-denominational, living art piece that touches the soul of the readers and helps them discover basic principles they can use in their own lives.” Make it vivid, make it emotional, and above all, make it feel good—the operative word, it seems, is “goosebumps.” More interesting than the list of the desired qualities is the list of what a Chicken Soup story is NOT: “about politics or controversial issues”; “a sermon, an essay, or a eulogy,” and so on.

I could go on. There’s nothing like coming upon entire worlds of cultural experience that I never knew existed to make me feel estranged from America, looking in from the outside in both fascination and horror. The sudden reality of this other world, with its highly articulated system of values that are unquestioned and unquestioning, makes me doubt that I ever knew anything about this country or its inhabitants. I had a similar feeling when I learned what a huge economic and cultural phenomenon scrapbooking was. According to Wikipedia, “this hobby has surpassed golf in popularity”—let that sink in for a minute. Does that not blow your mind? (By the way, Chicken Soup for the Scrapbooker’s Soul is now in development, so submit your stories now).

But what’s wrong, one might ask, with people sharing stories and feeling good about themselves? Isn’t there a kind of democratic ethos at work here, a collective grassroots effort that harnesses the energies of people who want to reach out and inspire and connect? I’m sure that many people do find comfort and inspiration in these books, and of course, it must be empowering to have a story or book idea accepted (and writers do get paid for any submissions that get published). It’s a form of interactive direct marketing whose appeal on both ends is easy enough to imagine.

Still, the whole thing creeps me out, and I’m trying to figure out why. For one, there’s the “violence of enforced happiness,” as my husband put it. The affirmation industry doesn’t leave much room for complicated or conflicted feelings in the face of hardship or adversity. It’s a collective act of repression—anger, jealousy, bitterness, resentment, frustration, boredom are allowed to make an appearance only as that which gets stamped out or expunged by the miracle of life and love.

But what bothers me more than the desire for the neat answer and happy platitudes that seems to drive the enterprise is how efficiently those behind the Chicken Soup brand exploit this need and how vigilantly they control its message. Maybe I’m just rehashing Marketing 101, but the great big gap I perceive between the promise and the product gets me down. Plus, the “guidelines” to which all stories must conform and the long development process each title undergoes (3-4 years on average) reinforce my sense that the collective efforts of contributors do not affect the brand; rather, the brand repackages contributions to a uniform standard.

To push the food metaphor of the brand a little, Chicken Soup for the Soul Enterprises, Inc. seems to be selling junkfood through the medium of books, and passing it off as healthful and nutritious. As the ad copy at the B&N proclaims, “Nourish your spirit!”; “Have an extra helping of goodness to nourish your heart!”; “One serving isn’t enough!” But if the books are so nourishing, why do we need another 101 stories that say essentially the same thing about being a Golden Latino Nature Loving Soul? Why does the soul remain so hungry? I can’t help but imagine millions of readers filling up on one Chicken Soup title after another and becoming spiritually obese and still vaguely unsatisfied. Such obesity would be both a symptom of deeper spiritual malaise and itself a condition that, like its physical counterpart, exacts its toll. Here, I do not mean to suggest that moral culpability lies with the individual readers for turning to these books for affirmation and comfort or for wanting to tell their stories of inspiration. Rather, to follow E Hayot’s piece on what it would mean to think about fat not as an “individual problem but a social and economic one,” I’m suggesting that there may be a “culture of spiritual obesity” in which the affirmation industry, like the food industry, is part of the “large-scale reproductive nature of the problem” (E Hayot again), perpetuating compulsive, compensatory habits that aren’t really good for us. The problem in this case, I suppose, is the idea that we can find answers in simple, platitudinous stories or that if our lives were more like Hallmark cards, we’d be so much happier. The active denial that these books seem to encourage is, I think, what creeps me out. And we don’t need to go far to figure out what might be being denied. The publisher of the Chicken Soup books, Health Communications, Inc., has another imprint, Hazelden, whose titles name what Chicken Soup can’t cure.