ICSA TODAY 22
Book Review
S.
By John Updike
Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Crest Books, 1988. ISBN 10: 0-449-
21652-7 ISBN 13: 978-449912126 (paperback). 300 pages
reissue edition, 1996 current edition, Random House, 2013.
ISBN-10: 0449912124 ISBN-13: 978-0449912126 (paperback,
$16.00 hardcover, $29.95, Amazon.com). 272 pages.
Review by Joe Szimhart
“…a burlesque of the quest for enlightenment, and an
affectionate meditation on American womanhood.”
—amazon.com introduction to 2013 edition
Back in the mid-1980s, cults were a more common topic in
the news when we witnessed the rise and fall of dozens of
homegrown and exotic gurus, some more notable than others.
John Updike (1932–2009), one of America’s premiere novelists,
wrote S. during that era. In S., Updike plunges us into the world
of white, upper-middle-class guru devotion through the letters
of his protagonist Sarah Worth, who signed off mostly as S. She
also used Sarah, Sally, Sare, mother, mummy, Ma Prem Kundalini,
Sara P. Worth, Sarah nee Price, and more. The novel is a wryly
sophisticated send-up of privileged, white, female devotees
who fall for ego-destroying therapies and pseudospiritual sexual
rituals with lascivious, non-Caucasian cult leaders.
I first read the novel around 1989 when I was very busy with
cult-related interventions. I recall being immensely entertained
by Updike’s rich prose and also by the raw if catty honesty of
his character Sarah, who leads us through witty twists and
surprises in her cult experience. S. captures the spirit of women
of means who in middle age decide to leave their unfulfilled
lives, unloving husbands, and flawed families behind to join an
ashram that promises true bliss. Like these women, S became
a “sannyasin” (pilgrim) on a deeper quest for a spiritual life. Her
weekly yoga classes were not cutting it. The guru in the novel,
known as “the Arhat” or Shri Arhat Mindadali, The Supreme
Meditator, parodies Rajneesh, a.k.a. Osho, (Chandra Mohan
Jain, 1931–1990), who led his outrageously controversial and
eventually criminal movement from India to Antelope, Oregon
in the early 1980s. Just as in Ashram Arhat, near fictional Forrest,
AZ in the novel, the majority of Rajneesh sannyasin who lived
communally next to Antelope were well-schooled, many with
advanced degrees in psychology, education, law, and medicine.
While flying from New England to join the Arhat’s ashram,
Sarah writes her first letter to her husband, Charles, a doctor
she describes as a philanderer for whom she sacrificed her early
career and interest in modern philosophy to raise their children,
and so Charles could pursue his calling. She coyly reveals to him
that she secretly “split” their financial assets, took her “half” and
fled the marriage for a chance to explore her inner self. At the
time, Sarah is around forty years old and her daughter Pearl is
20.
S also writes letters to her daughter, dentist, lawyer, former yoga
teacher, close female friends, son, mother, the Arhat, and the
IRS, and to news outlets. Through her often-effusive, sometimes-
intimate revelations, we follow Sarah’s progressions from the
neophyte who arrived at Ashram Arhat only to learn she would
be thrust into hard labor (work is worship) in artichoke fields and
made to rake poured cement for foundations for many weeks,
to her role as personal assistant to the guru. She participated
naked in verbally and physically punishing encounter groups
(she had to fight off a young man trying to rape her because
he saw his hated mother in her). Within a year, she managed
to work her way up to an executive position for the ashram.
She dealt with donations and finances for the guru. We learn
how she became his “Shakti,” or sex partner, in an uncensored
description of a rather silly tantric ritual. Sarah spends 3 years
at the ashram, where she picks up a new language of Sanskrit
words, one that she decides gave her an alternative way to value
her life and the world even after she defects. Updike treats us to
a Sanskrit glossary of more than 200 terms as references in the
back. He clearly did his homework for this novel.
In S, we find in Sarah an ex-wife and ex-cult member who refuses
to play victim. Despite the guru’s elaborate interpretations of
their “maithuna” (coitus) sessions, Sarah derives all the pleasure
Book Review
S.
By John Updike
Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Crest Books, 1988. ISBN 10: 0-449-
21652-7 ISBN 13: 978-449912126 (paperback). 300 pages
reissue edition, 1996 current edition, Random House, 2013.
ISBN-10: 0449912124 ISBN-13: 978-0449912126 (paperback,
$16.00 hardcover, $29.95, Amazon.com). 272 pages.
Review by Joe Szimhart
“…a burlesque of the quest for enlightenment, and an
affectionate meditation on American womanhood.”
—amazon.com introduction to 2013 edition
Back in the mid-1980s, cults were a more common topic in
the news when we witnessed the rise and fall of dozens of
homegrown and exotic gurus, some more notable than others.
John Updike (1932–2009), one of America’s premiere novelists,
wrote S. during that era. In S., Updike plunges us into the world
of white, upper-middle-class guru devotion through the letters
of his protagonist Sarah Worth, who signed off mostly as S. She
also used Sarah, Sally, Sare, mother, mummy, Ma Prem Kundalini,
Sara P. Worth, Sarah nee Price, and more. The novel is a wryly
sophisticated send-up of privileged, white, female devotees
who fall for ego-destroying therapies and pseudospiritual sexual
rituals with lascivious, non-Caucasian cult leaders.
I first read the novel around 1989 when I was very busy with
cult-related interventions. I recall being immensely entertained
by Updike’s rich prose and also by the raw if catty honesty of
his character Sarah, who leads us through witty twists and
surprises in her cult experience. S. captures the spirit of women
of means who in middle age decide to leave their unfulfilled
lives, unloving husbands, and flawed families behind to join an
ashram that promises true bliss. Like these women, S became
a “sannyasin” (pilgrim) on a deeper quest for a spiritual life. Her
weekly yoga classes were not cutting it. The guru in the novel,
known as “the Arhat” or Shri Arhat Mindadali, The Supreme
Meditator, parodies Rajneesh, a.k.a. Osho, (Chandra Mohan
Jain, 1931–1990), who led his outrageously controversial and
eventually criminal movement from India to Antelope, Oregon
in the early 1980s. Just as in Ashram Arhat, near fictional Forrest,
AZ in the novel, the majority of Rajneesh sannyasin who lived
communally next to Antelope were well-schooled, many with
advanced degrees in psychology, education, law, and medicine.
While flying from New England to join the Arhat’s ashram,
Sarah writes her first letter to her husband, Charles, a doctor
she describes as a philanderer for whom she sacrificed her early
career and interest in modern philosophy to raise their children,
and so Charles could pursue his calling. She coyly reveals to him
that she secretly “split” their financial assets, took her “half” and
fled the marriage for a chance to explore her inner self. At the
time, Sarah is around forty years old and her daughter Pearl is
20.
S also writes letters to her daughter, dentist, lawyer, former yoga
teacher, close female friends, son, mother, the Arhat, and the
IRS, and to news outlets. Through her often-effusive, sometimes-
intimate revelations, we follow Sarah’s progressions from the
neophyte who arrived at Ashram Arhat only to learn she would
be thrust into hard labor (work is worship) in artichoke fields and
made to rake poured cement for foundations for many weeks,
to her role as personal assistant to the guru. She participated
naked in verbally and physically punishing encounter groups
(she had to fight off a young man trying to rape her because
he saw his hated mother in her). Within a year, she managed
to work her way up to an executive position for the ashram.
She dealt with donations and finances for the guru. We learn
how she became his “Shakti,” or sex partner, in an uncensored
description of a rather silly tantric ritual. Sarah spends 3 years
at the ashram, where she picks up a new language of Sanskrit
words, one that she decides gave her an alternative way to value
her life and the world even after she defects. Updike treats us to
a Sanskrit glossary of more than 200 terms as references in the
back. He clearly did his homework for this novel.
In S, we find in Sarah an ex-wife and ex-cult member who refuses
to play victim. Despite the guru’s elaborate interpretations of
their “maithuna” (coitus) sessions, Sarah derives all the pleasure
