John Updike - S

Still love me? Here's some kisses:

XXX

Mummy

Gentlemen:

Enclosed find endorsed checks totalling $66,403.27 for deposit to my account, #0002743-911.

Thank you sincerely,

Sarah P. Worth

Gentlemen:

I am very interested in opening a credit-deferrable charge account with the Arhat Book and Gift Shop of Samana Cay. My understanding is that a balance in excess of charges will accumulate 6% interest compounded monthly, while a debit of more than thirty days' standing will be penalized at the rate of 12%, also compounded monthly. Though I am temporarily an executive assistant at Ashram Arhat here in Arizona, my account, I wish to emphasize, would be a personal one, for my use only. I look forward to receiving whatever information you can send, mailed to me in care of this motel, along with relevant currency and investment regulations in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.

With sincere thanks,

Sarah P. Worth

le deux septembre 1986

Monsieur,

Je voudrais ouvrir, peut-être, avec Crédit Suisse un compte identifié seulement par son numéro, un numéro qui soit secret. Envoyez-moi, s'il vous plait, à l’adresse cidessous, les formules necessaires et les règles qu'il faut qu'on observe concernant un tel compte.

Agréez, je vous prie,

l'expression de mes sentiments distingues,

Sarah P. Worth (Madame)

Sep. 2

Dear Dr. Podhoretz-

I'm afraid an October appointment won't do either. Tell your secretary to put me in the inactive file. I'm still flossing, though. Do you think an occasional twinge in the left eyetooth means anything, or is it just the enamel wearing thin with old age? I notice it most with iced tea, though very hot curries set it off too.

Warm regards,

Sarah Worth

Dear Martin-

Well, I'm enchanted that my little postcard meant so much to you. Your generous response-longer, I fear, than I can answer in detail-was waiting for me here at the motel. I don't live here, I live forty miles away with a lot of other people seeking the inner peace that comes with the good life. When I wrote you that all the material world is a jail I did not mean to make light of your predicament or the terrible conditions of incarceration in Massachusetts but to offer a consoling general premise-that for any of us to be alive is to suffer pain and limitation. We are born into a certain body, with a certain sex and color of skin, etc., at a specific time and place, of parents who shelter us and damage us according to their capacities, and as we grow we attain a certain height and degree of intelligence we can't do" much about, and fall into some job or r6le-in your case, into drugs and burglary-and from a certain angle one could become intensely claustrophobic about all these circumstances, which are more constricting and harder to escape from than any cell. And then the body and with it the brain begin to age and malfunction and eventually to die and the constriction is very tight indeed. But there is a way out, the way of the spirit, of accepting that little unchanging viewpoint or "I" inside you as part of a larger spiritual reality, which we call purusba, in relation to which material reality with all its confining specifics is mere illusion, called maya, which also means deception. And there are exercises and disciplines which enable men called masters (gurus) to attain release (moksba) from the material world and the bliss of pure spiritual being, nirvana, which doesn't literally mean nothingness but "no wind"-we will get out of the wind, Martin, and exist in a place where everything is still and shining and eternal. The orthodox path to nirvana is long and tedious (you begin by thinking of a point just behind your forehead, at the bridge of your nose) but it is not the only way, there are shortcuts that suddenly open to people-even and perhaps especially to foolish and miserable people-and there is no reason why at least the beginning of enlightenment-a little fascinating pinprick-won't come to you in jail just as one came to me in my nice suburban home (which in moments of weakness I still miss). But you must look within for what is real. You tried to look within with drugs but what they gave you was not real, they just suppressed part of maya. There is a better way out, which does not lead to jail and early death. This Way embraces everything: it is the Way of striving and surrender, of action and inaction, of good and bad, of the senses and their absence. Whatever name you give this Way, whatever images you use to help you visualize the Path, it is the Way that we all seek and that makes all our seeking one.

My fond regards to little Eldridge and your mother. Tell Shirlee my hair is stiff and brittle as burnt toast here in this climate and that I have given up Clairol so the gray strands are poking through, and I cut it short in a kind of scruffy mid-neck flip just to get it out of my mind and concentrate on higher things, but for all that there are still some here who find me an attractive brunette.

Your friend,

Sarah Worth

Dear Mother-

Just the briefest note, to check in. They've given me more responsibilities here, and I'm up to my ears in legal and financial details. Of course I'm horrified to hear that you have cashed in all your CDs, even paying the fines to do so, and have sold those blocks of Daddy's lovely old IBM and AT &T, and put everything into the stock of this cosmetic company your admiral friend has heard is going to be taken over by Revlon. His grandson's being an investment banker doesn't mean a thing; or, rather, it does mean, if this is real insider information, that you and the boy and old Granddaddy will all go to jail. I recently received a letter from a man in jail and he says it's no fun-the toilet is in the middle of the cell and the white guards let the black prisoners rule by survival of the fittest and there's a two-yean wait for the course in computer science. If on the other hand it's not real insider information, then you're holding a big chunk of some stagnant company (Visage, Inc.-what kind of name is that, and who put on that absurd incorrect accent?) from Arkansas (Arkansas, Mother!) that will pay peanuts-not even that, peanut shells -for dividends and slowly sink into the swamp of what's left of Reaganomics. The CDs were safe, sure, and smart, as I told you before. You've obviously written me off as an adviser and probably even heir, but think of your own grandchild, pretty Pearl who adores you and who has let herself fall into the clutches of some loathsome Dutch pseudo-plutocrats because, no doubt, of financial insecurity. If she didn't have a grandmother who was squandering her eventual inheritance she might have the self-respect and self-confidence to stick with her education and independent development. She's even threatening not to return to Yale this fall! Isn't that incredibly self-destructive? Do phone her and tell her so, instead of commiserating with her over what a rotter I am and what a saint Charles is-she didn't exactly quote you to that effect but I can read between the lines. Your involvement with this alleged admiral I find, of course, alarming. He sounds like a typical male exploiter, hunting for a cook and a nurse to see him into the grave. Don't be conned, I beg you, and don't fell me how dashing he looks in a double-breasted blazer and old-fashioned cream linen pants with broad cuffs-I can't imagine what's come over you. After Daddy, this clown in a sailor suit? I don't think you realize how humorous and pathetic your description of his rapping night after night on your hurricane shutters is. I guess it's not in the nature of women to learn. Seduced and ruined by an octogenarian swindler-is that what you want your epitaph to be? I know you have been teasing me about this romance, egging me on to overreact, so I have tried to be circumspect. It is your life-just don't ever dare say a word of criticism to me again about anything. And don't get Jerry to write me any more platitudinous chummy letters. It was embarrassing for both of us-he didn't know what to say and I didn't either. My brother is part of me but I have no more to say to him now than to my own left foot.