S. by John Updike

they hold, the more lies they hold. They are like old newspapers. They are garbage. They are like organized religion, like the Holy Bible and Talmud and Koran. They are old newspapers. They are like the bound collected works of Sigismund Fried and Carlos Marx; they are garbage, full of details that are lies. Details obstruct us from enlightenment, from samadhi, from surrender of ego. We must forget. We must drive out foolishness from our systems. We must use foolishness to drive out foolishness. If you were not foolish, you would not have come across the sea to India. You would be in Germany drinking beer [
startled laughter
]. You would be in America eating steak and whiskey [
more of same; an undertone of relief
]. That is why I have told you the fairy story of Kundalini, the little snake that lives at the bottom of our spine. While you were hearing it, no other garbage was in your hearts or heads or stomachs; little Kundalini burned it all away.
    [
end of tape
]
    June 7
    Dearest Pearl—
    How I
loved
receiving your letter!—though it
could
have been longer. The courses you are completing are still vaguein my mind. What exactly
are
Deconstructional Dynamics, and how can they be applied to Paradise Lost and the Faerie Queene? As you remember, Granddaddy Price had
lovely
editions of both classics—much too expensive, though, to be deconstructed. And you say the man teaching it is a Communist! I’m sure it doesn’t mean in England quite what it does here—something much more woolly and amusing, like George Bernard Shaw—but still I do wonder why Mrs. Thatcher and the Queen would give such a man control of young minds when there are so many honest and intelligent loyal Britons out of work.
    I am
pleased
you are not coming home for the summer. I think it’s a very mature decision. You would find the house very gloomy with just your father in it showing up now and then to change his shirt, and of course Europe has
so
many delights and you are
so
close to it, just a Channel away! And you
are
a bit old to go beach bumming and wind-surfing all day the way you could with perfect propriety when you were seventeen (not to mention the hideous damage you can do your lovely fair skin) and, though it makes me sad to think it, I do agree that your old job as lifeguard at the club pool (such a
vision
you were in that high chair, in your bikini and sombrero, with that cord of braided gimp holding the whistle around your neck) should go to someone younger. So Europe is fine, darling. But—
Holland?
Isn’t it just the dullest country on the Continent? Or at least the flattest. Surely once you’ve seen one little genre painting and one windmill you’ve seen them all. Your friend promises all this boating in the canals but it sounds very buggy to me, like bumping about in the Ipswich marshes. And I can’t believe the beaches there aren’t just
coated
with oil from all the tankers going by in the Channel. And when I try to picture these lumpy Dutch women in bathing suits I
shudder
.
    Your friend sounds charming, perhaps
too
charming. Charm is what European men are famous for, but there
are
qualities our ungainly native boys have that are worth treasuring—trustworthiness, for one, and the willingness to work to support a family. If Jan’s father is a count, why are they in the brewery business? And why was Jan at Oxford studying economics when the London School is the one you always hear about, where the Arabs and everybody go? I know you’re finding my motherly concern tiresome but one does read stories here of the goings-on in Amsterdam, right out in that big main square—it’s the drug capital of Europe, evidently, and still has boys with hair down to their shoulders and wearing buckskin and all that that went out here when Nixon finally resigned.
Do
be careful, dearest. You were sweet to reassure me that Jan is not a homosexual, but in a way it would be a relief if he were. You are all of twenty and very much feeling your