Imaginary Friends by Alison Lurie, 1967 is the second review below.
both reviews by Joe Szimhart, 2005
ocCult
They Didn't Think It Could Happen In Their Church
by June Summers
Publisher: Global Strategic Resources, 2005
Fiction, Soft cover, 372
Pages, $13.95
ISBN # 0-9754214-8-4
http://www.globalstrategicresources.com/pg14.htm#new
Although I found some valuable insights about cult behavior in this self-published novel, I would not recommend it for general reading. The author June Summers reports that she escaped from a cult 20 years ago. I assume that she belonged to a charismatic Christian church much like the one in her novel. Summers adopts a definition of cult as any religion that does not comply with a particular form of evangelical Christianity. Among her “signs” of a cult is emphasis on experience and emotion instead of scriptural truths.
In the story Penny, the main character in the novel, moves from her home in the Midwest to the Portland, Oregon area to try to find herself. She quits her job and has a conflict with her boyfriend who is dedicated to his golf career. He does not wish to relocate with her to Portland. In Oregon Penny encounters a lively Christian community in Grace Church. Mark, a man who speaks with an impediment that some women find irresistible, leads the independent church.
Throughout the book the author writes Mark’s words as pwetty, spiwit, pwaise, pwoblem, and so on. Mark has piercing blue eyes, but is otherwise a frumpy sort of fellow with a pompadour hairdo. Early in the story we learn that Mark has illicit sexual encounters with women in the church and some complained. Dissidents are “handled” or disfellowshipped and shunned by the community. Strict about marriage and sexual misconduct at first, Penny begins to experience changes in the church and herself over time. She succumbs to these changes as they happen gradually after certain charismatic bursts that surprise the congregation. She convinces her boyfriend Rick who is a promising golf pro to marry her, drop golf, and join the church. He does so reluctantly—part of the reason is that he is really horny after not seeing Penny for some time. She will not have sex with him until they are married. Sexual tension is a prominent theme in this book, sex between Christians who fight their impulses to comply at first with the rules. No frontal hugging is allowed, for example, until the pastor changes the rule.
During charismatic leadings from “God” some of the people in the church begin to dance spontaneously in an erotic fashion. At first Mark the pastor is confused and wants to stop it, but due to his own lewd propensities allows the spiritual connection move to thrive. Mark gets caught up in it too especially with a few of his closest female prayer partners. Mark is married, as are most of the characters, but soon the spirit dancing leads to illicit encounters. Couples dance and make out in the “mega connection” room, and many succumb to the “mistake” of intercourse with someone other than their spouse. The “connections” are so powerful that church members enter a kind of ecstasy that they interpret as God’s energy flowing through them.
Tragedy hits the congregation when one member drowns her young son to spare him from possibly becoming an active homosexual like his father. The already controversial church is now thrust into the news. Ex-members speak out about the sexual abuse and erotic activity, some threaten lawsuits, and many begin to doubt the holiness they felt in the group.
Despite her efforts to be a good churchite, Penny struggles with the obvious flaws in her community. She gets away for a while to think. She stays with an aunt who had been trying to convince Penny to leave the group for some time. While attending to her aunt’s garden Penny picks up an apparently good cucumber that has been hollowed out by a worm. At that moment she hears the voice of Jesus tell her that the fruit is rotten like her church. She has a disturbing dream about the occult nature of her church. After five years of devotion in the church she can finally admit to herself that is a “cult.” She talks with dissidents who convince her to leave. She in turn helps others to quit the cult.
After the end of her story, Summers offers help for people bothered by cult experiences, but she is non-specific save to contact her through email. Summers uses an odd spelling of occult for her title, but she clearly intends to convey that the devil can work through spiritual (occult) experience even in a born again, spirit-filled Christian community. She infers that the devil can turn a church into a cult through occult experiences that do not square with scripture. For example, illicit sex violates “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”
In my estimation the book fails as a novel. I did not enjoy reading it. Perhaps it was the tedious dialog among mostly humorless characters too simply developed. Mark, the misguided and perverse pastor, remained in caricature throughout for me. I struggled to believe why any woman would fall for this guy. Frank Peretti’s occult fiction (This Present Darkness) also feeds the fundamentalist Christian imagination, but Peretti manages to entertain the reader with his comic book notion of evil and the occult. I felt little richness of place throughout the Summers book, so it was less believable.
The author missed great opportunities to create suspense and sympathy. For example, when the distraught wife of a gay parishioner drowns their son Willy, I felt removed from the child. We have no insights into little Willy’s character, whether he had friends, his hair color, how he played. The author inserts sexual tension between characters, but not enough for it to feel more important than creepy adult behavior. Exorcisms described in Chapter 7 offer little dramatic power. Occult activity amounts to eyes locked in trance and group ecstasy with erotic touching. I was not convinced that the devil had anything to do with what seemed more like loosened libidos. Descriptions I’ve read about Umbanda or Macumba dance rituals are far more interesting.
In the genre of fundamentalist Christian literature, cult and occult carry the same sinister though equivocal spiritual warning—they both are “of the devil.” However, there are other ways to view cult behavior and to portray occultism more realistically as not only deceptive, but ridiculous and sublime as well. See my review of another novel, Imaginary Friends, also based on a real cult experience.
Author: Alison Lurie
Publisher: Abacus, 1967 original. Owl Publishing Company; Reprint edition 1998;
Henry Holt and Company, 115 West 18th St, New York, NY 10011
Fiction, soft cover: 245 pages (Abacus edition). Prices vary, from less than a dollar.
ISBN: 0805051805
In this novel author Alison Lurie appears to borrow heavily from a study done by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. In the study, Festinger’s assistants infiltrate a small “flying saucer” cult in “Lakeland” in the1950s. Their now classic report appeared in When Prophecy Fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world (1956). Lurie was not a member of the cult or an observer during the study. Alison Lurie is an accomplished novelist. She won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1985 for Foreign Affairs. The Festinger study disguises the actual cult name, location, and members and. Lurie mimics Festinger’s Seekers with her Truth Seekers, the cult in Imaginary Friends. My guess for the actual cult, if anyone cares, was a small group in the Chicago area led by the medium Dorothy Martin (Marian Keech in the study) who channeled information from ‘Sananda’ and the Guardians. The ‘space brothers’ used the Seekers in the Festinger study to warn earthlings about a coming catastrophic flood. In real life Martin fled the Chicago area after her prophecies went public, failed, and made headlines that caused ridicule and harassment of the group. Reportedly Martin feared commitment to a mental asylum and litigation. Martin continued her spiritualist quest with an obscure cult following as Sister Thedra in Arizona. She died peacefully in 1992.
I enjoyed Imaginary Friends. Lurie’s keen eye for detail, plot twists, and subtle, laugh-out-loud humor brings the Festinger study to another level. Lurie includes and goes beyond the participant-observer point of view of the sociologist. She deftly choreographs how a cult can affect and change those that study them, just as sociologists can change the cults they study. In many ways Lurie explores critiques of Festinger’s theory and methodology while sustaining the reasoning behind them.
Imaginary Friends is the story of two male professors, one seasoned and the other just out of graduate school. Doctor Tom McMann as the lead sociologist is a large, fit, middle-aged, never married fellow. He established a powerful reputation among his colleagues after just one important publication. MacMann convinces his new young colleague Roger Zimmern, a non-practicing Jew, to help him find a charismatic group so that they could test a sociological theory. It has been decades since McMann published anything of significance. He is anxious that no other colleague knows about the project until he gathers his data. Zimmern finds a small newly formed cult in the nearby town of Sophis. The two men successfully infiltrate the group that exhibits little suspicion of their motives save for one member, Ken. McMann wants to observe how unexpected change and unfulfilled prophecies affect group dynamics. He predicts that after cognitive dissonance from a “disconfirmation” the group will adjust through rationalizations and by increased recruiting. The sociologists expect to participate for months if necessary. Roger narrates the story upon reflection months after things fall apart. The comic events occur when Roger gets in over his head in more ways than one during the project. The story is his effort to make sense of all the apparent nonsense that happened.
The core of the cult depends on Verena, a college dropout at age 19, who moves in with her Aunt Elsie, an avid Spiritualist. Elsie encourages Verena’s mediumistic sensibilities. Through automatic writing Verena makes contact with an alien race of Guardians from the planet Varna. The Varnian leader Ro channels information to the group through Verena’s cryptic scrawls when she enters a trance state. The group also hears from Mo and Ko of Varna. Roger describes Verena as both a nut and a sensitive, alluring waif with sculpted features and hypnotic, liquid eyes. Throughout the text he refers to himself as both Roger Zimmern, the objective scholar, and as Stupid Roger, the klutzy, shy professor truly interested in contact with Varna. McMann poses as the professor that he is, but in personality more like an affable, accommodating car salesman. Roger’s split persona adds to the tension he feels and confusion he exhibits, causing uncomfortable, if comic, moments. He eventually wonders who is crazy: Is it he, McMann, or the group?
After weeks of meetings with six or seven others in Elsie’s house Roger endures progressive changes in diet and belief structures. He tries ineffectively to memorize layers of lessons derived from Ro, Spiritualist doctrine, and idiosyncratic truths that members add to group metaphysics. McMann and Zimmern try their best to be non-directive and participatory, but some circimstances push their acting abilities. For example, during a private conference Verena attempts to “clear” Roger of icy blocks in his mind by holding Roger’s hands while standing almost against his body as she gives an invocation to Ro. Stupid Roger believes that she is trying to seduce him and he wants to let her. Roger Zimmern knows that if he dares to have sex with the leader, he could screw up, literally, the entire project and McMann might kill him. Later in the novel McMann tells Zimmern that he missed a grand opportunity for some good sex.
There are truly ridiculous scenes that anyone (like me) who was in a New Age cult might identify with. Ro tells the group through Verena that he and other Varnians will appear to them on Earth from their spacecraft if only devotees prepare the way through purification. Ro gives instructions and announces the hour. The group removes all organic items from their person including cotton underwear, woolen jackets and leather shoes. They scamper through the house looking for wearable items made of “scientific” materials like nylon, polyester, and plastics.
The description of women in mismatched apparel gleaned from Elsie’s closet, and men in odd items like rubber galoshes from her husband’s closet, creates quite a madcap scene for the reader’s imagination. One man in the group had to wear a synthetic quilt wrap throughout the ritual session. After the group removes the offensive clothing, Verena directs them to put it all, piece by piece, in the fireplace and watch the stuff burn. Zimmern has a real problem with letting go of his only expensive jacket for something that only Stupid Roger has to believe in. McMann laughs at him later in their motel, reassuring him that the jacket is an expense covered by the budget.
The oddly attired group marches outside into the snow in Elsie’s backyard to await “The Coming.” They sing hymns of praise, offer invocations to the Light and wait and wonder for a long time. Ro and the Varnians fail to appear long after the expected time. An exhausted Verena, who had been fasting and not sleeping for days, finally announces that Ro did indeed appear in a spiritual way. Ro’s spirit is in “man” she says, then she faints. After the motley entourage carries Verena back into the house Elsie interprets “man” as Tom McMann. When the lead sociologist reacts on cue to accept his role as Ro, Zimmern gets very nervous and wonders what is going on. Things get out of control when Ken, an ex-member of the cult, arrives and demands to see Verena. Ken is in love with her and she has feelings for him too. McMann sees Ken as a threat to the newest developments in the group, thus potentially messing up his project. McMann gets a rifle, fires a shot into the ceiling, and threatens to shoot Ken if he does not leave. Ken later brings the police.
I will not give away the rest of the plot, but I will say that Lurie bends the story beyond anything that happened in the Festinger study from this point on. She entertains us with a wonderfully funny foray into the slippery edges between devotion and mental illness. I can understand why some professors of sociology still recommend this book to their students as required reading. I would.