Imaginary Friends by Alison Lurie
"Imaginary Friends" by Alison Lurie explores the complexities of belief and knowledge through the lives of an older sociology professor, Thomas McMann, and his younger colleague, Roger Zimmern. The novel contrasts the rational, academic world with that of the lower-middle-class Truth Seekers, a group engaged in spiritual practices and automatic writing. Lurie's narrative questions the credibility of both intellectuals and spiritual seekers, suggesting that the rationalizations of academics can be as absurd as the beliefs held by the uneducated.
Through characters like Verena Roberts, who channels messages from higher beings, the story delves into themes of delusion and self-awareness. The influence of Henry James's "The Bostonians" is evident as Lurie's Verena embodies the struggles between idealism and external pressures, mirroring the feminist tensions of James's time. As McMann's mental state deteriorates, the narrative raises critical questions about the nature of reality and the value we place on different forms of knowledge. Ultimately, "Imaginary Friends" challenges readers to reconsider the foundations of education, religion, and truth in American society, compelling them to explore who truly lives in the “real” world.
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Imaginary Friends by Alison Lurie
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1967
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Imaginary Friends is unlike Lurie’s other novels in that marriage, adultery, and the continuing war between the sexes, Lurie’s most common themes, give way to other concerns. She does, however, continue to explore academic lives—in this case, an older sociology professor, Thomas McMann, and his younger colleague, Roger Zimmern—and she once again juxtaposes two kinds of culture; the simple, lower-middle-class Truth Seekers with the intellectual, well-bred, and sophisticated sociologists who come to study them. Lurie demonstrates that the rational beliefs and pretensions of intellectuals are often more monstrous than the seemingly lunatic beliefs of the uneducated and that the most revered institutions of American life—colleges and churches, for example—are no more preferable to mystical cults and religious fringe groups, and often have fewer answers.
Lurie’s interest in such things as spiritualism and automatic writing may have come from her friendship with poet James Merrill, whose long narrative poem The Book of Ephraim (1977) recounts twenty years of experience with seances and Ouija boards. The novel is, in fact, dedicated to Merrill and another Ouija board enthusiast, David Jackson. Like them, Lurie takes the supernatural seriously. Verena Roberts, a young Seeker through whom higher beings speak by way of automatic writing, often gives messages that are difficult to explain rationally, although McMann, the senior sociologist, is always ready with a glib explanation.
At one point, for example, Zimmem (through Verena) receives a message from MAKES FAVOUR, SEE RIGHT ILLS, and O MAKE A VEIL HIGH, obvious puns on classic sociologists Max Weber, C. Wright Mills, and Nicolo Machiavelli, about whom Zimmern was thinking at the time. Moreover, Verena seems to have extrasensory perception when it comes to such things as finding lost car keys: Zimmern’s, she tells him correctly, had slipped down behind some furniture and were lying next to the wall. To Lurie, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in sociology.
A more literary influence on Imaginary Friends is Henry James’s novel The Bostonians. In James’s novel, principally concerned with the American women’s movement of the late nineteenth century, Verena Tarrant is a young, charismatic public speaker who is an inspirational apostle of the feminist cause. In Lurie’s novel, Verena Roberts is a similar inspirational apostle for the Truth Seekers. Both are objects of adoration by young men who wish them to renounce their passionate beliefs: Verena Tarrant is pursued by Basil Ransom, who, by muscular force, carries her off with him at the end; Verena Roberts, having been pursued by a tall, gawky boy named Ken (and worshiped from afar by narrator Roger Zimmern), finally gives up her beliefs, marries Ken, and goes off to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Both novels are about contemporary social movements (feminism in James’s time, religious fundamentalism in Lurie’s), and both novels contain conflicts between the natural, instinctive, naïve gifts of an idealistic young woman and the educated, neurotic, and insensitive demands of others who want her for personal gratification.
As Lurie’s novel progresses, the story’s narrator, Roger Zimmern, becomes aware of the increasing duplicity, neurotic behavior, and peculiarity of his senior colleague, Thomas McMann. Having gone to the home of the Seekers in Sophis (another suggestive name) to prove an academic theory that opposition and doubt unite rather than weaken a group such as the Seekers, McMann manipulates data to make the hypothesis come true. The Seekers have been in contact, by way of Verena’s automatic writing, with a spiritual alien named Ro of Varna, and when Ro promises to appear physically at a certain date, McMann and Zimmern have an ideal test situation. What will happen to the group when Ro fails to materialize, as will surely be the outcome?
On the evening of his promised appearance (which, of course, does fail to happen), Ro sends a final message: “I am in Man on earth.” This is interpreted by some of the Seekers to mean that Ro has become incarnate within McMann here on earth—an interpretation that McMann does not try to deny or dispel. Further, McMann assumes deific powers within the group when he takes it upon himself to “protect” Verena against the attempts of Ken to contact her, and, finally, when he chases Ken off the premises with a gun. The result is that Zimmern comes to realize that his colleague is mad, and McMann ends up in a mental asylum, believing he is Ro of Varna.
Lurie’s novel ultimately asks the reader to consider some very serious questions. Who is more self-deluded, those who believe in flying saucer saviors from the planet Varna or those who spend fruitless lifetimes studying them? Which of them live in the “real” world, those who believe that Varnians will deliver them the truth or those who believe the same from the high-level abstractions of the social sciences? Who do more harm, the Seekers with their weekly meetings of hymn singing, automatic writing, and nonsense about astral projection or McMann and Zimmern with their biased conclusions, their egomaniacal self-importance, their willingness to use others, and their questionable perception of reality? Lurie clearly comes down on the side of the Seekers. Ultimately, she forces one to question the ideals and attributes considered sacrosanct in American life—education, religion, science, society, and truth.
Bibliography
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