In a post for the “Idle Chatter” department of The Smart Set, from Drexel University, Morgan Meis reports on “Updike Country; In the semi-rural suburbs of southeastern PA, finding—and living in—Rabbit Angstrom’s middle America.”

“John Updike always wrote beautifully about this part of the world. The middle class houses. The certain kind of red clay. The specific attitude of a person who grew up around here, in the vicinity of Reading.

“If John Updike were still alive and driving around Limerick he’d write something about the beautiful pseudo-cloud coming from the cooling tower of the Limerick plant. He’d say, the white powder of that cloud drifts over the farmland and the strip malls all the same. It dusts the heads of the locals on their way out of the bar on Township Line Road. It dusts everything. You can’t see or feel the dust. It does not harm. But it’s heavy nonetheless. It keeps you here even when you want to pass on through. . . .”