{"id":5711,"date":"2022-08-29T09:03:12","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T14:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=5711"},"modified":"2022-08-29T09:06:10","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T14:06:10","slug":"dallas-columnist-invokes-updike-in-writing-about-infamous-conspiracy-theorist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2022\/08\/29\/dallas-columnist-invokes-updike-in-writing-about-infamous-conspiracy-theorist\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas columnist invokes Updike in writing about infamous conspiracy theory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>On the 50th anniversary of JFK&#8217;s assassination, the <em>Dallas Observer<\/em>&#8216;s Jim Schutze wrote a column titled &#8220;Umbrella Man, Umbrella Man, Please Stay Away. Don&#8217;t Come to Dealey on JFK Day.&#8221; The title itself is pure, poetic, fun with language, so it&#8217;s perhaps no surprise that Updike turns up. <\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-default\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2022\/08\/Screen-Shot-2022-08-29-at-8.04.32-AM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"141\" height=\"132\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2022\/08\/Screen-Shot-2022-08-29-at-8.04.32-AM.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5712\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Louie Steven Witt, are you still out there somewhere, alive? Would you tell me if you were? You know you&#8217;re back in <em>The Dallas Morning News<\/em> this morning, but only as a ghost,&#8221; Schutze began.  Witt was identified as the &#8220;umbrella man&#8221; during the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. The umbrella man was one of the closest bystanders when the assassin&#8217;s bullet struck President Kennedy, and the only one in the area with an umbrella who was opening and closing it. A signal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;You have something in common with the old rich Dallas people sponsoring the 50th whatever-it-is-this-year. A half century ago all of you were abducted and transported into the bizarre quantum universe of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory. When <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/books\/double-take\/updike-j-f-k-and-the-umbrella-man\">he wrote about you<\/a> in particular, Mr. Witt, in <em>The New Yorker<\/em> in 1967, the late great novelist John Updike described the alternative reality that consumed you as &#8216;a sub-atomic realm where laws are mocked, where persons have the life-span of beta particles and the transparency of neutrinos, and where a rough kind of averaging out must substitute for absolute truth.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasobserver.com\/news\/umbrella-man-umbrella-man-please-stay-away-dont-come-to-dealey-on-jfk-day-7144025\">whole article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the 50th anniversary of JFK&#8217;s assassination, the Dallas Observer&#8216;s Jim Schutze wrote a column titled &#8220;Umbrella Man, Umbrella Man, Please Stay Away. Don&#8217;t Come to Dealey on JFK Day.&#8221; The title itself is pure, poetic, fun with language, so &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2022\/08\/29\/dallas-columnist-invokes-updike-in-writing-about-infamous-conspiracy-theorist\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updike-in-pop-culture","category-updike-quoted"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5711"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5714,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5711\/revisions\/5714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}