{"id":6671,"date":"2025-07-04T08:03:43","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T13:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6671"},"modified":"2025-07-04T08:24:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T13:24:28","slug":"updikes-american-everyman-is-referenced-in-a-july-4-think-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2025\/07\/04\/updikes-american-everyman-is-referenced-in-a-july-4-think-piece\/","title":{"rendered":"Updike’s American Everyman is referenced in a July 4 think piece"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s July 4 in the U.S., and Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is once again in the news\u2014or rather, a think piece. Warning: Though Harry leaned right, The Nation, <\/em>in which this piece by Jeet Heer appears, leans left. One statistic, though, seems more personal than political, because the comparison year (2004) is one during which another Republican president, George W. Bush, was in office:<\/p>\n

Currently, “Only 58 percent of Americans<\/a> say they are extremely proud or very proud of their country. (This is down from a high of 91 percent in 2004.) Among Democrats, this number stands at 38 percent, among independents at 53 percent. Among Gen Z Americans (born between 1997 and 2012), only 41 percent feel pride in their country.”<\/p>\n

\"\"Heer had written, “Not too long ago, the Fourth of July was a festive occasion: a day of national celebration, hot dogs and parades, flag-waving and fireworks. John Updike memorialized the traditional July 4 holiday in Rabbit at Rest<\/em>\u00a0(1990), the\u00a0final novel<\/a>\u00a0of his Rabbit trilogy. In that novel, Updike\u2019s antihero, Harry \u201cRabbit\u201d Angstrom, a former high school basketball star now in his paunchy and troubled late middle age, dresses up as Uncle Sam for a parade in his hometown of Brewer, Pennsylvania (a thinly disguised rendition of the real-life Reading). His fake beard uneasily held on by Scotch tape, Angstrom surveys the American throng gathered in patriotic jubilation:<\/p>\n

\n

White-haired women sit in their aluminum lawn chairs down by the curb dressed like fat babies in checks and frills, their shapeless veined legs cheerfully protruding. Middle-aged men have squeezed their keglike thighs into bicycle shorts meant for boys. Young mothers have come from their back-yard aboveground swimming pools in bikinis and high-sided twists of spandex that leave half their buttocks and breasts exposed.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

“Like Angstrom, the celebrants are imperfect and beset by their own private anxieties, but also beneficiaries of a country that has allowed them in some small way to enjoy the Jeffersonian promise of the pursuit of happiness. Exultant despite his physical diminishment, Angstrom has an epiphany: ‘Harry’s eyes burn and the impression giddily\u2014as if he had been lifted up to survey all human history\u2014grows upon him, making his heart thump worse and worse, that all in all this is the happiest fucking country the world has ever seen.”<\/p>\n

Read the whole article.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s July 4 in the U.S., and Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is once again in the news\u2014or rather, a think piece. Warning: Though Harry leaned right, The Nation, in which this piece by Jeet Heer appears, leans left. One statistic, though, … Continue reading →<\/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":[6,53,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-updike-in-context","category-updike-quoted"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6671","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=6671"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6676,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6671\/revisions\/6676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}