{"id":7055,"date":"2026-07-12T08:39:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T13:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=7055"},"modified":"2026-07-12T08:39:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T13:39:27","slug":"millennials-advised-to-read-john-updike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/07\/12\/millennials-advised-to-read-john-updike\/","title":{"rendered":"Millennials advised to read John Updike"},"content":{"rendered":"

In “No One Reads John Updike\u2014And Why Millennial Americans Should,”<\/a> Tom Vondriska writes with the kind of persuasive flourish that is appropriate to an essay about America’s great stylist of the last half of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Contemplating America’s 250th anniversary, Vondriska writes that “only the superannuated medium of the novel can do proper justice to national self reflection. By slowing it down. Moby Dick<\/em>, Walden<\/em> (a novel in feel, if not content), Huckleberry Finn<\/em>, Catcher in the Rye<\/em>, and On the Road<\/em> timestamp America across decades and centuries. The time period most resonant for extant Americans in 2026\u2014that is, the decades after the war\u2014has a single literary protagonist whose life traces the arc of the American century and whose story reveals how this country dealt with finding itself at the center of the world. His name is Harry Angstrom and he was created by John Updike, who called him Rabbit.<\/p>\n

“No one reads John Updike in 2026” because “Updike does not fit in a basket Americans feel comfortable, in 2026, peering into. His writing is not didactic. There is no moral in tow. His characters are not progressive for the time he writes in (1950-1990, mostly) and certainly not for the present day. He does not rely on postmodern hijinks and stupid tricks to keep the reader engaged. There are no meta-textual, show-offy pyrotechnics.The author does not seek to confuse the readers or make them feel stupid. The characters are not created to be redeemed and if they grow or change, this is incidental. The characters are not created to be liked. There are no wizards, or time travel, or vampires, no strange inter-textual monkey business with trippy dreamlike surrealism transporting the reader to some altered state of confabulated vertigo. But the writing is simply the most flawless prose in the English language in the 20th century. The characters are set loose in the real world, in America, and make their way. The most famous of Updike’s creations and the one whose life tells the greatest literary story about post-1945 America is Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom”<\/p>\n

Read the entire essay.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In “No One Reads John Updike\u2014And Why Millennial Americans Should,” Tom Vondriska writes with the kind of persuasive flourish that is appropriate to an essay about America’s great stylist of the last half of the 20th century. Contemplating America’s 250th … 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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-updike-in-context"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7055","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=7055"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7058,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7055\/revisions\/7058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}