There's No National Glue Holding

Updike's Style Is An Exquisite Blend Of Melville And Austen: Reading Him Is Like Cutting Through Whale Blubber With Embroidery Scissors.

The Feminization Of America Has Made Emotions Sacrosanct While Condemning As Cold And Unfeeling Rigorous Concepts Such As Duty Andhonor. Propelled By Incessant Hosannas To Woman's "finer" This And "softer" That, We Make Emotional Decisions Instead Of Ethical Ones And Then Congratulate Ourselves For Having "heart.

Familiarity Breeds Democracry.

The American Way Of Stress Is Comparable To Freud's 'beloved Symptom', His Name For The Cherished Neurosis That A Patient Cultivates Like The Rarest Of Orchids And Does Not Want To Be Cured Of. Stress Makes Americans Feel Busy, Important, And In Demand, And Simultaneously Deprived, Ignored, And Victimized. Stress Makes Them Feel Interesting And Complex Instead Of Boring And Simple, And Carries An Assumption Of Sensitivity Not Unlike The Old World Assumption That Aristocrats Were High-strung. In Short, Stress Has Become A Status Symbol.

By Sending The Contradictory Message That The Famous Are Just Plain Folks On Mount Olympus, America Has Forged A Relentless Tension Between Loftiness And Accessibility. Stir In The Fact That The Inborn Talent And Intelligence Needed To Achieve Fame Are Immune To Distributive Tinkering By Government Programs And You Have A Definition Of Fame Certain To Produce Envious Rage: Somebody Screwed Democracy.