Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering why the hell you went.

The line compresses a familiar Updikean theme—suburban restlessness—into a mordant image of perpetual motion without clear purpose. “Driving somewhere and then driving back” evokes the car-centered geography of postwar America: commuting, errands, social calls, and leisure all mediated by highways and parking lots. The punchline (“wondering why the hell you went”) turns that mobility into existential anticlimax, suggesting that the culture’s promise of freedom-through-movement often yields boredom, regret, or a sense of wasted time. Read broadly, it’s a critique of distraction and consumer routine: activity substitutes for meaning, and the journey becomes a loop rather than progress.