| The Poorhouse Fair | |
| Author: | John Updike |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Publisher: | Alfred A. Knopf |
| Release Date: | 1959 |
The Poorhouse Fair (1959) was the first novel by the American author John Updike. A second edition (New York : Knopf, 1977) included an introduction by the author and was slightly revised.[1]
The residents of the Diamond County Home for the Aged prepare for their annual fair, a summer celebration at which they sell their crafts and produce to the people of the nearby town. The fair is at first rained out, and the young prefect, Conner, turns the "inmates" against him by arguing with the noble Hook (94 years old, a former teacher with strong religious beliefs). After the rain clears, some residents fling small stones at Conner. The novel examines the political and religious dialectics that exist among its characters and their respective generations.[2] [3]
The novel has been overshadowed by Updike's more popular works, and reviews have been mixed. As examples, Donald Barr of The New York Times deemed it "a work of intellectual imagination and great charity," [4] while Commentary called it a "hearty but not very successful try at a first novel."[5]
Author and dramatist Richard Gilman acknowledges the “deficiencies in some central qualities” of the novel advanced by critics and offers this caveat:
Literary critic Whitney Balliet provides this appraisal of The Poorhouse Fair:
Balliet adds:
The Poorhouse Fair couldn’t be farther from the thinly veiled, self-purgative catalog of an author’s adolescence that constitutes the usual first novel. Indeed, it seeks to enter into the minds of people ranging from their seventies well into their nineties, and, within the book’s purposes succeeds - no mean feat for a novelist born in 1932.[6]
Literary critic Joyce Markle identifies the thematic center of the novel: