Book dossier

The Poorhouse Fair

by John Updike

"On the third Wednesday of every August the inhabitants of a mansion-turned-poorhouse in central New Jersey hold their annual fair; this novel describes a fair that occurs about twenty years from now [1958], when the United States itself is heading downhill ... While 'The Poorhouse Fair, ' insofar as it regrets the decline of patriotism, handcraft, and religion, carries a conservative message, its technique is unorthodox; without so much regard for fictional conventions, the author attempts to locate, in the ambiguous area between farce and melodrama, reality's own tone."