num_pages: 208
description: The first novel from a master of American letters and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit  “Brilliant...Here is the conflict of real ideas; of real personalities; here is a work of intellectual imagination and great charity. The Poorhouse Fair is a work of art.”— The New York Times Book ReviewThe hero of John Updike’s first novel, published when the author was twenty-six, is ninety-four-year-old John Hook, a dying man who yet refuses to be dominated. His world is a poorhouse—a county home for the aged and infirm—overseen by Stephen Conner, a righteous young man who considers it his duty to know what is best for others. The action of the novel unfolds over a single summer’s day, the day of the poorhouse’s annual fair, a day of escalating tensions between Conner and the rebellious Hook. Its climax is a contest between progress and tradition, benevolence and pride, reason and faith.Appended with a discussion of  the book’s inspiration, its aesthetic sources and models in classics of science fiction, and the way in which its future (projected to be about 1977) compares with the present. The Poorhouse Fair was written in 1957 and published in January of 1959. It was hailed at the time of its publication as “a rare and beautiful achievement” and “a work of intellectual imagination and great charity.” Though its future has degenerated into our present, and Updike’s later work is better known, such critics as Henry Bech have hailed this little novel as, still, “surely his masterpiece.”
language: English
title: The Poorhouse Fair
titlecomplete: The Poorhouse Fair
genres: 20th Century, Literature, Novels, Contemporary, Classics, Fiction, Literary Fiction, American Fiction, United States, American
ratings_count: 811
awards: awardedAt: -315590400000
name: Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, awardedAt: -315590400000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Fiction
publisher: Knopf