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- Title
A New Deal, a New Updike: The Decline of New Deal Liberalism in John Updike's The Poorhouse Fair.
- Authors
FROMER, YOAV
- Abstract
This paper challenges the prevailing notions that John Updike's fiction was mostly apolitical by offering a fresh and unorthodox reading of his debut novel The Poorhouse Fair (1958). It argues that Updike's application of political metaphor to an ostensibly placid plot that revolves around a New Jersey retirement home illuminates mounting disagreements within the New Deal order regarding power, liberty, democracy, and religion. Unlike conventional narratives that attribute the decline of liberalism in the 1960s to external factors such as Vietnam, racial strife, counterculture, and postindustrialism, this counterintuitive reading of Updike reveals that latent internal philosophical tensions were embedded within liberalism long before these formidable challenges materialized.
- Subjects
POORHOUSE Fair, The (Book : Updike); UPDIKE, John, 1932-2009; LIBERALISM in literature; NEW Deal, 1933-1939; POLITICS in literature; 20TH century American fiction; LITERARY criticism; WELFARE state in literature
- Publication
Journal of American Studies, 2017, Vol 51, Issue 2, p385
- ISSN
0021-8758
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.1017/S0021875816000992