Fifty-seven years after Updike’s first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, was published, it’s still attracting attention. Ray Greenblatt reviewed it last summer for the blog North of Oxford.

“Since John Updike’s oeuvres have come to an end, it is fitting to revisit his very first novel,” he writes.

“John Updike’s short novel of one hundred and fifty pages is equally divided into three chapters. Each chapter contains a dozen sections or more offering glimpses of the people and events at the poorhouse fair as it moves through the day. This kaleidoscopic effect is often intensified by certain fascinating techniques,” he writes.

“Some of Updike’s sentences are bedrock declarations, such as what products sold best at the fair . . . . Or unique personification . . . . Or pure fanciful imagery . . . .

“Late in the novel to underscore the pouring out of the long day and the jagged energy of those tending and attending the fair, Updike uses a stream-of-conscious[ness] method. . . ,” he adds, offering examples from the text.

“Reputations fluctuate. Hemingway, dead now a half-century, in the future might be known for:  a book on bull-fighting or big game hunting; a few stories still unique ninety years later; or A Moveable Feast, nearly an afterthought to him. John Updike has been a factory of endeavor:  two Eastwicks, three Bechs, four Rabbits just in the genre of novel. Will the multiple weights of these works dominate? Time will winnow literature, that and changing culture. Sometimes first is best; I firmly believe that The Poorhouse Fair will endure.”

Read the entire review.