Conflict Unresolved
The Poorhouse fair.
by John Updike.
Knopf. 185 pp. $3.50.
John Updike, one of the more talented of the New Yorker’s resident storytellers, has had a hearty but not very successful try at a first novel. The failure of The Poorhouse fair lies largely in its adherence to established New Yorker conventions regarded in many quarters as rather OK. One does not mind the OK archness and urbanity that occasionally creep into Updike’s prose. He has a genuine way with words and usually rises above that. Other OK things, however, are more disturbing: in particular, a rather mannered way of exploring character, and a distaste-for-the-sight-of-blood daintiness that he shares with certain other New Yorker contributors (e.g., John Cheever and Harold Brodkey). Most disturbing is that New Yorker-like critical remoteness which enables one to be awfully aware of, say, the “ridiculous” build-up in nuclear armaments, and then (having exercised one’s social conscience) to go on to chuckle at the “ridiculous” oversight of an Iowa proofreader. In being aware of impending perils, one is relieved of responsibility for heading them off: in being aware of the existence of ideas, one is absolved from thinking about them.
In Updike’s book, a host of meaningful problems are paraded in the tale of a revolt of some aged poorhouse inhabitants against their rector. But somehow, before the book is ended, the problems have evaporated and we never know why.
The central issue is set forth as a conflict between the planned and the unplanned society. The rector, Conner, seeks to impose order on his charges by such means as assigning name-tagged chairs on the front porch. Asked to disclose his conception of heaven, he replies with a description of the Ideal State (“There will be no disease . . . there will be ample time for recreation.”) The inmates, however, cling to a belief in a mysterious, unpredictable God, and cherish the memory of their former rector, Mendelssohn, whose authoritarianism they preferred to Conner’s impersonal egalitarianism. Conner means well, but his every action creates antagonism.
The climax comes on the morning of the annual fair given by the inmates. First, it begins to rain—symbolizing disorder and the doings of that unpredictable God. The rain agitates the anarchic impulses of the inmates, and at this unpropitious moment Conner chooses to organize a work project. The inmates suddenly begin pelting him with stones. Conner comes around somewhat—he is willing to play God to the extent of “forgiving” his charges; but even this he never gets around to doing. Suddenly the sun comes out (God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world?). The fair is on: a brass band plays the old songs, the townspeople flock to the fair. Conner retires to his office to check reports, and the inmates likewise fade from the scene. The remainder of the book is mostly devoted to selections from the conversations of the townspeople—the most ordinary conversations, one supposes, that Updike could devise, and very funny; but the conflict between Conner and the inmates is neither continued nor resolved. It is just neglected.
This is more than a dramatic letdown. It is the sign of an inability to deal—beyond a certain point—with ideas and the problems that ideas create. Whether Updike’s “failure of nerve” can properly be identified with the New Yorker syndrome, or whether it is symptomatic of a type of cultural failure, is, of course, debatable. But that does not make the book any better.
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