On Wednesday I read John Updike's first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, a work he wrote back in 1958 to some critical acclaim and a burgeoning literary career. Poorhouse is something of a futuristic work, though tame by today's standards, and the work is indicative of the times, with it's various abbreviations for "curse" words and entendres.
Reading The Poorhouse Fair now, after reading so much of Updike's mature work, served to witness his enormous talent at an early age. The author photo on the back cover reveals a studious man, dark-haired and fresh from Oxford, reclining on a bench, possessing an air of self-assurance coupled with friendliness. One gets the impression Updike posed for the photo and then went out for beers afterwards.
I'm glad to have read Poorhouse on a snow day. It's a terse book, a mere 180 pages or so in length, though heavy reading. It's a great book to make a writer like me feel the weight of depression and winter's heavy hand, having given up long ago at being able to write, myself, such magnificent and austere prose.
Ah, but such is life. Some, like Updike, were meant to scale the literary heights and others, like me, to feed on the bottom scraps of the hack.
How poor I am!
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