Back Novels 1959–1965

John Updike: Novels 1959–1965

The Poorhouse Fair | Rabbit, Run | The Centaur | Of the Farm More

Edited by Christopher Carduff

Library of America launches its definitive multi-volume edition of John Updike’s novels with the four early works that signaled the arrival of one of the most gifted young novelists of the 1960s.

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

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Save $75 when you purchase the five-volume set of John Updike’s novels.

Twenty-six-year-old John Updike was already well known as a contributor of stories and poems to The New Yorker when, in January 1959, he published The Poorhouse Fair, the first of four novels that mine his early life in small-town Pennsylvania. All four are collected here in this inaugural volume of the Library of America edition of Updike’s novels.

In an act of imaginative daring for such a young writer, Updike took for his protagonist in The Poorhouse Fair a spirited ninety-four-year-old former schoolteacher now resident in a rural poorhouse. Over the course of a single eventful day, John Hook emerges as a philosophical opponent to Stephen Conner, the facility’s officious young administrator, who is convinced he has found in bureaucratic order the sure path to his and others’ happiness.

The racy and provocative Rabbit, Run (1960), one of the 100 best modern novels published in English according to Time magazine, introduces Updike’s most enduring protagonist, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high school basketball star who, feeling constrained by his middle-class life, leaves his pregnant wife and two-year-old son. Rabbit’s decision to go “on the road” promises an escape from the countervailing pressures of desire and duty, a chance to recapture some missing magic, but at what price?

The Centaur (1963), winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, is a contrasting companion piece to Rabbit, Run, a study of a good and dutiful family man and the spiritual cost of his self-sacrificing devotion. The novel imagines the story of Chiron―the noblest of the centaurs, who, grievously wounded yet unable to die, gives up his immortality―retold as father-son tragicomedy, unfolding in alternating chapters of present-tense narrative and myth-saturated reminiscence.

The novella Of the Farm (1965) is one of Updike’s loveliest performances, a chamber piece for four voices: Joey Robinson, a thirty-five-year-old Manhattan advertising executive; his second wife, Peggy; her eleven-year-old son, Richard; and Joey’s mother, a widow now living alone on the farm where she was born and where Joey grew up. Over a long autumn weekend at the farm, this quartet confesses, argues, and apologizes, airs old grievances and seeks new alliances. The novel plays variations on the central theme of the works in this volume―the challenge of being at once true to yourself and true to those closest to you.

Rounding out this edition are seven nonfiction pieces—introductions, speeches, and memoirs—that elaborate upon the composition and themes of these four novels.

Christopher Carduff is Books editor of The Wall Street Journal. He is the editor of John Updike’s posthumous collections Higher Gossip (essays & criticism), Always Looking (writings on art), Selected Poems, and Collected Stories. A former member of the staff of Library of America, he is the editor of the LOA edition of the works of William Maxwell.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Project support for this volume was provided by The Giorgi Family Foundation.

This volume is available for adoption in the Guardian of American Letters Fund.
Table of Contents

THE POORHOUSE FAIR
RABBIT, RUN
THE CENTAUR
OF THE FARM

APPENDIX
Introduction to the 1977 Knopf reissue of The Poorhouse Fair
Note to the 2004 Ballantine edition of The Poorhouse Fair
Foreword to the Modern Library’s omnibus edition of T_he Poorhouse Fair_ and Rabbit, Run
“Special Message” to readers of the Franklin Library’s signed limited edition of Rabbit, Run
Reminiscence of Alfred A. Knopf and the publication, in 1960, of Rabbit, Run
Remarks upon accepting the National Book Award for Fiction for The Centaur
Introduction to the Czech edition of Of the Farm

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-581-5 824 pages

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N° 311 Library of America Series

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