e, I have executed his commands; acquired pencils, paper, and an office. Now I wait apprehensively for his next command, or at least a nod of appreciation, and he smiles through me as if I am already transparent with failure. graduating from Harvard in 1954 with a BA degree, Updike studied drawing in England for a year at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, and on his return to the United States went to work for The New Yorker, a weekly magazine which has published many of his short stories. After two years there, he made the courageous decision to support his young family entirely by writing. He left New York for Massachusetts, and he had since produced impressive novels, stories, poems, and critical essays. the publication of his first collection of poetry, The Carpentered Hen and Other Tamed Animals (1958), John Updike published several other collections of poetry, many novels and short stories, numerous essays and book reviews.the first, Updike < span align = "justify"> s stories had a freshness and honesty that brought them regularly into The New Yorker s pages. They have since been collected under such titles as The Same Door (1959), Pigeon Feathers (1962), The Music School (1966) and Museums and Women (1972). Novels have brought Updike further acclaim. The first novel Poorhouse Fair was published in 1959. Updike s The Poorhouse Fair is a narrow-gauged story, quietly yet effectively done. The story concerns a county poorhouse, its inmates, its prefect, and visitors to the annual Fair. The building housing is a decayed Victorian mansion. In the cupola, three or four stories high, Conner, the rationalistic, ambitious, idealistic homosexual prefect has his office. He sees himself as a scientifically minded director of his elderly, sickly, and indigent charges. Because he envisions future and better positions with the federal government, he wants to be successful as prefect. Therefore he attempts to institutionalize the lives of the inmates. For example, he puts name tags on chairs, claiming this gives each individual his or her chair. The inmates know better - it gives each of them a tag or number; they resent his busy work.entire action takes place on the day of the Fair. During the afternoon there is rain. Conner joins the inmates, wanting to show them his charity and chumminess. They resist him, and as the rain continues their resentment, like the humidity, increases. Finally the rain stops. Outside, as Conner is bent over, one of the inmates, Gregg, slightly intoxicated, throws a stone at him. The others also pelt him. Trying not to display wrath or lose his dignity, Conner walks off. s elderly indigents have few comforts, and mostly don't even want those. They want to be themselves, unorganized, experiencing the days or years left to them. Being poor, they have few illusions about their eminence or significance in the social order. The visitors to the Fair seek power, sexual encounters, and money. These three - power, sex, money - compose their dream of the world and their roles in it.the most successful have been the three tales in the Rabbit series: Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), and Rabbit Is Rich (1981), for which Updike was awarded a second National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. The sexual frankness of Updike s second novel brought the author to public attention. The author exposes his old anti-hero to the radicalism and sexual freedom of the youth movement of the 1960s. He takes his inspiration from the American Protestant small-town eastern middle class , treating themes on what he calls the despair of the daily . These novels chronicle the life of Harry Rabbit Angstrom, who lives, as his creator might have, an outwardly conventional life in a small Pennsylvania town. In revealing Rabbit s yearnings and disappointments, the uncertain course of his heart, and the dismaying fluctuations of his relationships with family and friends, Updike gives us a remarkably accurate portrait of the 1960 s and I970 s in the United States, the Americans, reacting to changing attitudes about national, social, and moral behavior. As always with an Updike novel, readers enjoy the feel of life - the sights, smells, and sounds that bring life into focus.in all the Rabbit series John Updike s characters in Rabbit , Run can hardly be said to be participants in a dialectic. Mostly they feel. Structurally, and stylistically, Rabbit, Run is skillfully handled. The action is in the present tense - Rabbit feels, Rabbit sees, Ra...
