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A New Deal, a New Updike: The Decline of New Deal Liberalism in John Updike's The Poorhouse Fair

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2016

YOAV FROMER
YOAV FROMER*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University. Email: fromy857@newschool.edu.
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Abstract

This paper challenges the prevailing notions that John Updike's fiction was mostly apolitical by offering a fresh and unorthodox reading of his debut novel The Poorhouse Fair (1958). It argues that Updike's application of political metaphor to an ostensibly placid plot that revolves around a New Jersey retirement home illuminates mounting disagreements within the New Deal order regarding power, liberty, democracy, and religion. Unlike conventional narratives that attribute the decline of liberalism in the 1960s to external factors such as Vietnam, racial strife, counterculture, and postindustrialism, this counterintuitive reading of Updike reveals that latent internal philosophical tensions were embedded within liberalism long before these formidable challenges materialized.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 385 - 410
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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References

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4 When referring to postwar liberalism, I am not alluding to the broadly defined Lockean principles of individual liberty and the corresponding rights necessary to preserve it (i.e. limited government, popular sovereignty, a market economy). Rather, I am addressing the particular ideology that came to define American liberalism in the later stages of the New Deal and dominated the Democratic Party (and the moderate wing of the Republican Party) until the late 1960s. This included a dedication to the welfare state, a tamed form of regulated capitalism, vigilant anticommunist foreign policy, technocratic government dependent on interest groups rather than participatory democracy, a secularized culture suspicious of religion, and an intellectual sensibility that relied on a rational–empirical perspective. For more on this see Brinkley, Alan, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Vintage, 1996), 6–10 Google Scholar. For a survey of postwar liberal thought see Marsden, George M., The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief (New York: Basic Books, 2014)Google Scholar; Brick, Howard, Transcending Capitalism: Visions of a New Society in Modern American Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Mattson, Kevin, When America Was Great: The Fighting Faith of Postwar Liberalism (London: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar; Pells, Richard H., The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Neuchterlein, James, “Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and the Discontents of Postwar American Liberalism,” Review of Politics, 39, 1 (Jan. 1977), 3–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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54 Updike, “Letters to Plowville,” 15 Nov. 1950, 6 Feb. 1951, 8 May 1951; Updike, “Marx: Man of Mission,” 23–26. For a more biographical survey of Updike's college education and political interests see Fromer, Yoav, “The Liberal Origins of John Updike's Literary Imagination,” Modern Intellectual History (forthcoming fall 2016)Google Scholar, published online 27 Aug. 2015, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S147924431500030X.

55 For more on Updike's intellectual and political writings see Fromer, Yoav, “The Inside-Outsider: John Updike as a New York Intellectual – from Shillington Pennsylvania,” John Updike Review, 4, 2 (Spring 2016), 29–55 Google Scholar.

56 Updike to Moynihan, JUP, folder 5250. Dwight Macdonald to Updike, 25 Sept. 1961, Dwight Macdonald Papers, Yale University Library, Archives and Manuscripts Division, MS# 730, Box 54, Folder 1309. Schlesinger to Updike, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Papers, Box 137, Folder 137.4, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library. Ludwig, Jeffrey, “Roommates and Rivals: John Updike, Christopher Lasch, and a Harvard University Friendship,” John Updike Review, 2, 2 (Spring 2013), 3–25 Google Scholar. On his diplomatic voyages see Updike, Self-Consciousness, chapter 4. On ADA see Lorna Kaufman to Updike, 5 Nov. 1973, JUP, Folder 2921. On Sakharov see Adrian Karatnycky to Updike, 16 Dec. 1980, Folder 5891.

57 Updike, More Matter, 3–16, esp. 13.

58 Hofstadter, 50. On Lasch's relationship with Hofstadter see Miller, Eric, Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010)Google Scholar, chapters 3–4.

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65 See Fitelson, David, “Conflict Unresolved,” Commentary (March 1959), 275–76Google Scholar; Norman Podhoretz, “Novels: Style and Substance,” The Reporter, 22 Jan. 1959, 42–43. Judie Newman has pointed toward Amy Mortis's revered quilts as a potential “feminine resolution” to the irrepressible conflicts between the chief male protagonists: by incorporating both individual and communal aspects into her “social fabric,” Amy is the only one who has actually provided the plot with an opportunity for harmony. See Newman, John Updike, 11.

66 Plath, 45. For more on Updike's motivation for writing see Updike, John, Picked-Up Pieces (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Crest, 1977), 45–54 Google Scholar.