John Updike aims to shape the pastiche portrait of the homegrown terrorist (a la Richard Reid, John Walker, even Timothy McVeigh) into something psychologically rich and artistically profound. A lesser writer would have stumbled into threadbare stereotype, but Updike is up to the task, and his novel ...
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Updike's first novel describes the annual fair staged by the elderly inhabitants of a New Jersey poorhouse. Although everything proceeds along traditional and unremarkable lines for most of the afternoon, a protest suddenly breaks out and threatens to overwhelm the young director of the home.