This paper challenges the prevailing notions that John Updike's fiction was mostly apolitical by offering a fresh and unorthodox reading of his debut novelThe 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.