'A Skyrocket Waiting to be Let Off', but to where? Christina Stead's first impressions of the United States and her postwar literary rehabilitation

Abstract

[Extract]Christina Stead was, as Jose Yglesias rightly highlighted in 1965, a product of the 1930s-its controversies and epochal events had indelibly shaped her novels and diverse pronouncements. The occasion was a review of the recently reissued The Man Who Loved Children,about which he made a number of crucial, dissenting points. Whereas others focused on the book's extraordinary human insights or, like Jarrell in his highly influential prefatory essay, praised it as an unforgettable, rarely equalled portrayal of family life, Yglesias insisted that 'Marxist ideas ... are inseparable from Stead's literary vision.