![]() ![]() Henny Pollit, our furious heroine, is trapped in a marriage to a sanctimonious bore who keeps her pregnant. But when it was rereleased in 1965, the book finally found the praise it deserved: "a long neglected masterpiece" and a "big black diamond of a book." I became a rabid fan. Her fellow novelist Mary McCarthy was not kind, calling the book "an hysterical tirade" filled with "fearful, discorded vindictiveness." It's hardly surprising that The Man Who Loved Children quickly disappeared. "I say 'impose herself' because her qualities are not apt to win her an immediate, warm acceptance"). This devastating portrait of one of the most hateful, spiteful, unhappy marriages ever imagined was originally published in 1940 with little fanfare and some backhanded good reviews ("Eventually, Christina Stead will impose herself upon the literature of English-speaking countries," Clifton Fadiman wrote in The New Yorker. And no other novel in the history of literature is more depressing than Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children. A "feel bad" book always makes me feel good. Sick of reading about weird children? Let's turn to the rage in adults. Here are parts one, two and three – the final part from the chapter on the famous director's literary heroes follows tomorrow. ![]() Picking up from where we left off yesterday, the latest excerpt from John Waters' new book Role Models looks at Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children and Jane Bowles' Two Serious Ladies. ![]()
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