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The Man Who Loved Children: A Novel de…
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The Man Who Loved Children: A Novel (original: 1940; edição: 2001)

de Christina Stead, Randall Jarrell (Introdução)

MembrosResenhasPopularidadeAvaliação médiaConversas / Menções
1,4334412,774 (3.76)2 / 196
With an Introduction by Randall Jarrell. Sam and Henny Pollit have too many children, too little money, and too much loathing for each other. As Sam uses the children's adoration to feed his own voracious ego, Henny watches in bleak despair, knowing the bitter reality that lies just below his mad visions. A chilling novel of family life, the relations between parents and children, husbands and wives, The Man Who Loved Children, is acknowledged as a contemporary classic.… (mais)
Membro:Stig_Brantley
Título:The Man Who Loved Children: A Novel
Autores:Christina Stead
Outros autores:Randall Jarrell (Introdução)
Informação:Picador (2001), Edition: 1, Paperback, 576 pages
Coleções:Sua biblioteca
Avaliação:
Etiquetas:Lit, Australia

Informações da Obra

The Man Who Loved Children de Christina Stead (1940)

  1. 22
    Chesapeake Country de Lucian Niemeyer (TheWasp)
    TheWasp: illustrated overview of setting and history of area in which novel is based
  2. 12
    The Little Friend de Donna Tartt (shaunie)
  3. 01
    Nothing Holds Back the Night de Delphine de Vigan (JuliaMaria)
    JuliaMaria: unkonventionelle große Familien
  4. 02
    Farther Away: Essays de Jonathan Franzen (JuliaMaria)
    JuliaMaria: Jonathan Franzen preist den Roman von Christina Stead im Essay "Die tollste Familie, von der je erzählt wurde".
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Mostrando 1-5 de 44 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
A masterpiece. A difficult, challenging, cruelly misanthropic, desperately hopeful (or hopefully desperate?), linguistic feat. Patrick White famously considered Christina Stead to be the greatest Australian novelist, and - although I think he was - Stead must be in the running. The dire situation of Henny and Sam's household was based in part on Stead's own childhood (the reason why she fled Australia) and you feel the needle-sharp accuracy of her characterisations. Surely neither of these people can be real. Yet they also feel so true. Yet they also feel so literary.

Stead must be read on her terms, especially in The Man Who Loved Children, but she will reward those who like their literature confronting, tangled, and inventive. (Also, if you're going to buy a used copy, buy the Penguin paperback from the 1960s with an introduction by Randall Jerrall! He almost single-handedly restored this forgotten 1940s novel to the public eye, and the introduction is a masterpiece of old-world criticism: even-handed, luxurious in its praise but fair in its criticisms, and masterful in its analysis of the central characters and themes.) ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
I'll start by saying that I understand why many contemporary novelists are fans of this novel. The family dynamics in this novel are so life-like, I felt like a fly on the wall who is observing a real dysfunctional family. That being said, the novel suffers from a lack of critical editing. It could easily have been cut to half the length without any loss of resonance or truth. Still, I recommend it to anyone that writes about family dynamics and any fan of novels centering around those dynamics. Just be prepared to work hard to make it through the overly drawn out center of the novel. ( )
  dogboi | Sep 16, 2023 |
What is memorable are the book's characters, especially the couple, Sam and Henny, and Louise to a certain extent. The plot is rather long, and you need patience to get through it. But if you have patience, there are some unforgettable scenes. For example, Ms Aiden's visit to their house. You see how run-down and decrepit their living environment is, and how poor the family is. In contrast, Sam thinks they live in paradise. He lives in a world of his own and is quite unlikeable. He touts the goodness of man but mocks and denigrates people, advocates eugenics, and manipulates his children. In contrast, Henny is the pitiable one. Despite her pronouncement to the contrary, she loves her children and is the one silently helping the family to survive. ( )
  siok | Aug 9, 2023 |
Well, that's what I get for reading that Christina Stead, the author of The Man Who Loved Children, is from Australia and assuming the novel's setting followed suit, therefore qualifying as A Book Set Somewhere You’ve Always Wanted To Visit. I have never been to the land down under. I have been to DC—where the novel is set—multiple times, and could have done without this visit.

Until the last chapter, this was a thoroughly deplorable book that left me wondering why it made the 1,001 BYMRBYD list. Some of my early review notes include the observation that Ms. Stead must have been disappointed that The Idiot was already used as the title of another, much better novel, because her main character displays all the traits of one. Another note, in response to the title of section 5 of chapter 8, "What Will Make You Shut Up," was: apparently, nothing. The preface to my copy credits Sam's annoying patois to various works I'm either entirely unfamiliar with or have only the barest knowledge of: Artemus Ward, Hiawatha, Uncle Remus. I struggled to believe pre-adolescent children would be as enthralled with their father's blathering as portrayed, given the mundane, juvenile nature of the letters they write to him while he is away.

Sam Pollit, the government bureaucrat at that heart of this tale of family disfunction, is an insufferable buffoon of a father who babbles in baby-talk-like gibberish to his children. His wife, Henny, debutant turned wretch, spends the bulk of her days hiding in her room from her verbally abusive husband. The first four hundred pages of the story paint a grim picture of their marriage. Sam takes a ten-month government trip to Singapore. Upon his return, he loses his position (for reasons which go largely unexplained). The family moves to a run-down house in Baltimore, where the unemployed Pollit spends his days in idiotic schemes and activities rather than seeking a way to support his family. Unsurprisingly, the family becomes destitute.

Then, in an inverse deus ex machina, all sorts of awful things happen in the final chapter, leading to an unexpected but long overdue ending which I won't spoil. This last chapter might have been stretched into an interesting novella if prefaced by a brief history of the family's unhappiness which spared readers from slogging through endless pages of Sam's "conversations."

Ultimately, The Man Who Loved Children is a portrait of an unkind father inflicting emotional distress on his hapless wife and children, and the price they all pay for his so-called devotion. While the ending somewhat redeems the novel, I don't agree with the jacket blurb describing it as "one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century." ( )
  skavlanj | Sep 30, 2022 |
This book grows on you. Please stick at it. You may want to quit after 100 or so pages. Sam Pollit is the evil that looms in half formed ideas and narcissistic kindness. He is a criminal who believes he has committed no crime other than love. But his "love" is toxic. It is malignant. It is childish. He is cruel. Stead has written a beautiful novel that can only be fully grasped by finishing its 500 pages. I have given it 4 stars. But I feel other the next couple of days it will haunt me to a 5. ( )
  jaydenmccomiskie | Sep 27, 2021 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 44 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
This novel is not for everyone, nor for every mood. I have read it twice with great admiration. When I tried to read it a third time (when I had a young family myself), I couldn't stand it. If Hamlet runs four hours and Lear almost five, well, The Man Who Loved Children runs 14 or 15 hours, and though the plot is actually quite neat and progresses steadily, novel-readers are not used to 15-hour storms. The catharsis here, compared with any other tragedy, is a long time coming. Nevertheless, Stead's novel is like Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier in its power to astonish and compel with each reading. It is sui generis among novels, and Stead, too, never wrote anything else like it.
adicionado por PGCM | editarThe Guardian, Jane Smiley (Jun 10, 2006)
 
"Although “The Man Who Loved Children” is probably too difficult (difficult to stomach, difficult to allow into your heart) to gain a mass following, it’s certainly less difficult than other novels common to college syllabuses, and it’s the kind of book that, if it is for you, is really for you. I’m convinced that there are tens of thousands of people in this country who would bless the day the book was published, if only they could be exposed to it. I might never have found my way to it myself had my wife not discovered it in the public library in Somerville, Mass., in 1983, and pronounced it the truest book she’d ever read."
 
In a letter to Thistle Harris Stead in 1942 Christina Stead wrote:

Every work of art should give utterance, or indicate, the dreadful blind strength and the cruelty of the creative impulse, that is why they must all have what are called errors, both of taste and style: in this it is like a love-affair (a book, I mean.) A love affair is not delicate or clean: but it is an eye-opener! The sensuality, delicacy of literature does not exist for me; only the passion, energy and struggle, the night of which no one speaks, the creative act: some people like to see the creative act banished from the book - it should be put behind one and a neatly-groomed little boy in sailor-collar introduced. This is perhaps quite right. But for me it is not right: I like each book to have not only the little boy, not very neat, but also the preceding creative act: then it is only, that it gives me full satisfaction.1

Here is an author quite conscious of the imperfect, disunified nature of her art. In this letter, Stead shows a rather postmodern consciousness of the novel as creation and an interest in exposing the act of creation in the work of art. Without the assistance of poststructuralist critics, Stead points to the importance of 'errors' as indicators to the reader of art's place in life - art as 'struggle', as process rather than as product.
 
Zeer lovende bespreking. Ook nawoord en vertaling worden hogelijk geprezen.

"Pas bij de heruitgave in 1966 kreeg het boek, mede door een lang nawoord van Randall Jarrell, de aandacht die het verdiende, en al snel werd het beschouwd als veruit de meest indrukwekkende roman uit de hele Australische literatuur van de twintigste eeuw."
adicionado por PGCM | editarVrij Nederland
 
Het is erg knap zoals Stead Sams maatschappelijke idealen koppelt aan de praktijk van het gezin – tirannie, manipulatie, geldingsdrang en emotionele chantage (‘Sammiepammie vraagt niet veel, alleen dit...’).
De man die van kinderen hield is te vol om hier recht te doen, soms misschien zelfs iets te vol. Maar de indruk die na lezing overblijft, is een aangrijpend beeld van destructie. De ideale staat die Sam thuis probeert te creëren, ontaardt in een hel. Een koningsdrama, maar wel een dat zich afspeelt binnen een ‘gewoon’ gezin. Het drama wordt door die gewoonheid alleen maar versterkt, en dat zal de reden zijn geweest dat het in de jaren zestig lezers wél aansprak, en dat het boek invloed zou krijgen op andere schrijvers. Ik kan me voorstellen dat bijvoorbeeld A.M. Homes dit las, voordat ze Music for Torching (1999) over een disfunctioneel gezin in een Amerikaanse buitenwijk schreef.
 

» Adicionar outros autores

Nome do autorFunçãoTipo de autorObra?Status
Christina Steadautor principaltodas as ediçõescalculado
Barbero, SilviaTradutorautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Benítez Reyes, FelipeIntroduçãoautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Bergsma, PeterTradutorautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Bossi, FlorianaTradutorautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Carter, AngelaPrefácioautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Franzen, JonathanIntroduçãoautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Hébert, C. M.Narradorautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Jarrell, RandallIntroduçãoautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Lessing, DorisIntroduçãoautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Schmidt, MichaelIntroduçãoautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
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All the June Saturday afternoon Sam Pollit's children were on the lookout for him as they skated round the dirt sidewalks and seamed old asphalt of R Street and Reservoir Road that bounded the deep-grassed acres of Tohoga House, their home.
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En je kan alles aan, alle wereldproblemen, terwijl er de hele tijd andere vrouwen zijn, jij hypocriet, jij smerige, bloedeloze hypocriet, te goed, andere vrouwen, wetenschapsvrouwen, jonge meiden en je eigen vrouw. Ik zal al je wetenschappelijke verenigingen schrijven, ik zal de Dienst voor Natuurbehoud schrijven, ik zal ze eens vertellen wat voor leven ik heb gehad. Sla me maar, sla me maar neer, ik kan er niet meer tegen. Je dreigt maar je doet niks, niks om me een kans te geven om weg te komen, niet voordat je iets tegen me hebt om mijn kinderen te stelen. Maar dat zal je niet, dat zal je niet! Ik vermoord ze allemaal, ik vermoord ze allemaal vanavond, ik giet die stinkende olie brandend je strot in en en vermoord mijn kinderen, je krijgt ze niet.
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With an Introduction by Randall Jarrell. Sam and Henny Pollit have too many children, too little money, and too much loathing for each other. As Sam uses the children's adoration to feed his own voracious ego, Henny watches in bleak despair, knowing the bitter reality that lies just below his mad visions. A chilling novel of family life, the relations between parents and children, husbands and wives, The Man Who Loved Children, is acknowledged as a contemporary classic.

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