letty fox: her luck

Note. This post is a part of a series of Christina Stead link-posts. You can find the primary post here. It will connect you to the rest. I've added them to the bottom of this post too, so scroll down if you prefer.


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Commentary on Letty Fox: Her Luck.

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At Bookslut.

This is the potential that chick lit has and is constantly squandered by the bestselling authors.

At the Guardian's Book Blog.

The narrative is peppered with barbed comments and humiliations; pleasure is taken in the downfall of others. Plenty have argued that Stead intends this: that the novel remains a timely reminder of the poisonous games society forces its members (particularly women) into playing. To me, however, there's also something unconscious in the cruelties.

At the Scotsman.

Letty's voice leaps off the page with an ultra-modern frankness about her sexual and emotional life. It calls to mind the sensation one has reading Colette, whose books also seem "of the minute", yet were written even earlier.

At that blog called Anecdotal Evidence.

It seems a novel can bee as big and sloppy and life-grabbing as Letty Fox (or Augie [March]) and still be a great work of art. The form is infinitely elastic, and we merely ask that it be interesting.

At a blog called Outmoded Authors.

Also amusing and somewhat surprising was Stead's/Letty's frank talk about horniness.

At a blog called Verity's Virago Venture.

I have read elsewhere on the internet that this book could be read as "early chick-lit", anticipating the concerns of contemporary women, but I feel there are other books of the period which also do that.

At a blog called Underbelly, run by a blogger who calls himself Buce.

Whatever you might think of [Letty's] schemes and aspirations,still her stark vivacity is (I should have thought) something that you couldn't help but find engaging.

Among the Stead-related bits of paraphernalia held at the National Archives of Australia is this report, submitted to the censorship board in 1947 by a man who wondered if Letty Fox should be banned. (It was.)

The poor literary quality of the novel, combined with its salacious nature, is hardly sufficient grounds for banning unless it has passages which are definitely indecent.

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General Commentary on Christina Stead.

Commentary on The Man Who Loved Children.

Commentary on miscellaneous other books published by Stead.

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