The marionettist or puppeteer motif

In "Whatever Happened to Coppelius? Antecedents and Design in Christina Stead's The Salzburg Tales," Michael Ackland writes about "the puppet motif" in the first of Salzburg Tales' short stories, The Marionettist. This is a pdf file.

He writes:

In recasting the marionettist or puppeteer motif, Stead could draw on an extensive tradition that used the puppet theatre as a metaphor for commenting on human existence and authorship.

This is a subtle novel, a term rarely applied to Stead

Judith Kegan Gardiner argues that The Little Hotel is "underappreciated" in her essay, "Christina Stead and the Synecdochic Scam: The Little Hotel." This is a pdf file.

She writes:

Unusually for Stead, in The Little Hotel we hear less of her characters’ speeches than we might like. The characters and their pasts are gradually revealed, with much left open to our imaginations. This is a subtle novel, a term rarely applied to Stead.

Her fictional character incorporates the laughing apocalypse

Brigid Rooney describes the husband and wife of I'm Dying Laughing as "fallen angels" in her essay "Crossing the Rubicon: Abjection and Revolution in Christina Stead's I'm Dying Laughing." This is a pdf file.

She writes:

Her fictional character incorporates the laughing apocalypse, representing even as she displaces not only the despair and horror of the postwar years, but also, it would seem, the difficulty for a generation of committed Marxists of reconciling with their beliefs the mounting evidence of Soviet atrocities.

Emily and Stephen’s first lesson in political reality

Susan Sheridan, writing about I'm Dying Laughing, considers the fate of "art and politics under capitalism, where heroics degenerate into farce" in her essay, "Christina Stead's Last Book: The Novel and the Best-Seller." This is a pdf file.

She writes:

Hollywood provided Emily and Stephen’s first lesson in political reality, where they learned that the Party can be the enemy. Their second major political lesson is learned in postwar Europe, and it is one that they cannot just move continents to escape: that collaboration is everywhere, and may be the condition of survival.

The problem, Stead thought

The British journalist Kate Webb has posted three substantial essays, all built around I'm Dying Laughing. Those essays are: "The American Dilemma: The Comedy of Life and Death in I’m Dying Laughing", "The Hollywood Background", and "Christina Stead and the Problems of Placing an Author".

She writes:

The problem, Stead thought, was that the talent Americans had, the passion and drive which had brought them so far, was of little use in the face of the Crash, the Depression and the Cold War