House of All Nations

by Christina Stead

The devious world of international finance comes alive in Christina Stead’s enthralling epic about a ruthless bank director in 1930s Paris.

Praised as “a work of extraordinary talent” by the New York Times, Christina Stead’s ambitiously layered House of All Nations is an engrossing satire of wealth and manipulation. Set in an elite European bank in the 1930s, Stead’s epic spans the interwar years of a money-hungry Paris. Jules Bertillon, the distrustful and unpredictable bank director, sees every national disaster—including war—as an opportunity for riches. Adored by his clients for his ability to rake in staggering profits, Bertillon leaves no opening wasted—even if it means dealing with unsavory speculators or ruthless gamblers while his clients suffer the consequences. A stunning page-turner, House of All Nations is as significant and resonant today as it was upon its publication in 1938.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Classics, 20th Century, Novels, Female Authors, Literary Fiction

787 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

Christina Stead (1902–1983) was an Australian writer regarded as one of the twentieth century’s master novelists. Stead spent most of her writing life in Europe and the United States, and her varied residences acted as the settings for a number of her novels. She is best known for The Man Who Loved Children (1940), which was praised by author Jonathan Franzen as a “crazy, gorgeous family novel” and “one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century.” Stead died in her native Australia in 1983.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary and perfectly pitched novel, which remains as relevant today as it was in 1938.

You can read the first few pages, including the wonderful line: " Her eyes, large as imperial amethysts, roved in an indolent stare of proud imbecility."

here http://gallery.mailchimp.com/2f54e743...

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Christina Stead is, in my opinion, one of the geniuses of 20thc literature. Sadly the vast majority of her work is neglected and unread. As can be seen from this list of her novels (spot the odd one out!):

Seven Poor Men of Sydney (1934) – 319p - 35 ratings
The Salzburg Tales (1934) – 502p - 18 ratings
The Beauties and Furies (1936) – 383p - 10 ratings
House of all Nations (1938) – 787p - 17 ratings
The Man Who Loved Children (1940) – 527p - 2655 ratings
For Love Alone (1945) – 502p - 92 ratings
Letty Fox: Her Luck (1946) – 517p - 65 ratings
A Little Tea. A Little Chat (1948) – 394p - 9 ratings
The People with the Dogs (1952) – 345p - 10 ratings
The Puzzleheaded Girl: Four Novellas (1965) – 285p - 14 ratings
Cotters' England (1967) – 360p - 16 ratings
The Little Hotel: A Novel (1973) – 191p - 35 ratings
Miss Herbert: The Suburban Wife (1976) – 308p - 10 ratings
I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist (1986) – 447p - 22 ratings
The Palace With Several Sides: A Sort of Love Story (1986) – 33p - 2 ratings

Total number of pages = 5900

I have read 6 of these, and fully intend to read the rest.

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The Saturday Review, June 11, 1938

THE HOUSE OF ALL NATIONS. By Christina Stead. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1938. $3. Reviewed by ELLIOT PAUL

FEW present-day writers attempt a canvas of such magnitude as Miss Stead's. International banking is a field which has been surrounded by a great deal of hokum and mystery. Miss Stead makes its personalities as vivid as James Farrell's Chicago Irish. At the head of the Banque Mercure in Paris is Jules Bertillon, a slip-shod, conceited, but presentable young man who has all the instincts of a gambler and none of a builder. William, his brother, is the balance-weight, who does most of the work and feels all the responsibility. Alphendery, an Alsatian communist, is the brains of the institution, an impractical Jew who is discontented with what he is doing, has an affection for Jules but no regard for his mind. Raccamond, who works himself into the job with all the subservience of the toady, has been a white-slaver and has been through several bankruptcies in preparation for his career as customer's man. Jules's enemy is a French politician named Jacques Carriere, who wants to break Bertillon because both of them are rated at about three hundred millions. None of these people expects anything but trickery from the others. Alphendery, who has no fortune, is the possible exception. The others, who have money or want it in huge quantities, know that their associates will stoop to anything, that they will lick boots in a manner unworthy of an Algerian rug pedlar, that it is practically impossible for them to tell the truth, that stealing and spying and selling out to the enemy is second nature to them. Miss Stead performs the feat of describing such men and their actions objectively and without indignation.

The women in the book are matter-of-fact and predatory; the whores of all prices are true to type. The opening chapter is an epic of vulgarity—not on the part of the author, whose delicacy is Olympian. Henri Leon, grain merchant, out for an evening collects a flock of women, gives them little, gets nothing from them. Complete, meaningless waste—and still the same man, on another plane, conceives a commercial and political manoeuvre as delicate and powerful as a Beethoven symphony. Not only would it make him millions but it would even help people everywhere. Leon appeals to Jules to go in with him on the deal, and one of the most interesting episodes of the book results. Jules makes a hash of it. Leon cries to heaven. No millions are made and no starving nations get wheat or credit.

The book is a long one, only because the scope is large. I was held by it to the highest pitch of excitement. There is a long list of characters published in the back pages, merchants, servants, lawyers, clients, even a poet or two. That should not cause the reader alarm. The story is so well constructed, with such originality and force, that the main characters stand out clearly. There is nothing in the book except human beings and their activities, few descriptions of scenery or interior decorations, few doses of author's philosophy. The pages are filled with conversations and concise stage directions. The essence of Miss Stead's art is dialogue. She makes her characters articulate, preserves the difference between them, makes use of their rhythms of speech, and is never in too much of a hurry. The emotional tension of the story rises and falls magnificently. This she accomplishes without padding or shorthand. There are passages which one would swear have been translated from the French, but on close examination it appears that the exact meaning could not have been conveyed another way.

"The House of All Nations," named for a famous Paris bordel which makes a perfect symbol, is packed with memorable scenes, flashes of wit, almost everything except pathos. What is pathetic is the waste, is the inability of these surfeited men and grasping women to enjoy life or even to understand it. The victims are not widows and orphans. All the clients are rich and vicious, or rich and ill, or rich and foolish. No one starves except an eccentric millionaire, who will eat only porridge. In this limited space it is impossible to do justice to Miss Stead's book. I only hope to convey that it is interesting and almost inexhaustible. Miss Stead possesses an immense vocabulary from which triteness only is missing, and she uses it with the utmost simplicity. Having a knowledge of her subject gained by five years of intense application of a brilliant mind, she has perfect poise but no desire to display erudition. Miss Stead is in America, at work on a book with an American setting. Everyone interested in reading or writing should be glad to welcome her and salute her.



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Belongs with Gaddis' JR as an analysis of banking, capitalism and the nation, also both are primarily novels in dialogue, and ones that consider the tragic waste of a certain type of creativity when it gets sucked into the world of finance.

I would suggest giving it time to grow on you - it took about 100 pages to get into it properly - there are a lot of characters, and quite a bit of technical banking stuff to get your head round, but she builds the pieces carefully and clearly. It really is a deeply impressive piece of work, and one that remains highly relevant in our finance-governed times.

One final point, and something mentioned in a book on Stead I have been looking at, is that part of her problem with recognition is that each of her books is so very different, both in terms of style and subject matter. I see this as a sign of her genius. But it also makes it doubly sad that those who tried her better known work - The Man Who Loved Children - and hated it (often apparently for the idiotic reason that they found the characters annoying) never move on to try anything else...

[John Purcell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The noisiest book I have ever read. Life spills out of its pages. Raucous, wise, witty, opulent, unique and human. Highly recommended for those who like to be stretched intellectually, emotionally and morally.

[Leigh Swinbourne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christina Stead’s third novel, ‘House of All Nations’ reads like Balzac on steroids. When Stead, a big fan of the French super-realist, left Australia to work in trade and banking houses in London and Paris in the early 1930s, she found that all the characters she had to deal and socialise with could have stepped straight from the pages of ‘La Comédie humaine’. Apparently bankers and businessmen and their various vacuous hangers-on were just as ruthless, amoral, grasping, delusional, energetic, greedy, avaricious, and toadying social climbers in the 1930s as in the 1830s. Well, well. Suffice it to say that these characters also seem surprisingly recognisable to contemporary readers; with minimum tweaking, this novel could be set in the 1987, 2008, pick your period of financial rapacity and instability: ‘plus ça change’ as Balzac might have remarked.

So Stead was inspired to write this far too long but still compulsively readable picaresque describing the rise and fall of the boutique bank, ‘Bertillon Frères’, commandeered and powered by the mercurial charismatic Jules Bertillon. The House of All Nations, referred to only a couple of times in the novel, is a Parisian brothel, so you can see where Stead is coming from with this. However, here is one of those unusual examples in literature where a mismatch between intention and achievement actually results in a better work. Stead was a communist and what is obviously meant to be a savage takedown of capitalism’s immoral gaudy excesses, and she does make her points, winds up being a thoroughly entertaining comedic romp.

In these pages Stead is ‘of the devil’s party without knowing it’ as Blake said of Milton’s depiction of Satan in ‘Paradise Lost’, or maybe she does know it, anyway, whether or not, Jules, the in-house devil here, drives the whole show with his charisma and energy, the typical speculator’s eternal optimism. He is cast as the negative principle, the rotten core of a rotten system, but we’re charmed and fascinated by him as is everyone else in the novel, and so very clearly is Stead. Blake thought Milton wrote ‘in fetters’ but all chains are burst here as Jules, our animating spirit, effortlessly bends the whirling world of pre-war plutocratic Paris to his various extravagant whims.

Although a long book, 800 odd pages, the texture is curiously light, insubstantial, like its leading man; Jules is a will-of-the-wisp and despite the occasional anti-capitalist diatribe (not his), he stops the show from getting too stodgy. His Sancho Panza, Michel Alphendéry, who basically runs the bank for him, efficient servant of his desires and excesses, is based on Stead’s lover-soon-to-be-husband, another William Blake (anglicised from Wilhelm Blech) and is also a communist. A Marxist banker, how about that? Almost all the characters are men, and there are a lot of them, although there is no problem following it all. None of them have much depth, but each rings true, you know them, you’ve met them, like in any successful picaresque.

Another factor that keeps things skipping along, aside from Jules, is that it is largely a book of conversations. Talk, talk, talk, that’s all these bankers ever seem to do, and so we have the same frenetic energy that you find in Dickens or Dostoevsky where various obsessives grab you by your lapel and hold their faces that bit too close but still you’re mesmerised and even convinced by their schemes until they finally release you and you realise what madmen they really are.

Yes, Jules fiddles while Europe burns, well not quite yet, but although above I mention the ‘timelessness’ of the cast, one of the fascinations of this novel is Stead’s perceptive rendering of the contemporary political and social scene. We know what’s going to happen, she doesn’t, but the coming cataclysm is well and truly foreshadowed, all the instability, shifting allegiances, anti-Semitism. Jules knows he is dancing on the edge of a volcano, although it’s not capitalism that’s going to suck everything into a black hole, but forces far more sinister. Hitler often crops up in conversations―no-one seems to quite know what he is about―as does the nascent (doomed) Spanish republic and all the various communist and workers’ insurgences, England dropping the gold standard, Mussolini in Africa, the Depression in America etc. A real snapshot.

Can I recommend this? Well you need to have time on your hands, but with the present pandemic lockdown (I’ve lost my job), it could be the go: not too heavy, not too light. Possibly best read with one of those low-alcohol beverages of the period, a long Pimm’s say, with mint and chopped fruit. Although Stead would go on to write a truly great novel after this, her wild and furious ‘The Man who loved Children’, still there are plenty of brilliant literary flashes here. So, I’ve given you my snapshot, and I’ll leave it to you.

[Jayden McComiskie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edit: Reread and enjoyed it. What a mammoth of a book.

Stead is a favourite of mine, this just wasn't my cup of tea. Can't wait to read more of her work though.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

review coming