I'M Dying Laughing: The Humourist
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: No markings
A sweeping and darkly satirical novel, I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist chronicles the turbulent life of Emily Wilkes, a brash and brilliantly funny American writer whose comedic talents propel her to fame and fortune in Hollywood and postwar Europe. Christina Stead traces Emily's moral and political unraveling as she and her husband Stephen Howard, committed leftists, find themselves caught between their socialist ideals and an insatiable appetite for wealth and luxury during the McCarthy era. The narrative unfolds with biting wit and relentless psychological intensity, illustrating how ideology buckles under the weight of ambition, self-deception, and bourgeois comfort. Stead presents Emily as one of literature's most contradictory and compulsively readable protagonists — a woman whose humor masks a profound and ultimately tragic inability to reconcile who she is with what she believes. Published posthumously, the novel stands as one of Stead's most ambitious works, a sharp-edged dissection of American radicalism, excess, and the corrosive power of compromise.
Author: Christina Stead
Format: Hardback
Published: 1986, Virago
Genre: Modern fiction
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: No markings
A sweeping and darkly satirical novel, I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist chronicles the turbulent life of Emily Wilkes, a brash and brilliantly funny American writer whose comedic talents propel her to fame and fortune in Hollywood and postwar Europe. Christina Stead traces Emily's moral and political unraveling as she and her husband Stephen Howard, committed leftists, find themselves caught between their socialist ideals and an insatiable appetite for wealth and luxury during the McCarthy era. The narrative unfolds with biting wit and relentless psychological intensity, illustrating how ideology buckles under the weight of ambition, self-deception, and bourgeois comfort. Stead presents Emily as one of literature's most contradictory and compulsively readable protagonists — a woman whose humor masks a profound and ultimately tragic inability to reconcile who she is with what she believes. Published posthumously, the novel stands as one of Stead's most ambitious works, a sharp-edged dissection of American radicalism, excess, and the corrosive power of compromise.