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109th out of 697 books
—
864 voters
Nightwood
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (TLS). That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold...more
Paperback, 182 pages
Published
September 26th 2006
by New Directions
(first published 1936)
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Nightwood is the sound of hearts breaking, written on the page, spread out for all to see, five lives, five people eviscerated and eviscerating each other. These people fucking kill me, they are so sad and so full of nonsense and so determined to live in their own personal little boxes, striving for epiphanies that they barely even understand, trying to be a certain idea of What a Person Is. Is that what I'm like? Maybe that's what everyone is like. Barnes lays out these characters' lives like b...more
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Nightwood plays out lenticularly: Christ-cum Rasputin- like Dr O’Connor dominates the central frame with secondary characters phasing in and out in tune with a subtle rotational accretion of meditational ‘om’ spiked Eurekas.
A trifecta of bisexual women in perpetual locomotion seek out a Pythagorian articulation of their triangular ‘saltarello’, overseen by the gregarious doctor and overshadowed by a jilted husband. This then is the plot, what little of it there is.
Character driven in extremis, ‘...more
A trifecta of bisexual women in perpetual locomotion seek out a Pythagorian articulation of their triangular ‘saltarello’, overseen by the gregarious doctor and overshadowed by a jilted husband. This then is the plot, what little of it there is.
Character driven in extremis, ‘...more
23 likes · like · see review
Review of Nightwood by Djuna Barnes.
Shelf: Female writer,Modern fiction,disturbing.
Recommended for: Tortured souls,outcasts.
Night people do not bury their dead, but on the neck of you, their beloved and waking, sling the creature, husked of its gestures. And where you go, it goes, the two of you, your living and her dead, that will not die; to daylight, to life, to grief, until both are carrion.
Nightwood is such a strange book and this isn't so much a ramrod- straight person's reaction to gay-l...more
Shelf: Female writer,Modern fiction,disturbing.
Recommended for: Tortured souls,outcasts.
Night people do not bury their dead, but on the neck of you, their beloved and waking, sling the creature, husked of its gestures. And where you go, it goes, the two of you, your living and her dead, that will not die; to daylight, to life, to grief, until both are carrion.
Nightwood is such a strange book and this isn't so much a ramrod- straight person's reaction to gay-l...more
15 likes · like · see review
Well this was a strange, yet strangely compelling book. Lauded by William S. Burroughs - an introduction by T.S. Elliot - the better part of its length is taken-up with bizarre monologues against the insanity and artifice of modern society, delivered by an unlicenced, transvestite medical doctor. It has all the markings of a cult classic and couldn't possibly be as good as it sounds - but then it actually is.
I wonder if we can trace modern literary fiction's obsession with writing purely in epig...more
I wonder if we can trace modern literary fiction's obsession with writing purely in epig...more
i reread this with nate's review in my mind, his reading shapes mine. this is the way i saw it--felix wants robin to prove his identity, to give him legitimacy, to support his story of who he thinks he needs to be to feel safe/connected/to end the exile. nora wants to save robin, to be saved by saving her, by the force of love, to prove her love is powerful by being powerful enough to save robin. jenny wants to possess something of value (to prove her own) and she sees robin as possessing the ve...more
10 likes · like · see review
A short, but by no means easy novel set in Paris (mostly) in the 1930s. It is semi-autobiographical and contains some strong and memorable characters. My edition has two introductions. The first by T S Eliot says that to truly understand Nightwood you have to have a poetic sensibility (Well thsnks for that Tom; if I don't get it that means I am a complete philistine!!!}. After that I really wanted to hate the book but sadly couldn't. The other intro is an achingly heartfelt and passionate recomm...more
11 likes · like · see review
T.S. Elliot said of Nightwood, that it was "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it". It's really more like a poetic dream than it is a novel. This isn't really because there is no narrative to be found, there is, and what's more, there is a clearly defined romantic conflict between the two main female characters, Nora Flood and Robin Vote. What makes it poetic is probably the flowery digressions that follow the brief explanations of what is happening i...more
This book was incredible ... it took me beyond what I've come to expect of a novel in that it was wildly poetic and impossible to understand on the rare occasion, but the quality of the writing is so strong and expressive that I was moved to mark and commit to memory a passage on almost every page. It felt like a book that had been in my life a long time, just waiting to be read. An old woman saw me reading it on the train and said to me, "it's good to see that book is still around ... I read it...more
1 like · like · see review
After a second reading had to include the missing fifth star. Full reassessment soon.
...
So I'm not used to this kind of reaction with a book--finished it this morning, and I might very well start it all over again. Immediately. This never happens to me.
And this despite not knowing what the hell was going on half (most?) of the time, but by the end I became intoxicated by the sheer absurdity that made me laugh stupidly despite being in public, the unexpected submersions into harrowing despair,...more
...
So I'm not used to this kind of reaction with a book--finished it this morning, and I might very well start it all over again. Immediately. This never happens to me.
And this despite not knowing what the hell was going on half (most?) of the time, but by the end I became intoxicated by the sheer absurdity that made me laugh stupidly despite being in public, the unexpected submersions into harrowing despair,...more
8 likes · like · see review
The early 20th century Modernists produced a number of remarkable books, but Djuna Barnes' NIGHTWOOD (1936) is one of the very strangest. The plot at its heart is simple, a lesbian love triangle where the passionate Nora Flood loves a young and enigmatic woman named Robin Vote, only to lose her to the conniving widow Jenny Petherbridge. This all unfolds among American and European expatriates in Paris in the 1920s, as royalty is dying out, the scars of World War I have still not healed, and beli...more
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Attention lesbians: Don't marry a Jewish guy pretending to be an Austrian Duke, have a son, and ignore them both to run off to America with a much older, neurotic sugar mama. That PSA aside, I have to say this is the longest 170 pages I've ever read. There are, for example, whole chapters born out of a character asking, "What is the nature of night?" (This was answered by a gay socialite fake doctor.) It's one of those books people call "poetic."
Lest I forget to spoil the ending for you, the les...more
Lest I forget to spoil the ending for you, the les...more
6 likes · like · see review
i read this book in college and have read it on an almost annual basis since. and i swear, i never feel like i'm reading the same book. it's prose is thick with lush descriptions and imagery reminiscent of a lot of the ex-pat's of paris at the time. it's intoxicating. the only drawback is that there's not a whole lot of djuna barnes' work available. so don't get too attached. and if you do, don't say i didn't warn you. i'm notorious for my warnings and i've worked hard to garner such a reputatio...more
This is a book which really resonated with me. To me, it is truly a great book, but I have to agree with a often-cited early review of the book which states that it "strains rather than enriches" one's sensibilities. This is the reason I am not heaping the highest ratings on it.
Reading Nightwood can be somewhat of a challenge. Not only is it often quite opaque in its use of metaphors and its entangling of systems of meaning, unclear intertextual references and the like, but it is also - I believ...more
Reading Nightwood can be somewhat of a challenge. Not only is it often quite opaque in its use of metaphors and its entangling of systems of meaning, unclear intertextual references and the like, but it is also - I believ...more
OK whoa, my girlfriend wasn't kidding about this one being a doozy. Literary and high-minded as hell, high falutin and pretentious, but nonetheless outstanding. Nightwood is a gleefully bizarre marriage of Shakespearean tragedy and experimental Modernist prose. Dr. Matthew O' Connor is an out-of-place--gay and a transvestite, and a theatrical monologuist among a cast of internally disquieted novel characters. Dr. O' Connor provides most of the exposition, is endlessly quotable (even when one has...more
Rating: 1.75* of five
The Book Report: Serial adultress and all-around malcontent Robin leaves her too, too unendurable husband "Baron Felix" after presenting him with the desired heir...only the child is crippled...and takes up with Nora, a whiny dishrag of a nothing-much who represents Robin's desire for dreary domesticity. Needless to say, Robin can't stand too much of that and leaves Nora at home so she can cavort and disport herself with all and sundry. While so doing, Robin meets Jenny, a s...more
The Book Report: Serial adultress and all-around malcontent Robin leaves her too, too unendurable husband "Baron Felix" after presenting him with the desired heir...only the child is crippled...and takes up with Nora, a whiny dishrag of a nothing-much who represents Robin's desire for dreary domesticity. Needless to say, Robin can't stand too much of that and leaves Nora at home so she can cavort and disport herself with all and sundry. While so doing, Robin meets Jenny, a s...more
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After the first ten pages of this book, I really thought I was going to hate it. Nightwood is a tale told across many locations, but of a time where a certain reputation and a pile of cash led to mobility and a new moral order in the developed world. It's also really sodding annoying to hear them talk about it at the start, and I skim read quite seriously while the Doctor prattled. At the introduction of the female leads though, I got more intrigued. There's not much to like about any of the cha...more
In the words of one of the characters in the book, "Well, there's something in that, still I like to know what is what."
This is a Modernist novel, written in 1937, about the love quadrangle between Felix, a Jewish wannabe Baron; Robin, a crazy, dreamy, inhuman kind of gal, who abandons Felix and their son; Nora, Robin's new lover; and Jenny, who Robin abandons Nora for. Got that? Robin goes through Felix, Nora, and Jenny, in that order. The other main character is Doctor Matthew, a transvestite...more
This is a Modernist novel, written in 1937, about the love quadrangle between Felix, a Jewish wannabe Baron; Robin, a crazy, dreamy, inhuman kind of gal, who abandons Felix and their son; Nora, Robin's new lover; and Jenny, who Robin abandons Nora for. Got that? Robin goes through Felix, Nora, and Jenny, in that order. The other main character is Doctor Matthew, a transvestite...more
T.S.Eliot wrote an introduction to this novel in 1937. He said he has read it "a number of times." Twelve years later, in 1949, he wrote a note to the book's second edition. He said his "admiration for the book has not diminished."
In 1937 T.S.Eliot said that this novel would "appeal primarily to readers of poetry." I agree. I could even dare say that this is poetry masquerading as prose. Thus, even with a deceptively simple plot, almost in every page passages will move you even if you're unsure...more
In 1937 T.S.Eliot said that this novel would "appeal primarily to readers of poetry." I agree. I could even dare say that this is poetry masquerading as prose. Thus, even with a deceptively simple plot, almost in every page passages will move you even if you're unsure...more
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There is no question that Djuna Barnes' book is engaging. To begin to read it is to fall into a mania; descending word after word into the pathetic world of the four main characters - especially Dr. O'Conner, whose errant monologues expose the other characters while covering his own descent.
Is it well-written? No doubt; the descriptions are moving, the scenes (when there are scenes) are gripping, and the characters are alive. But it's easy to fall into the question: does all of the book matter?...more
Is it well-written? No doubt; the descriptions are moving, the scenes (when there are scenes) are gripping, and the characters are alive. But it's easy to fall into the question: does all of the book matter?...more
A modernist classic, one of the first great works of lesbian literature, and an exceedingly difficult read. T.S. Eliot indicates that it took him several readings to appreciate this novel fully. If that was so of him, then I should not be ashamed to say that perhaps fifty percent of "Nightwood" was incomprehensible to me. I will read this novel again, albeit not in the next few months . . . and perhaps then will upgrade it to five stars. Some of "Nightwood" seems, upon fairly rapid reading, to b...more
I had great difficulties understanding this book. Sentences such as 'When the streets were gall high with things you wouldn't have done for a dare's sake, and the way it was then; with the pheasants' necks and the goslings' beaks dangling against the hocks of the gallants, and not a pavement in the place , and everything gutters for miles and miles, and a stench to it that plucked you by the nosttrils and you were twenty leagues out!' are just plain too long. If I read it three times slowly I ca...more
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I'm not rating this. I could barely read it, but I do understand its importance as a seminal work of lesbian modernist fiction. I earned that pun.
The subject matter was daring, relevant and personal to Barnes, and for those reasons, I think this was a worthy undertaking to expand my understanding of interwar Bohemian expat life. However, it is practically obscured by the raving, navel-gazing babblings of the "doctor" who is so wound up in his own conflicts of wanting to be taken seriously as a l...more
The subject matter was daring, relevant and personal to Barnes, and for those reasons, I think this was a worthy undertaking to expand my understanding of interwar Bohemian expat life. However, it is practically obscured by the raving, navel-gazing babblings of the "doctor" who is so wound up in his own conflicts of wanting to be taken seriously as a l...more
it's tough to sort through what did and did not work for me in this book. i decided to finally read it after years of meaning to because i had just finished clarice lispector's brilliant hour of the star, and thought it might make an appropriate follow-up. it sort of did, i guess, though i think the effortless eccentricities of the lispector novel stand in sharper contrast to the larger modernist "canon" than those of nightwood, which fit more easily into categories like "surrealism" and "existe...more
May 03, 2013
Ruxandra Irina
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
my-most-loved
First things first: I LOVED this book! I loved it so much that I read it in a day and would've written a review right after putting it down if when that happened I hadn't felt so saturated with the sensuous texture of the language and generally lost in a jungle of wild emotions. Apart from the plot, which is scant by any rate, I feel Nightwood offers a whole new experience of reading. Although its "lessons" on love and life are high up in the sky of abstraction, their impact is visceral, as if t...more
T.S. Eliot, in the introduction he wrote for this novel, describes the basic foundation for a novel as a collection of characters who interact with each other, and that 'Nightwood', seeming to fit this description, would thus be counted as a 'novel'. This is about as far as that could be taken. Like Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities", "Nightwood" is a formless, poetic windsock. A comparison with Musil can go further: just about every page contains an epiphany. Is there a plot? I'm not su...more
So this book has been lurking on my shelves since uni, when I bought it for a Modernism module. My edition has two prefaces by T S Eliot, who praises the book for its poetic style. I've got to say, I think I missed the point. I barely got one single word of it, which probably says a lot more about the reader than the book, I'd say. It is sort of a novel set in the 1930s about a bunch of characters about whom I did not care, swanning around Europe falling in and out of love, and when the book is...more
Another book that the star rating system barely fits. This is a classic, interior, brilliant, odd, irritating, lovely, unpleasant, lyric, weird book from the '30's... self-impressed European decadence... traces of Sally Bowles, definitely expect that green nailpolish. It was heavily promoted by TS Eliot in one of those strange literary love affairs... You wince at the anti-semitism (I hate when people try to explain their characters as racial specimens, rather than human beings), and flounder a...more
Barnes' writing style eluded me at first, and it wasn't entirely clear to me what was happening. After finishing the book, I felt better about this upon reading 1) T.S. Eliot's introduction in which he says the beginning of the book drags and 2) a quote from Marianne Moore saying that reading Djuna Barnes is like reading a foreign language that you recognize. Precisely. Once moving past the hump of the beginning, the language is fantastically energetic with character, flavor, and tangibility. El...more
I read this book during my junior year of college, I absolutely loved it. Everytime I read this book, I just want to put Aimee Mann on. Save me from the freaks who suspect they can never love anyone except the freaks who suspect they can never love anyone, rings in my ear. However, Mann's lyric gives a simple portrait to this poetic novel. I think it depicts the truth of rejection, love lost and pain. I am not even really sure how to do this book any justice, but it is beautiful. I am not sure I...more
It took me 3 years and three attempts to dive in and stay submerged, but the time must have been right because I couldn't tear myself away this time around. It heightened an awareness of what I love in a novel: It comes down to the way the quality of the language comes together to paint a whole. And Matthew and Nora--and even Robin--were so painfully convincing, not as "real people" but as something so very HUMAN.
The narrative is haphazard; character "development" is all but non-existent; the op...more
The narrative is haphazard; character "development" is all but non-existent; the op...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Three - Nightwood - Ch. 7 - 8, p. 132 - 180 | 5 | 7 | May 14, 2013 11:23am | |
| Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Two - Nightwood - Ch. 4 - 6, p. 71 - 131 | 2 | 6 | May 08, 2013 07:06am | |
| Brain Pain: Discussion - Week One - Nightwood - Ch. 1 - 3, p. 3 - 70 | 4 | 11 | May 05, 2013 05:49am | |
| Brain Pain: * Questions, Resources, and General Banter - Nightwood | 5 | 16 | Apr 28, 2013 02:40am | |
| Brain Pain: * Schedule for Discussions - Nightwood | 1 | 16 | Apr 01, 2013 11:00am | |
| Is it a decadence or not | 3 | 27 | Jan 24, 2013 08:46am |
Barnes has been cited as an influence by writers as diverse as Truman Capote, William Goyen, Isak Dinesen, John Hawkes, Bertha Harris and Anaïs Nin. Writer Bertha Harris described her work as "practically the only available expression of lesbian culture we have in the modern western world" since Sappho.
Barnes played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist wr...more
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Barnes played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist wr...more
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“I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed.”
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“The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.”
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