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Collected Stories
Beginning in 1914, Djuna Barnes contributed regularly to numerous magazines and newspapers works of fiction, poetry, essay, and drama. Unlike some works in other genres in which she wrote, Barnes held her stories in particularly high regard, revising several of the stories collected in A Book (1923; reprinted as A Night Among the Horses in 1929) late in her life. These stories from Spillway , her other early tales, and other stories never before published are collected in this volume. What they reveal is the breadth and consistency of Barnes's story writing, and should help establish her as one of the most interesting and vital storytellers of the great period of American literary output after World War I.
Barnes is recognized internationally for her masterwork Nightwood and for other works of fiction, including Ryder and Ladies Almanack. She also wrote plays, most notably The Antiphon -which will be republished by Sun & Moon Press next year-and shorter works collected in At the Roots of the The Short Plays . Her early poetic work, The Book of Repulsive Women , has increasingly gainer readers over the past few years. A selection of her drawings, which often accompanied her literary writing, has just been published by Sun & Moon Press as Poe's Mother .
Barnes is recognized internationally for her masterwork Nightwood and for other works of fiction, including Ryder and Ladies Almanack. She also wrote plays, most notably The Antiphon -which will be republished by Sun & Moon Press next year-and shorter works collected in At the Roots of the The Short Plays . Her early poetic work, The Book of Repulsive Women , has increasingly gainer readers over the past few years. A selection of her drawings, which often accompanied her literary writing, has just been published by Sun & Moon Press as Poe's Mother .
480 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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About the author
Djuna Barnes
98 books563 followersDjuna Barnes was an artist, illustrator, journalist, playwright, and poet associated with the early 20th-century Greenwich Village bohemians and the Modernist literary movement.
Barnes has been cited as an influence by writers as diverse as Truman Capote, William Goyen, Isak Dinesen, John Hawkes, and Anaïs Nin. 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 writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and 30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens. Her novel Nightwood became a cult work of modern fiction, helped by an introduction by T. S. Eliot. It stands out today for its portrayal of lesbian themes and its distinctive writing style. Since Barnes's death, interest in her work has grown and many of her books are back in print.
Barnes has been cited as an influence by writers as diverse as Truman Capote, William Goyen, Isak Dinesen, John Hawkes, and Anaïs Nin. 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 writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and 30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens. Her novel Nightwood became a cult work of modern fiction, helped by an introduction by T. S. Eliot. It stands out today for its portrayal of lesbian themes and its distinctive writing style. Since Barnes's death, interest in her work has grown and many of her books are back in print.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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October 24, 2021The kinds of stories a writer sold to magazines at the time, except Barnes concocts quirkier prose and situations than one might expect, making them a step above the commercial stories in Sylvia Plath’s Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, for instance. Overall, probably only suited to Barnes completionists. I need to stop fooling around and read Nightwood already; the uncensored version, mind you, not the TS Eliot’d one. That is, the Dalkey, not the New Directions edition.
July 3, 2008
Djuna Barnes is an example of one of those writers I know more about their personal lives than I do about their writing. Her name was thrown around freely at my college and all the heavy-handed feminists there claimed to be big fans, to really "understand" Barnes. Barnes, a lesbian who claimed not to be a lesbian, had a rough life including rape and possible incest. Nightwood is the book I hear referenced more often than not, but chose the collected stories for my introduction to her writing.
I can say that as a collection it really is just "okay". Some stories felt stronger and stand out in my mind now - a day after I finished it - while the others are lost somewhere in the crevices of a back room in my brain. Along with other modernist writers of the time her stories involved symbology, some direct, some indirect. Some stories ended abruptly, some anticlimactically. Most of them left little room to really delve into the character which is generally my biggest complaint with modernist writing - there is a lot of time spent on the symbols and maybe an image or two, but it's all so superficial and I wind up crabby about the whole thing because I never actually get into any of it.
Perhaps her longer works are more likely to appeal to me, so I have not given up on Barnes entirely. Again, her life was fascinating enough to give me reason to feel there must be a gem somewhere in her writing.
Favorites: "The Earth"; "Oscar"; "Aller et Retour".
I can say that as a collection it really is just "okay". Some stories felt stronger and stand out in my mind now - a day after I finished it - while the others are lost somewhere in the crevices of a back room in my brain. Along with other modernist writers of the time her stories involved symbology, some direct, some indirect. Some stories ended abruptly, some anticlimactically. Most of them left little room to really delve into the character which is generally my biggest complaint with modernist writing - there is a lot of time spent on the symbols and maybe an image or two, but it's all so superficial and I wind up crabby about the whole thing because I never actually get into any of it.
Perhaps her longer works are more likely to appeal to me, so I have not given up on Barnes entirely. Again, her life was fascinating enough to give me reason to feel there must be a gem somewhere in her writing.
Favorites: "The Earth"; "Oscar"; "Aller et Retour".
December 13, 2020
It didn't really work for me. I enjoyed one of her stories in a larger collection of books by classic women writers, so I thought I would give this a try. Much of the language was just too old. The stories did not have a timelessness to me, they might have had a different effect on people 80 years ago. There were a handful of stories that were vaguely pleasant, but there were many more that I tired of after reading the first couple of pages and just skipped past..
March 20, 2011
I'm not sure how I feel about this book. I was grabbed more by turns of phrases here or there than by any of the stories as a whole. They were all about sad people with strange names who did things for motives not entirely clear. I liked "The Diary of a Dangerous Child" when it came along b/c it was written in the first person & that made a big difference b/c I suddenly felt much less distant from the character. There were a few others, but as a whole these stories are not really going to stay caught up in my memory for long.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews