Barnes, Djuna

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"Fate and entanglement...have begun again."
Very Disappointing
The Night Is A Hunter
An elegant classic
baroque splendor

Nightwood
Djuna Barnes
Manufacturer: New Directions
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0811216713

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Nightwood is not only a classic of lesbian literature, but was also acknowledged by no less than T. S. Eliot as one of the great novels of the 20th century. Eliot admired Djuna Barnes' rich, evocative language. Lesbian readers will admire the exquisite craftsmanship and Barnes' penetrating insights into obsessive passion. Barnes told a friend that Nightwood was written with her own blood "while it was still running." That flowing wound was the breakup of an eight-year relationship with the lesbian love of her life.

Book Description

The fiery and enigmatic masterpiece—one of the greatest novels of the Modernist era. 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 but surprisingly porous. The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction—there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions. Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another person—a woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature. Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.

Customer Reviews:

"Fate and entanglement...have begun again.".......2006-09-27

Considered a seminal work in the history of lesbian fiction, "Nightwood" by Djuna Barnes is the tale of Robin Vote--a woman who leaves disaster in her wake through her strangely disaffected love affairs. The book begins with the background story of half-Jewish Baron Felix Volkbein--a man with a fabricated ancestry who speaks seven languages, and who possesses a deep-rooted love of the "pageantry of kings and queens." This love translates to a fascination with the accessible circus and the theatre crowd, and he mingles with various circus performers and actors who've assumed fancy titles to "dazzle." In this colourful company, Baron Volkbein "clung to his title to dazzle his own estrangement."

One evening, the forty-year-old Baron meets the particularly loquacious Matthew O'Connor--a medical student who focuses on gynecology and grants himself the title of "doctor." Volkbein is simultaneously repulsed and attracted to the doctor, and recognizes that while the doctor is a liar, he's a "valuable liar." O'Connor is called to the bedside of the bland, Robin Vote, and the Baron, who accompanies O'Connor is immediately smitten. In time, he marries Robin and they have a child together. But Robin is not content with the safety of the role of wife and mother, and she soon begins drifting towards another sort of life....

The enigmatic Robin makes a peculiar object of mad passion, and yet throughout the novel, that's exactly what she is. Remote, quiet, and strangely unattainable, she is adored by Nora Flood, but then drifts into an affair with a middle-aged widow, Jenny Petheridge. Jenny, who's buried four husbands, is driven almost mad by Robin, and "has a longing for other people's property." Since Jenny 'belongs' to Nora, Jenny strives to possess Robin.

In many ways Robin seems to be an unlikely inspiration for grand passion and obsession--she is earthy, but blank and almost characterless. She becomes the object for the passions other people place upon her--just as they try to place defining roles upon her. But Robin cannot be possessed, boxed-in or controlled, and this is not due to the fact that she's wild, willful, or independent, but because she simply drifts through experience. And it's Robin's elusiveness that ultimately makes her so desirable.

Djuna Barnes was one of the bohemian set in 1920 and 30s Paris, and her creative circle of acquaintance included Gertrude Stein, so therefore it should come as no surprise that the prose of Nightwood has a non-traditional lyrical quality--especially evident in the character of O'Connor--a man who's prone to tell stories whenever he has an audience. The book is notable for its attitudes towards sexuality, and this new edition from New Directions includes a valuable introduction by Jeanette Winterson--displacedhuman

Very Disappointing.......2005-11-18

I had such high hopes going in, what with Eliot's singing praises and all sorts of reputable people claiming this book to be a lost Modernist gem, but they were dashed by actually trying to read the work. Grueling is perhaps the best word that can be used to describe the feeling that overwhelms the reader attempting to tackle this book. This quickly fades to annoyance with the realization that it is all for naught. Contrary to what Eliot says in relation to its poetic qualities, her writing is messy and unfulfilling. And the content? It was often very hard to discern what it even was(which, for me, is not an automatic strike against a book) and, even worse, was very, very dated. However, there were some moments when, as another reviewer has noted, Barnes will have a single sentence or phrase that makes one's heart skip a beat, but these are few and far between. And, as one last note, before actually reading this book, I disregarded many of its negative reviews as being indicative of laziness or incompetence on the other reviewers' parts in relation to my superior reading skills, but now, I must abashedly say, that this is just not a very good book.

The Night Is A Hunter .......2003-03-25

Djuna Barnes' short modernist novel Nightwood (1936) is one of the genuine odd ducks of 20th century literature. Written in an uneven, semi - comic, and baroque style, the book is more likely to impress young readers rather than older and more experienced individuals who have lost their appetite for decadent romantic entanglements. Nightwood is certainly an original work, and Barnes' vision of the factors shaping human destiny - especially time, heritage, and evolution - are uniquely expressed. But despite its fluidity of language, many of Barnes' seemingly brilliant observations concerning life, consciousness, and human suffering are more specious than acute, which is important, since Barnes' emotionally marooned cast is badly in need of answers, wisdom, and salvation.

Hiding under the text's antique lathering is a sparse, skeletal plot, one top heavy with philosophical speculations but reflecting little grasp of basic psychological truths about human nature. Nora Flood meets and falls destructively in love with passive - aggressive Robin Vote, a strange, corpse - eyed, and inexplicably charismatic woman who, despite marriage and motherhood, is spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally adrift in the world. When their affair evolves into a love triangle, Nora turns increasingly for advice to charlatan doctor and Greek chorus Matthew O'Connor, a poverty - stricken alcoholic who is pleasurably inclined towards homosexuality, transvestitism, and self - demoralization ("I'm a lady in no need of insults," "I was born as ugly as God dare premeditate"). Significantly, all of the book's characters are in some way stunted, crippled, or pathologically predisposed.

Barnes excels at dramatizing the failure of romantic love, especially the kind that displays active neurotic factors, elements of codependence, and spontaneous psychological transference. Those pages which detail Nora's isolation and sad obsession with her abandoning lover are deeply felt, haunting, and moving indeed.

In "The Squatter," Barnes spends an entire chapter fulfilling a personal vendetta by brilliantly depicting widow Jenny Petherbridge's status as a rapacious black hole and non - entity. Jenny is ugly ("she had a beaked head and the body, small, feeble, and ferocious, that somehow made one associate her with Judy," "only severed could any part of her been called "right"), stupid ("when anyone was witty about a contemporary event, she would look perplexed and a little dismayed"), incapable of establishing her own values ("Someone else's wedding ring was on her finger...the books in her library were other people's selections...her walls, her cupboards, her bureaux, were teeming with second - hand dealings with life...the words that fell from her mouth seemed to have been lent to her"), spiritually empty but power hungry ("she wanted to be the reason for everything and so was the cause of nothing"), and lacks poise, maturity, and dignity ("being one of those panicky little women, who, no matter what they put on, look like a child under penance," or, as O'Connor calls her, "a decaying comedy jester, the face on a fool's - stick, and with the smell about her of mouse - nests"). Barnes makes an excellent case for the argument that it is not the powerful that are to be feared, but the weak, frustrated, and incapable.

Robin the "somnambulist" is also lengthily described, largely via the use of symbols and metaphors: throughout the text, the boyish, bird - named Robin is described in animal, vegetable, and mineral terms. When first encountered, Robin, who is later recognized as a kindred spirit by a wild circus animal and a ferocious dog, is found lying unconscious in a small apartment crowded with a superabundance of plant life. Barnes describes Robin's abode as "a jungle trapped in a drawing room" and Robin as the "ration of the carnivorous flowers."

The flamboyant, limp - wristed ("his hands...he always carried like a dog who is walking on his hind legs"), dirty - kneed, rhetoric - spewing Dr. Matthew O'Connor, the book's most famous character, is a figure of high camp whom today's readers are more likely to find mildly distasteful rather than shocking. O'Connor is given an entire long chapter in which to pontificate ("Watchman, What Of The Night?"), though the chapter reflects badly on the wounded Nora, whose continuous exclamations of "But what am I to do?" and "What will become of her?" and "How will I stand it?" reduce her from the genuinely tormented human being of earlier chapters to a one - dimensional cartoon damsel in distress.

Intelligent, perceptive readers are likely to find one passage in every five that sounds profound and poetically illuminating like the others, but means absolutely nothing on careful examination (for example: "Your body is coming to it, your are forty and the body has a politic too, and a life of its own that you like to think is yours. I heard a spirit new once, but I knew it was a mystery eternally moving outward and on, and not my own.") Despite Barnes' often incredible use of language, the ultimate effect of Nightwood is one of shallowness, slickness, and almost hysterical distance from its own primary sources. When compared to other literary books written by women also primarily focused on women, such as the five novels of Jean Rhys or Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat, Nightwood seems sketchy, brittle, and, as one critic said about Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales, seemingly more concerned with mystification than with genuine mystery. Though bold and intrepid as a beautiful young big city journalist, and later as an expatriate modernist writer living among the Parisian glitterati, Barnes closed the door on the rest of the world in very early middle age, and became a notorious New York City recluse known primarily for bitterness and explosive outbursts of anger. Readers of Nightwood, with its essential focus on theoretical, airy philosophy rather than psychological home truths, may find clues as to how Barnes's life went sorrowfully wrong.

An elegant classic.......2003-03-22

There are few books that can be safely called classics--and out of those, fewer are as deserving of the term as Djuna Barnes' 'Nightwood'. Elegant and mesmerizing, difficult and beautiful, it is a measured and balanced work of art.

Another reviewer said this wasn't a 'celebration of lesbian love'--this much is true. What makes this book truly remarkable is that it *doesn't* set any boundaries--hearts are fickle, hearts are cruel, and every character in the novel is inflicted with his/her own brand of emotional anxiety. Barnes makes no distinction between 'lesbian' love and any other--it is as normal, and as abnormal, as any other human affection. That alone makes this book a classic (but of course, the writing too is intoxicating). In fact, what is truly surprising (to me, at least!) is that despite her exquisite elegance, Djuna Barnes manages to take such a no-nonsense approach to human emotions. She never seeks to simplify anything--and makes her work difficult for the reader in the most rewarding of ways. (I mean that she doesn't let us get away with pre-conceptions or romantic illusions. She manages to make the imperfect reality as arresting as the myth of perfection.) Most of us, in our lives, don't *really* know what we're doing, or what we feel. Barnes makes her characters real by putting them through the same confusing maelstrom of experiences--where one emotion often morphs into another--love into indifference, respect into insecurity, and so on. There are no answers--there is only endurance--endurance of others, endurance of ourselves.

I don't want to be more specific and give out details of the plot. This book has to be experienced to be believed...

baroque splendor.......2003-01-06

barnes' prose is some of the most voluptuous language that one can find. indeed, it is bach as word. and her characters' minds are luxriously deep, and as fascinatingly convulted as those of the macbeths. few have written so convincingly and precisely about the complexity of human intimacy. she, like all great minds, recognizes that intimacy is always and ever the final frontier (this includes the campaign for intimacy with self). and o'connor's thought on the protestant imagination rivals that of any philosopher of the modern religious noodle.

this novel defines the terrain of the modern intellectual epidermis; it tickles the very pores of nuance, imploring them to dilate more widely. in it one not only meets with supple minds, one gets to see them thinking. the fugue of the post-kierkegaardian soul never sounded so like elizabethan pop. barnes' glorious, incisive mind weds donne with henry james.

Book Description

NIGHTWOOD before TS Eliot's & Emily Coleman's cuts

Customer Reviews:

A first and great incite into a mystery concerning manuscrip.......1998-09-04

It was thought for many years that there was another manuscript, or that there were more pieces to this book than the slim version which became a prose masterpiece included in the canon of American Lit 1900 to 1940. Because of the editing and work by Eliot etal, and because of Barne's reclusiveness, wse didn't know much about this manuscript. Thus Cheryl Plumb's work helps us understand more about the process of this book, it's starts and stops, it's magic and mystery. A must for Djuna Barnes fans

The Book of Repulsive Women: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings (Sun and Moon Classics)

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A lyrical upwelling of a very special woman's heart

The Book of Repulsive Women: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings (Sun and Moon Classics)
Djuna Barnes
Manufacturer: Sun and Moon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

"8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings," from 1915

Customer Reviews:

A lyrical upwelling of a very special woman's heart.......2004-05-24

This thin little book of poetry was the first published work of American author, artist and journalist, Djuna Barnes (1892-1982). If Ms. Barnes is remembered at all today, it is for her 1936 novel Nightwood, a study of women's relationships which was based on her long-term affair with the sculptor Thelma Wood. But, in her own time, she was well known, and she influenced such luminaries as Truman Capote and Anais Nin.

This absorbing book was first published in 1915, and sold for fifteen cents! (Though demand quickly drove the price up to fifty cents, which was an astonishingly high amount for the time.) This book contains the original eight poems and five drawings, all by Ms. Barnes. I found the poems to be quite touching, being a window into Ms. Barnes thoughts on women. Is this a book of sapphist poetry? I can honestly say that I don't know. What I'm sure it is, is a lyrical upwelling of a very special woman's heart. I found these poems to be quite touching and thought provoking. I highly recommend it.

Average customer rating:

an astonishing writer
A Great Achievement

Ryder
Djuna Barnes
Manufacturer: Dalkey Archive Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Ladies Almanack: Showing Their Signs and Their Tides; Their Moons and Their Changes; The Seasons As It Is With Them; Their Eclipses and Equinoxes; As Well As a Full re
Nightwood
Cobra and Maitreya: Two Novels
Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes
Nightwood: The Original Version and Related Drafts

ASIN: 0916583554

Book Description

Barnes's extraordinary first novel, illustrated

Customer Reviews:

an astonishing writer.......2006-09-23

It wasn't only T.S. Eliot who described Djuna Barnes's style as Elizabethan. (Though the poet Marie Ponsot has described her as Jacobean.) What period could encompass this twentieth century writer's talent for casting spells both psychological and atmospheric? I've never read anyone quite like her. If only James Joyce had been a little more talented, he might have been Barnesian--but few of us know this; join us!

A Great Achievement.......1999-07-05

This is an amazing work. A mostly autobiographical parody, Barnes uses Ryder as sort of a twisted extended metaphor for the rest of the world. The beautiful and inventive prose, though often obscure, illustrates the life of the Ryder family poignantly and indignantly. Written in various styles, the book is bound to touch each and every reader.

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The Selected Works of Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Collected Poems: With Notes Toward the Memoirs

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Collected Poems: With Notes Toward the Memoirs
Djuna Barnes
Manufacturer: University of Wisconsin Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Nightwood: The Original Version and Related Drafts
Nightwood
Ryder

ASIN: 0299212343

Book Description

This groundbreaking edition compiles many of the late unpublished works of American writer Djuna Barnes (1892–1982). Because she published only seven poems and a play during the last forty years of her life, scholars believed Barnes wrote almost nothing during this period. But at the time of her death her apartment was filled with multiple drafts of unpublished poetry and notes toward her memoirs, both included here for the first time. Best known for her tragic lesbian novel Nightwood, Barnes has always been considered a crucial modernist. Her later poetry will only enhance this reputation as it shows her remarkable evolution from a competent young writer to a deeply intellectual poet in the metaphysical tradition. With the full force of her biting wit and dramatic flair, Barnes’s autobiographical notes describe the expatriate scene in Paris during the 1920s, including her interactions with James Joyce and Gertrude Stein and her intimate recollections of T. S. Eliot. These memoirs provide a rare opportunity to experience the intense personality of this complex and fascinating poet.

Nightwood ; Ladies almanack (Triangle classics)

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Nightwood ; Ladies almanack (Triangle classics)
Djuna Barnes
Manufacturer: Quality Paperback Book Club
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

The Sun Also Rises

ASIN: 0965041778

Product Description

Two books in one by lesbian-interest author Djuna Barnes: Nightwood, first published in 1937; and Ladies Almanack, first published in 1928.

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