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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 12, 2019 9:12:41 GMT
Mattsby , jimmalone, @redhawk10 , @tyler - because I know these guys are big readers...... I am re-reading this book and it has to be one of the most fascinating books not just of its time (1936) as a book and for its acclaimed history. It is what would commonly be called "gay themed" - lesbian in this case.......I think it's a really interesting read but a hard read too - very elusive and unclear in parts ..........almost like gothic horror prose in how it reads..........and because it's sort of overly conceptual some people are really bored by it. It's a very short book which makes it all the more mysterious in its prose problems........the book jacket has raves from everyone from Dylan Thomas to Burroughs.....yet I think because it reads unclear and jumps time period too makes people tune out too. As far as I know it's never been filmed which has to make it one of the most acclaimed 20th century books without a corresponding film? On some level it might make a better film than a book even because I could see the movie solving the style/prose problem?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2019 19:26:14 GMT
I think it's a really interesting read but a hard read too - very elusive and unclear in parts almost like gothic horror prose in how it reads it's sort of overly conceptual Sold! Added to my to-read list. |
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Post by MsMovieStar on Sept 12, 2019 21:04:14 GMT
Oh honey, Barnes was a friend of Joyce in Paris so it was experimental for it's time. I couldn't get into Nightwood but did enjoy The Book of Repulsive Women, her short stories, and also the biography on her. Nightwood was published by T.S Eliot. Barnes was a much admired journalist in her youth - known for her daring and originality...
Ever read any Bowles, Jane not Paul?
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 12, 2019 21:21:36 GMT
Oh honey, Barnes was a friend of Joyce in Paris so it was experimental for it's time. I couldn't get into Nightwood but did enjoy The Book of Repulsive Women, her short stories, and also the biography on her. Nightwood was published by T.S Eliot. Barnes was a much admired journalist in her youth - known for her daring and originality... Ever read any Bowles, Jane not Paul? I read Two Serious Ladies and remember finding it quite funny (in a good way) although sometimes I laugh at stuff inappropriately. Um....... How'd you like to have a dinner party with the Jane & Paul, Barnes and Sartre/Simone de Beauvoir..........that would be something. You could get a good book out of that I'll tell you that much  |
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Post by Mattsby on Sept 13, 2019 3:25:17 GMT
She, the literary Greta Garbo, is worthy of a thread and more, so let's dig. I read Nightwood last summer, jaw-dropped at her writing talent, I actually scooped up some other books with her stories, plays, poems (From 3rd Avenue On, a Poe-esque fave), journalism (proto-gonzo), and even an unexpurgated version of Nightwood before her most important and exacting collaborator T.S. Eliot edited it down - and it goes into extensive detail what exactly was cut out. When I read, I like to underline (always gleaning!) and my Nightwood copy is let's say rather colorful. I didn't grasp a lot of it, a re-read wouldn't hurt, but I especially liked the first 50pgs, and everything Dr Matthew O'Connor (I actually pictured Depp while reading) - he's an utterly wildly unique character, perceptive, intelligent, and hilarious. Doesn't he pickpocket a patient while treating them!! The book stumbles only a little losing the zing to the sentimental but it's all in all a marvel of prose and incredibly ahead of its time with its explicit lgbt themes. The doctor's monologues are really amazing, there's one p136-7 about the fabled lie of love and gender, something like that, but it's really profound. Another touching moment when he implores one of the girls to seek out the other, despite what's happened, "You must unspin fate." Djuna says a lot, in pained pyrotechnical prose of course, about how we buffer and devastate ourselves - with the gloss of prestige, style, etiquette ("sitting upon spines too refined for rest"), and much more intimately and deceptively when we sleep ("the horizontal fear") and dream ("the night does something to a person's identity") - she almost called the book The Anatomy of Night btw. Simply and helplessly in love but against sweeping historical social psychological forces. "The broken arc of two instincts" as Djuna distills it. For such a slim books it packs a lot, and there's so much to quote. “How do you live at all if this wisdom of yours is not only the truth, but the price?” Shudders.Paul West (underrated essayist) eloquently broke down Djuna's talent, a sample: “She thought in this scrunched-up, infolded way, more of a wit than a witness, more of a dealer in synecdoches than a scrutineer of timelines.” Greta Gerwig a few years ago called Nightwood one of her fav books with spot-on praise: "There is something mysterious and unreachable about this novel, it makes you want to peer behind it somehow. It is rigorous and brave, never allowing the reader to become complacent. It is tragic and erotic and no matter how many times you read it, it eludes your grasp." And not to mention WA's two Djuna refs, Midnight in Paris "No wonder she took the lead" and a character in Everybody Says I Love You named after her. Also some fun trivia (from Brando Unzipped)..... in '43 Brando lived in the same Greenwich Village cul-de-sac as Djuna, then an infamous recluse, and he was a fan of Nightwood.... and despite a "Do Not Disturb" sign on her door, he called for her and she, apparently, madly chased him out of her building.  |
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Post by jimmalone on Sept 13, 2019 8:18:12 GMT
I have heard good things about "Nightwood", but never read it or anything else by Djuna Barnes. She seems to have been a fascinating, but very difficult person, Javier Marias included her in his portraits of writers in "Written Life", also calling "Nightwood" a fascinating work (though it had it's detractors like William Faulkner).
It seems that Djuna was a very instable person and following up this book she failed on her own expectations and her unsound lifestyle, hardly publishing anything for the next decades.
Today in europe Djuna Barnes is almost forgotten.
"Nightwood" is certainly a book I want to read at some point. So thanks for your input.
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Post by jimmalone on Sept 3, 2020 9:44:02 GMT
I have read this now and it was certainly interesting. The style was great, but all was very nebulous, which on one hand had it's charme and especially reading the dialogues of Dr. Matthew O'Connor was quite fun and you could guess what he was meaning or to what he was referring, but overall it had not quite enough substance to me. And even thinking that his book was of an important matter back in the 1930s it couldn't quite keep my interest the whole time, as even the main characters were just silhouettes and not very fleshy. I get the feeling that Barnes just wrote down part after part what she felt and didn't necessarily think much about the whole construct.
Appearantly some of the work to finish that book was done by T.S. Eliot, I guess otherwise the novel could have been even more fragmentary.
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