Nightwood

Barnes' Magnum opus, "Nightwood" (1936), was her second novel and one of those books that probably 'must' be read, the same as "Winesburg, Ohio" (Sherwood Anderson), or "The Great Gatsby", (F. Scott Fitzgerald). Poet Donald J. Greiner once wrote, "[It]...stands out among post-World War I American novels as one of the first notable experiments with a type of comedy that makes the reader want to lean forward and laugh with terror." What is the book "about"? To grossly oversimplify this complex tale, it's about one woman's mental, emotional, and sexual domination and manipulation, over time, of another young woman. There is also a significant sub-plot about a physician who has his own unique problems, especially concerning alcohol abuse and homosexuality. This is truly a dark and atmospheric story, partially about homosexuality, which probably accounts for its limited readership in a Puritanistic America when it was first published, and possibly even since. Barnes was an American, home-schooled and raised among incredibly artistic people such as Jack London and Franz Liszt, both of whom visited her father's farm. She lived from 1892 to 1982 and spent 20 years of her life in Paris, passing time in the company of other avant garde personalities such as Mina Loy, Janet Flanner, Dolly Wilde, and Gertrude Stein. This book was an incredibly tough read for me but people who understand poetry, (and I don't very well), will probably get it just fine. Barnes doesn't use words wastefully and her prose-style of writing takes on a sort of incongruous, syncopated rhythm. A review of the Cliff's Notes prior to reading the book would probably help out a lot. But I will say outright that this is one of the most compelling novels I've ever read. Having now read Barnes' greatest work, I'm eager to note that she was probably at least a borderline genius. Don't expect your typical novel here -- you won't come away from this one with a warm, fuzzy feeling. In fact, as you relate to each of the principals, especially "the doctor", you'll likely experience some emotional discomfort. Perhaps that is the genius of the work.

I enjoyed the review by Eric Karl Anderson. But I'd like to add a few things about Anderson's identity interpretation on the five characters that thread 'Nightwood' and its meanings. In the introduction of the book T.S Eliot wrote a preface which prepared the readers from possible misunderstandings for Djuna Barnes brilliant story written in prose was a work of 'creative imagination' and not 'philosophical treatise'. I read it twice, the second time believing it to be a different book. From the beginning Barnes persuades the reader to dislike Robin for her strangeness; living but not present, a turmoil in the cold that disrupted the farse of other characters reality when she touched their lives. Robin and Doctor. Matthew are antagonists. They represent opposite dimensions of the self. The Doctor, although a brilliant mind, accurate in understanding the misery of Man is never the less a failure, in bondage with humility and the truth. In the end he curses Robin for existing; having transformed also him, Nora, Felix and Jenny into doomed creatures in a mysterious and horrific sense of how small their lifes became. In the chapter Go Down, Matthew, the Doctor and Nora could not hold a conversation. They spoke to the readers, not listening to each other. Their lives like a ring closing in their personal pain, existing only in the past, like dummies tragically possessed by death. Robin killed what they proclaimed as birthright, symbolically how she killed son Guido, who prayed to the Virgin by calling the statue Mamma. Loved the last chapter. I, that despised Robins personal distinction of morality was able to finally understand her. Her nature made her different; nor human nor a beast. A creature like the night that drifted 'sonambule' through life. No other human soul could be so free, so they love her but it's not Robin they want, but who she is. The misery in understanding it was not in reach. Djuna Barnes also tells a parallel tale of obsession for an image of love. Robin is that woman like an iman, possessed with a childs memory, but that causes a certain attraction to fear. In 'Bow Down' the writer evoked that it was easier to love a lion for its tamer. The story, and finally Robin were irresistable to my imagination. There is a tempting invitation from the writer to participate for the lonely souls (they become) speak to us, and Robin unaltered by their existance leaves us (readers) out. The book is brilliant. Like many readers have stated, it is a very hard book to fully comprehend in its various contexts. I advice those to wait for an appropriate moment in their lives to read this book. It answers many questions if we search, and dig between words and the quality of a genuine thinker, such as Djuna Barnes.

In Nightwood there is a purposeful distortion of biographical facts. The past is based on self-deception and self-forgetfulness. The characters speak about their identity as if it were something they are trying to lose by constantly forgetting and reformulating who they are. Felix begins the novel with a past that is admitted to be one based upon deceit. Instead of trying to clarify it, he is compelled to associate with men and women of the theatre who have assumed titles that are equally false. By absorbing himself in this community of carnival freaks, he is able to relieve himself of the need to technically defend the presentation of his identity and he is able to more fully believe in the illusion himself. It is apparent that his assumed identity is no less true than the one that has been given to him through inheritance. An implied assertion is made through his actions that an understanding of identity cannot be achieved by either historical or self-evaluative means. The reaction, then, is to cast the notion of one's own identity out away from oneself as something to be created externally. This effect is illuminated upon in Dr. O'Connor's speech about the continual process of the night: "Let a man lay himself down in the Great Bed and his ` identity' is no longer his own, his `trust' is not with him, and his `willingness' is turned over and is of another permission. His distress is wild and anonymous. He sleeps in a Town of Darkness, member of a secret brotherhood. He neither knows himself nor his outriders; he berserks a fearful dimension and dismounts, miraculously, in bed!" By giving oneself over to the "Night", you dispel with the responsibility for your own identity. It is a space of anonymity that can be used to escape from identity because it becomes something completely outside of the self. The suggestion is that this is a process that people are a continual participant in. It is a necessary ritual performed in order to not only to escape what identity is understood to be, but to escape false layers of identity as well. To "berserk a fearful dimension" is to be rid of the aspects of identity that are used as props to cover what is really unknown about identity. Consequently, the greatest fear of anyone in Nightwood would be the discovery of any certain facts about themselves and, more importantly, their own remembrance of their actual identities. Yet, this is unlikely to happen to any of the characters because they have subjected themselves to enough "Nights" to never remember themselves again. The result is that you are left in a labyrinth of each character's creation where they may open any one door to find another display, but no certainty because the true identity of the character has been irretrievably lost.Barnes's elliptical descriptions of her characters create a sense that she knows as little about the characters in their narration as the reader knows reading of them. This is not a failure to properly think out the characters

First, I should tell you what Nightwood isn't. It's not acelebration of love between women, or of the glamour of Paris, or ofmodernism's traditionally spare aesthetic. It is, however, a wonderful book, which will probably try your patience but will repay your efforts with the pleasure of reading some of the most wonderful writing to have been produced this century. Djuna Barnes, born in the US, spent some twenty years in Europe, during which she wrote innovative journalism, a novel (Ryder), short stories, poetry and plays, and, slowly, the autobiographical fictional narrative that was finally published as Nightwood in 1936. The novel was hard to place, and finally published by no less of a modernist luminary than T.S. Eliot, then working at Faber and Faber. Barnes' novel chronicles a love affair between two women: Nora Flood, the sometime "puritan," and Robin Vote, a cipher-like "somnambule" -- sleepwalker -- who roams the streets of Paris looking for -- well, it's not quite clear, but it's a fruitless quest she's on. Nora finds herself roaming the streets too, looking for Robin, but, like most of the characters of the novel, she bumps up against Dr Matthew O'Connor instead. O'Connor, an unlicensed doctor from the Barbary Coast, dominates much of the novel with his astounding barrage of anecdote, offering a stream of stories that all point, ultimately, to the sublime misery of romantic obsession. The love story (if it can even be called that) is framed by the history of Felix Volkbein, a self-styled Baron who marries Robin early on, and whose family tree provides the structure on which the rest of this dawdling narrative hangs.But nothing I say here can give you a sense of Barnes' dense, lyrical prose, and quite amazingly complex and beautiful writing: you simply have to puzzle over the book yourself to experience perhaps the most idiosyncratic novel produced by an American writer between the wars. It's a dark, melancholy story, with much detailed description of the decaying expatriate lifestyle Barnes herself (sometimes) enjoyed. The final chapter of the book has been regarded as controversial, opaque, and/or vaguely pornographic: Eliot wanted to exclude it when the novel was first published. It might certainly surprise you, and perhaps dismay you if you want to see all threads neatly tied together at the end. But I've read this book several times, and have never regretted it for a moment.

Nightwood is a Masterpiece. So much can be written about masterpieces that it's better to let the master's speak. I was never horrified by this book, but then I have no doubt that Nora and Robin loved like prisoners of one another's souls, and hearts, and as if their lives were on fire.Perhaps they were "As Rome burns against a nightime sky" (Dr O Connor the philosophizing heavy drinking Transvestite Irishman surmises) "Rome could only have burnt at night."Unlike the woman who says to skip a few chapters I will tell you every drop of this book is indispensible but that while light and well rehearsed as a good play, the language can be daunting. Buy a dictionary or get an encyclopedia if it's too much but I think the general effect of Barne's alchemy will take hold anyway. I first read her when I was twenty years old. I was in utter astonishment.I am a writer, and this book permanently altered my ideas of what made a book or a novel because I was ready to receive the genius of this fresh. I have gone back and reread the dense, tightly packed metaphysical drama of the heart and soul and NEVER come away disappointed.Wizardry.A must must must read!