Nightwood
Djuna Barnes's Nightwood is a book I keep coming across at various places but have never picked up. This week's Guardian review has a brief appreciation by Jeanette Winterson:
Certain texts work in homeopathic dilutions; that is, nano-amounts effect significant change over long periods of time. Djuna Barnes's Nightwood is not much more than a couple of hundred pages long, and more people have heard about it than have read it. Reading it is mainly the preserve of academics and students. Others have a vague sense that it is a modernist text, that TS Eliot adored it, that Dylan Thomas called it "one of the three major prose works by a woman" (accept the compliment to Barnes, ignore the insult directed elsewhere), that the work is an important milestone on any map of gay literature - even though, like all the best books, its power makes a nonsense of any categorisation, especially of gender or sexuality.I have put it on my next to-read list now. Will fit in with my "more women-writers reading program" too. And I have got Ingeborg Bachmann's The Book of Franza and Requiem for Fanny Goldman too. Will try to get into it over the weekend.
8 comments:
it's an extraordinary wonderful intense book, the review is good too and Dr. O'Connor is one of the greatest characters in literature. it's one of my all time favourites.
wow, I am going to locate a copy as soon as possible now.
How wonderful. It is also one of my favorites. Remeber Dr. O'Connor hiding beneath the sheets trying to conceal his night-gown! And the dialogues? How great that you're including these on your list. I also got Bachmann's, that's the only one I haven't read. About J. Winterson, I have read all her books and enjoy them a lot, but to tell you the truth, I don't consider her very literary. That's for another discussion! Good luck kiddos!
I did read Winterson's written on the body a few years back but I was somehow bored stiff with it. It has some quirky musings but the whole thing looked and felt lightweight and shallow.
yes dr O'Connor and his nightgown..but much more I love his johnnywalker-wisdom...the dialogues are great...found somehting similar only and then only on occasions in Lowry's vulcano again
I like Winterson too, butprefer Bachmann and Barnes
http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/barnes/djunabarnes.html
http://www.leftbankreview.com/profiles/DjunaBarnes.html
I am rubbish with inserting links,tellme when they dont work and i mail them to you.
hey, thanks for the links! I have got the book too from the library.
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