NightwoodNightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (Times Literary Supplement). 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 persona 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. |
Contents
BOW DOWN | 3 |
LA SOMNAMBULE | 32 |
NIGHT WATCH | 55 |
THE SQUATTER | 71 |
WATCHMAN WHAT OF THE NIGHT? | 84 |
WHERE THE TREE FALLS | 114 |
GO DOWN MATTHEW | 132 |
THE POSSESSED | 176 |
Biographical Note | |
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Arthur Rimbaud Baron Baronin beast began Bernadette Mayer bird body Book Café carriage child chin church Collected Poems coming Comte de Lautréamont crying D.H. Lawrence damned dark Davide Lajolo dead death Djuna Barnes doctor doll dream drink eyes face fear Felix flowers forward Frau Mann girl glass Guido hair hand head heart Hedvig Heinrich von Kleist Henry Jenny Kay Boyle knees knew laughing legs listening lived looking Matthew Matthew O'Connor mind misery mother moved Muriel Spark never night Nightwood Nora Nora's Paris prose Qian Zhongshu Robin Vote seemed Selected Poems Selected Writings shadow sitting sleep smile someone spoke standing stood stopped story T. S. Eliot talk tears tell thing thought Tommaso Landolfi took touched trouble turned Vienna voice waiting walking weeping woman women