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    Nightwood
    Nightwood
    Nightwood
    Audiobook6 hours

    Nightwood

    Written by Djuna Barnes, T. S. Eliot and Jeanette Winterson

    Narrated by Gemma Dawson

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Nightwood, Djuna Barnes's strange and sinuous tour de force 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's depiction of these characters and their relationships has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 11, 2017
    ISBN9781515986638
    Nightwood
    Author

    Djuna Barnes

    Djuna Barnes was an American modernist writer and visual artist. Her hugely successful novel Nightwood (1936) has become a cult classic of lesbian fiction. Barnes began her career as a journalist and illustrator for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1913. Within a year, Barnes was a highly-sought features reporter and interviewer whose work appeared in the New York City’s leading newspapers and periodicals. Later, Barnes became part of Greenwich Village’s Bohemian community and began publishing her prose, poems, illustrations, and one-act plays in both avant-garde literary journals and popular magazines. She published her first illustrated volume of poetry, The Book of Repulsive Women, in 1915. In 1921, she left New York for Paris, where she published three more works: A Book (1923), Ladies Almanack (1928), and Ryder (1928).  

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    Reviews for Nightwood

    3.5/5

    484 ratings24 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I feel like I didn't really understand this book, like when you're a child listening to adults talk to each other. I understand the individual words, I understand the narrative, but I don't really understand what's being said. It is beautifully written, though. Like a poem.
    • 3/5
      Much of the language of Nightwood is impenetrable burl, root to branch, which curls around the subject in hints and suggestions but rarely points. Aside from the occasional thorns. We enter and perhaps exit a labyrinth of obsessions often erotic and all unsatisfied and leave the characters self-crucified there.
    • 3/5
      Other than as a feeble ploy to keep plugging a book in the hope of raising sales, it is no use saying that a book should not be forgotten, that it should be a modern classics. Some books are justly "the preserve of academics and students" (Introd. Winterson, p. ix).
    • 1/5
      OMG!!! This was horrible. I had never heard of Djuna Barnes until I saw Midnight in Paris. She was an incidental character, but because she was there, I was intrigued so I got this book.She wrote in spirals and it just isn't worth the work to read the story. The reason I had heard of so many of her contemporaries, but not her, is because only scholars of the period are interested in struggling through her stuff.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Was it bad timing? I read this book like it was written in a dream. And when it was over I woke up and wasn't sure exactly what had happened.
    • 3/5
      Nightwood reminded me a little of D. H. Lawrence, that overwrought imagery of night, degradation and death. I found the prose impenetrable in parts, unlike that of Lawrence. Not to my taste at all.The characters include Felix, the Jewish husband of Robin, the innocently depraved invert, who is desperately loved by Nora but stolen by the empty Jenny. An unqualified doctor links the characters and delivers monologues.I thought the book was anti-Semitic.
    • 3/5
      A landmark work in lesbian literature and certainly the work of a highly intelligent woman, but for my taste, far too dense in its prose, with long meandering sentences making up paragraphs and modernist techniques that made it a battle to get through. The references and gist of the points Barnes expands on about her characters (telling instead of showing) often seem tedious or just escaped me. Maybe I’m just getting too old, but for whatever reason, this didn’t resonate with me, and I just didn’t see the elegance of poetry in the work, as T.S. Eliot did.
    • 4/5
      Reading this book is like being transported to another world (usually a good sign in a novel) a world full of allusion where the reader is left grasping at smoke rings, which elegantly curl above the heads of the characters. Although the language is elegant the emotions are raw as the characters, all living in a world of pain desperately try to cope with their feelings of love and loss. There is an excellent introduction by T S Eliot that alerts the reader to the writing style of the author, prepares him perhaps for a reading experience that will take some concentration. I found it best to approach the book in small chunks, because the writing style then becomes fresh with every read and allowed me to revel in the use of language, without becoming too tired or complaisant. This approach served me well for the first six chapters: the final two where the strands of the story come together in a more narrative approach I was pleased to read in one sitting.T S Eliot says the style of the novel with its beauty of phrasing the brilliance of wit and characterisation has a quality of horror and doom very nearly related to that of an Elizabethan tragedy. This is Barnes describing the Squatter Jenny Petherbridge:“She was nervous about the future, it made her indelicate. She was one of the most importantly wicked women of her time - because she could not let her time alone, and yet could never be part of it. She wanted to be the reason for everything and so she was the cause of nothing. She had the fluency of tongue and action meted out by divine providence to those who cannot think for themselves. She was master of the over-sweet phrase , the over-tight embrace”Barnes aims to fascinate the reader, not merely by what is said, but also by the manner of saying it. There is duality and word play in the sentences in a style not unlike that of the Elizabethan author Jon Lyly, but like Lyly’s writing the style can be more important than the content and so the reader is left with decisions to be made about what he has just read and what has just been said. It does not always work because at times it feels like a scatter-gun approach, and it can be waring. However there is much in the writing that made me stop and think at how thoughtful, original and appropriate a phrase or sentence was in the context of the novel.Djuna Barnes was an American artist, illustrator, journalist and writer Nightwood published in 1936 is considered a cult classic of lesbian fiction. She spent two decades in Europe and her novel has a distinctly European feel, with its old world sophistication and her use of German, French and Italian phrases: much of it is set in Paris between the two world wars. The story is basically about a lesbian menage-a-trois relationship with the pains and guilt of love being laid at the door of a male Doctor who advises while getting caught up with the emotions and struggling with his own catholicism. The Doctor is an Irishman who is not a qualified practitioner and leads an alcohol fused existence on the edge of polite society. The events in the novel centre on a couple of incidents that define the nature of the relationships and lead to thoughts and conversations that reflect on love, pain and death. The book has an intense feeling of melancholy leading to despair and is shot through with observations that may not be life changing, but may make you think about living - warning the style can be infectious. It is a book that will go back onto my shelves for an occasional partial re-read and so 4 stars.
    • 4/5
      Given T.S. Eliot's introduction, in which he says he read the book multiple times and it better each time, I should state this is a review of my FIRST reading. I would estimate a 99.98% chance it will be my last, but you never know.I was attracted to this book by its mention in Eric Ambler's autobiography (Here Lies), where he says it was suggested by a friend, who recommended books Amber otherwise wouldn't have thought about. So I guess I owe my reading to Ambler's long-ago friend also.In reviews of the book (which I read afterwards), it is hailed as a pioneering work of lesbian literature. Yet while it is true that the woman, Robin, around whom the events of the book revolve, has relationships with two women (Nora and Jenny) in addition to the husband, Felix, she leaves early in the book, I didn't find anything about how anyone behaved that depended upon the nature of the relationship, i.e., whether it was lesbian or heterosexual. This is a book about relationships between human beings and how they can leave lasting, indelible marks on the human soul and psyche. The behavior of Nora in the wake of Robin's departure is extreme, but it certainly isn't any more extreme than some men act when left by a woman.At the center of the book, however, is the doctor, whose long rambling monologues fill up most of the pages. These are, by turns, entertaining, funny, observant, and mystifying. This is a book where sentences often seem to use a word or two that just doesn't belong, and most of these words come out of the doctor's mouth.Well, I could ramble on, but it would just further show my lack of understanding! This is a book I'm glad I read, and despite its often obscure language and motivations, it isn't that hard to read. Perhaps if I just had the right drink in my hand....
    • 3/5
      While it is not fair to compare Barnes to other authors (and on International Women's Day it was poignant to read T.S.Eliot's foreword suggesting that Barnes is one of the few good female authors), I could not help but feel like I was reading a cross between Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka, with a touch of Gertrude Stein. The discussion of night and day was interesting, especially after reading Scott Fitzgerald's "The Crack Up" from Esquire magazine in 1936 which touched on similar ideas. Given that Nightwood and "The Crack Up" were both published in 1936, it is clear that the period represents a significant change in the style and tone of literature from the greats of the 1920s. Nightwood has intrigued me enough to want to read Barnes' earlier work. What distinguishes Barnes' dialogue from Charlotte Brontë and Mary Shelley was that when I felt it was far too long for realistic conversations, the author indicates that the listener had also tuned out (on occasion). I found this clever and kept me intrigued, whereas Brontë and Shelley drag on with their dialogue without apology, and I find this hard work to stay interested. Not so with Djuna Barnes and I am glad I found this gem at the Argyle Emporium in Goulburn the other day.
    • 5/5
      So incredibly good & wholly conceived & astoundingly executed that to give it merely 5 stars is an insult. One could spend an entire review on the genius of the title Nightwood, evocative as it is of nightshades (poisonous plants identifiable by their seductive rich red or black berries); evocative as it is of those things we draw at night that keep darkness where we want it, whether it be in or out. It is especially fitting for a novel peopled predominately by homo- & trans-sexual characters existing in the caesura between the First and Second World Wars. The socially marginalized experience the precarity of peace twice over: even in peacetime they can only exist as as themselves, in the shadows, under the cover of night; they are never without anxiety and therefore never without peace. Djuna Barnes does not belabor (and by belaboring estrange) queerness, if anything she presents--in 1937--extraordinarily precise psychological portraits of what would be quite ordinary love, if only that love were not complicated by its cultural forbiddenness. Nightwood is the story the irresistible & fickle Robin Vote, and the tornadic havoc she wreaks on those lovers (male and female) who enter her orbit. Her story is largely interpolated by “Doctor” Matthew O’Connor, a transexual woman, who finds himself in the role of accidental pseudo-psychoanalyst to all of Robin’s forsaken lovers. (Being faithful here to Barnes’ pronoun slippage). In a deeper sense however, Nightwood is an homage to O’Connor, how he has navigated the “nightwood,” how he has helped others to do the same, how exhausting & underappreciated his task, and how wisdom cannot suffice as a substitute of loneliness. No review can do this book justice, you simply must read it. Every sentence describes its own small universe. Don’t be intimidated by its reputation as a difficult modernist masterpiece. You’ll get it, and if you don’t, it will keep rewarding you on each re-reading.
    • 2/5
      Second time attempting this beautifully written, beautifully dull novel. The book starts out with an intoxicating sense of loss and estrangement and goes through a series of emotional relationships early on that really left a big impression on me. Barnes handles loss and inner psychology with finesse.

      Unfortunately the second half of the novel reads like a series of boring, pedantic conversations between people I'd rather not know. Though the book is often called one of the most difficult from the modernist period, I'd say it's more dull than complex in the final sections.

      Too bad that the book loses so much steam and becomes so repetitive, especially considering the power of the opening passages and the book's rather short length.

      Maybe the end is good, but once I skipped twenty pages of boring philosophical bs dialogue between the Doctor and whomever, I figured, What the hell is the point?

      5/5 for the first 80 pages, then 1/5 from there on.

    • 3/5
      Six-word review:Literary geode: sparkling walls, hollow core.
    • 5/5
      For whatever reason, it seems that “Nightwood” has one of the more precarious reputations in twentieth-century literature. The name of its author, Djuna Barnes, is still synonymous with the life of the modern, and Modernist, American expatriate living in Paris; however, like Lawrence Durrell, another author I have been thinking quite a bit about, she seems to have fallen into disfavor – and this is quite a loss. And like Durrell’s “Alexandria Quartet,” this coheres as fiction in a completely different way from most other fiction. While Durrell’s prose is florid and sometimes downright meretricious, Barnes uses her characters, especially the eccentric Dr. O’Connor, to stretch the limits of language and meaning. O’Connor, a fay dandy and philosopher-mystagogue, is so preposterous and unbelievable it’s a miracle that he even works as a character. He serves as a perennial touching conversational touching stone for all the other characters, endlessly and giddily upending their assumptions and, especially in the case of Nora, emotional commitments.The other characters, each histrionic in their own way, are all fairly normal in comparison; the plot is barebones and simple. The “Baron,” a self-stylized aristocrat manqué, marries Robin Vote, who seems lost and discontented whoever she surrounds herself with and wherever she goes, often being driven to roam the streets of the city at night, a listless flaneur. The chapter “Watchmen, What of the Night?” is one of the most beautiful meditations on night that I have ever read in literature. Soon after having a child with the Baron, she leaves him and moves in with Nora, with whom she is just spiritually out of place. Robin then finally leaves Nora for Jenny, at which point Nora turns to Dr. O’Connor for solace. His brand of consolation is some peculiar poesy to say the least. At the height of Nora’s despair, her heart rent in two by a woman she truly loved, O’Connor offers these words: “For the thickness of the sleep that is on the sleeper we ‘forgive,’ as we ‘forgive’ the dead for the account of the earth that lies upon them. What we do not see, we are told, we do not mourn; yet night and sleep trouble us, suspicion being the strongest dream and dead the throng. The heart of the jealous knows the best and the most satisfying love, that of the other’s bed, where the rival perfects the lover’s imperfections. Fancy gallops to take part in that duel, unconstrained by any certain articulation of the laws of that unseen game.”T. S. Eliot’s beautiful introduction does two things introductions rarely do: holds back any plot spoilers (not that there is really anything to “give away,” per se) and actually sheds light on the text. It can safely be read, as I read it, before finishing the book. And I second Eliot’s take on the novel, especially his observation that in “Nightwood” you will find “great achievement of a style, the beauty of phrasing, the brilliance of wit and characterization, and a quality of horror and doom very nearly related to that of Elizabethan tragedy.” The brilliance of wit and characterization is something I can only second and treble. This is bold, high Modernism at its most audacious, and the sum of its effects is simply stunning.
    • 1/5
      Rating: 1.75* of fiveThe Book Report: Serial adultress and all-around malcontent Robin leaves her too, too unendurable husband "Baron Felix" after presenting him with the desired heir...only the child is crippled...and takes up with Nora, a whiny dishrag of a nothing-much who represents Robin's desire for dreary domesticity. Needless to say, Robin can't stand too much of that and leaves Nora at home so she can cavort and disport herself with all and sundry. While so doing, Robin meets Jenny, a serial widow (why does no one wonder how this dry, juiceless woman LOST FOUR HUSBANDS?!) and a sociopath whose sole pleasure in life is making others unhappy. Bye bye Nora, hello Jenny, and ultimately Robin seeks the help of Dr. O'Connor, a male transvestite and fraudulent medico, with predictable results. The ending of the book is one of the weirdest I've ever read, involving Nora, Robin, a dog, and a truly weird accident in a church.My Review: Queer Ulysses. Famous for "raunchy" sex descriptions,most of which would not raise a Baptist preacher's eyebrows in this day and time. Dreadful, sesquipedalian sentences recounting unpleasant peoples' doings in endlessly recursive and curiously directionless arabesques.Do not read this after the age of twenty-four. It will cause your nose hairs to ignite and your T-zone to break out in painful cysts. Seriously...don't.
    • 5/5
       This exquisitely written modernist classic novel, which is in command of at least fifteen prose styles ranging from the Age of Elizabeth to circus vaudeville, combines revulsion with perplexity and deep sexual allure, and must be read at least three times, hopefully with an empathic textual guide, in order for its subject matter and achievement to be justly appreciated.
    • 5/5
      In this perfected drama of passion Djuna Barnes shines with methaforical intelligence and striking details. The story itself is one of broken hearts and obbsesion, it could well be a soap opera of today but the plot takes place in the 30s. The plot itself is however not what's important to me as I read it, but Barnes fantastic use of the language.
    • 2/5
      I read this book on Mar 14 and 15, 1952. On Mar 14 I saId: "Am readng a New Directions book, Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes but am getting nothing out of it." On Mar 15 I said: "Finshed Nightwood, which was published in 1936 and is authored by an avant garde woman who lived in Paris between the wars. It tells the story, in scintllating prose, of the emotional reactions of 3 Lesbians, a homo dr., and a baron. The book left me with a sterile and decadent feeling that the book is of little interest since the insight is not into people's minds that hold true for many, but only is of validity for the kind of people the characters were. This despite T. S. Eliot's introductory warning that that is just what I should not do."
    • 3/5
      Strange, very strange. Eliot's forward to this singular novel is that Barnes wrote a truly poetic book that only poets can truly understand, and I can see his point. At least half the text is devoted to conversations between two people that aren't really talking to each other at all, but airing their own opinions in very symbolic language. The Doctor, in particular, gives vent to numerous monologues that are poetic and frequently obscure, bouncing from one topic to another seemingly unrelated topic. What connects these apparent non sequiters is his underlying meaning or message that each anecdote contributes to thematically. In other words, he may be profound, and have some interesting things to say, but I wouldn't want to try to hold a conversation with him in reality, he would drive me crazy.Besides the long dialogue, the plot of the book is about a mysterious woman, Robin, who destroys the lives of two other women and a man. Not out of malice, but because of her primitive nature that doesn't conform to society, because she is always seeking in the darkness for the other side of humanity that has come to exist only in the subconscious for others. For some reason, Felix and Nora and Jenny all fall in love with her, seeing in her nature something they need but can't explain, and imposing their own subconscious desires on her. The relationships are all very complex, and more than a little strange. Doctor Matthew looks on as a mediator, and an enabler, watching their drama unfold as if it were a show, yet taking an active role in pushing these people together, as if he has no choice in the matter. He is their narrator, and yet he despairs of his role, feeling that these tangled lives are pulling him down into the darkness with him. The night and darkness are motifs that run throughout the novel, forming the basis of many metaphors. A theme that Barnes presents is that the dark side of humanity is our missing half, the missing link, and we have tried to subsume that in polite society but it is always there, raging under the surface. She also plays with the animal nature of man, making many comparisons and even ending with a regression to an animal state. Robin is the physical embodiment of all of these ideas, and the other characters are both drawn and repulsed. The twin forces of attraction and repulsion are repeated in various forms throughout the book. The Doctor, on the other hand, serves as a balance to Robin, as he understands these needs in humans but has successfully integrated them into a human life. He walks the razor thin edge of the twin worlds but manages to keep from falling off into either side. I read this book as an undergraduate and didn't take anything away with me - it was a school assignment, and that was that. I decided to reread it now, and see if my added years could help me understand the novella better. I found that the plot was much easier to follow, and I was able to discern some of the central themes of the novel (although, in such a dense story, I'm sure I missed many others). However, I truly disagree with Barnes's presentation of life and with her message. They go firmly against my own faith and life philosophy. More than once I had to put the book down and say that I just did not think so. While being a well-written and complex story, it is a sad and discomforting view of humanity, and I doubt I will visit it again.
    • 1/5
      Hated it. Woman leaves husband and child to take on lesbian lovers...who she destroys also. Waste of time.
    • 5/5
      the wild bunch?!
    • 2/5
      This book is supposed to be brilliant, but I just couldn't GRASP any of it. It had a lot of those melodramatic outbursts that seem to come from nowhere and go nowhere.
    • 1/5
      There are about four passages of stunningly beautiful prose in this novel. However, it's not worth slogging through the pretentious, quasi-nonsensical ramblings that make up 75% of the text in order to experience those moments of beauty. Barnes has an annoying tendency to start writing something that is relatively straightforwardly descriptive, then suddenly swerve off into sentences that, while grammatically correct, _make no sense whatsoever_. It feels like reading Gertrude Stein (I'm thinking of _Tender Buttons_ specifically) -- quite irritating, and taking far too much work to ferret out whatever miniscule nugget of sense might be hiding in among the glut of senseless language.
    • 1/5
      What a train-wreck of a book. You can open it to any page-- whether it's the text proper or T. S. Eliot's effusive introduction-- and be guaranteed at least one meaningless howler. The only purpose to writing a book like this is to impress someone like, well, T. S. Eliot, and mission accomplished on that score, Ms. Barnes.I won't say that this is an awful book. I will say that there are an awful lot of sentences that start nowhere, go nowhere, and lack any sort of sense whatsoever. Perhaps you like that sort of thing. Drink up.