5/26/2023 0 Comments Nightwood djuna![]() She looked down at the volume in my lap, and said, "Oh, Djuna Barnes. One afternoon, that same spring, I found myself sitting next to an elderly woman on the subway. Matthew O'Connor - a cross-dresser, petty thief, inveterate liar and tragic anti-hero. ![]() And I pored over the speeches delivered by my favorite character, the novel's bombastic but tender bard, Dr. ![]() I carried the book around with me, reread passages, pondered their meanings, and suffered with Nora Flood, whose liaison with the wild, amoral Robin Vote, becomes her abiding anguish. ![]() And yet, the story of passion and grief, of exile and loneliness, spoke directly to me, a young woman who, for some reason, had never felt she quite belonged anywhere. ![]() Nightwood is set mostly in a Paris Barnes knew intimately in the 1920s, a city inhabited by ex-pats, drifters and poseurs. It wasn't about my world - I had grown up in a small town in Minnesota and then moved to New York City. The spring after I turned 24, I discovered Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, a slender, dense novel that I read with the aching intensity of a person possessed. ![]()
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