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Rating:  - baroque splendor
barnes' prose is some of the most voluptuous language that one can find. indeed, it is bach as word. and her characters' minds are luxriously deep, and as fascinatingly convulted as those of the macbeths. few have written so convincingly and precisely about the complexity of human intimacy. she, like all great minds, recognizes that intimacy is always and ever the final frontier (this includes the campaign for intimacy with self). and o'connor's thought on the protestant imagination rivals that of any philosopher of the modern religious noodle.
this novel defines the terrain of the modern intellectual epidermis; it tickles the very pores of nuance, imploring them to dilate more widely. in it one not only meets with supple minds, one gets to see them thinking. the fugue of the post-kierkegaardian soul never sounded so like elizabethan pop. barnes' glorious, incisive mind weds donne with henry james.
perhaps this book is not for tourist of literature. i dunno. don't care.
Rating: - Style and Tragedy
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.
Rating:  - do you like stream of consciousness?
Put this on the shelf next to Ulysses. It's sort of a parallel universe to that style, loosely speaking. But the other similarity is that it is fairly hard to read. If you read A LOT, then probably you will really enjoy this book. If you just want something that gets to the point, don't read this. It may be the best example of a novelist with "misinformation" as an intent. By that I mean that trickery and deception are part of the writing itself, and Barnes is really good with prose- it's likened to poetry for a reason. Still, I'm left unsatisfied.
Rating: - do you like stream of consciousness?
Put this on the shelf next to Ulysses. It's sort of a parallel universe to that style, loosely speaking. But the other similarity is that it is fairly hard to read. If you read A LOT, then probably you will really enjoy this book. If you just want something that gets to the point, don't read this. It may be the best example of a novelist with "misinformation" as an intent. By that I mean that trickery and deception are part of the writing itself, and Barnes is really good with prose- it's likened to poetry for a reason. Still, I'm left unsatisfied.
Rating:  - Heavy
I guess you've gotta be in the right frame of mind to read this. It's poetic, much too poetic for a quick-read kind of book. It's thorough and deep and I enjoy reading that parts that I can understand! For a first read, it's taken a long time to get through. I can't wait to read it a second time, though.
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