I Am Alien to Life: Selected Stories

by Djuna Barnes, Merve Emre (foreword)

The best of Djuna Barnes’s dark, droll, incisive short fiction, spanning her all-too-brief career, edited and introduced by Merve Emre.Djuna Barnes is rightly remembered for Nightwood, her breakthrough and final a hallmark of modernist literature, championed by T. S. Eliot, and one of the first, strangest, and most brilliant novels of love between women to be published in the twentieth century. Barnes’s career began long before Nightwood, however, with journalism, essays, drama, and satire of extraordinary wit and courage. Long into her later life, after World War II, when she published nothing more, it was her short fiction above all that she prized and would continue to revise. Here are all the stories Barnes sought to preserve, in the versions she preferred, as well as a smattering of rarities as selected by critic and New Yorker contributor Merve Emre. These are tales of women “‘tragique’ and ‘triste’ and ‘tremendous’ all at once,” of sons and daughters being initiated into the ugly comedy of life, monuments all to a worldview singular and scathing. As Emre writes in her foreword, “[Barnes’s] themes are love and death, especially in Paris and New York; the corruption of nature by culture; the tainted innocence of children; and the mute misery of beasts . . . her characters may be alien to life, but they are alive—spectacularly, grotesquely alive.”

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Library Science, The United States Of America, American, Classics

240 pages, Paperback

Published October 8, 2024

About the author

Djuna Barnes was an artist, illustrator, journalist, playwright, and poet associated with the early 20th-century Greenwich Village bohemians and the Modernist literary movement.

Barnes has been cited as an influence by writers as diverse as Truman Capote, William Goyen, Isak Dinesen, John Hawkes, and Anaïs Nin. Bertha Harris described her work as "practically the only available expression of lesbian culture we have in the modern western world" since Sappho.

Barnes played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and 30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens. Her novel Nightwood became a cult work of modern fiction, helped by an introduction by T. S. Eliot. It stands out today for its portrayal of lesbian themes and its distinctive writing style. Since Barnes's death, interest in her work has grown and many of her books are back in print.

Reviews

[Aye Gomorrah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Random book store pickup. Holy focking shit. The second i finished this book immediately began to re read the whole thing because that’s how incredible it was. I have no words. Well i have some words. Djuna barnes I am so fascinated with you and your life i hope we can kiss one day in gay heaven. She exposes truths that I physically have to keep out of my viscinity because they are so ugly and she does it as if it were a simple after thought or like, putting sugar in the coffee of her sentence structure. It’s not disturbing it’s just there. I am transported i am floating i am watching the repugnant human behavior and the frailty of everything we grasp onto for meaning in this hilarious perception of life. Delicious scrumptious i can’t get enough of her descriptions of the intricacies of womanhood and humanity in these stories.

[Selin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hauntingly strange, a true fever dream, requires many re-reads

[Marjorie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the privelege of living for two years in Patchin Place, across the street from where Djuna Barnes had suffered, lived and breathed her last. e e cummings lived there as did Theodore Dreiser, John Reed, and John Cowper Powys. The creative energy was palpable in the mews. Now, three decades later, I am reading their works. I haven't made it through Nightwood, Barnes's novel inspired by her relationship with Thelma Wood but I picked up this collection at Three Lives Booksellers, just down West 10th Street from the mews and worked my way through these grim stories.

The purchase price of collection is justified by the insights Merve Emre packs into his forward.

And then their are the stories, disorienting, depairing, unsettling. However, they are not all together nihilistic. The emotional tension is present but never unbearable. Barnes often suggest horrors but these are not horror stories. They are struggling humans clawing their way through love, parenthood, thought, and death. The children seem representative of a concept, not of flesh and blood. The last story in this collection, "Behind the Heart" starts with a line I loved, "... for she at forty had known life for almost forty years, which is no so with most people, ..." Barnes goes on to explain that children are given 20 years, more or less, to understand happiness and sadness. But this adult woman character she is describing, she had suffered all her childhood and thus had "known life" for every year of her existence. Given how Emre describes Barnes's own miserable childhood, this feels like a truth she speaks from experience.

It is not a collection that is a joy to read, but it is also not unpleasant. It is at times confusing and disorienting. Her setting, if in a city, is usually Paris or New York City. I felt the influences of the neighborhood she inhabited in New York in her stories. For example, Jeffereson Market was a provisions store and butcher shop right around the corner on Sixth Avenue. Barnes is describing Jefferson Market when in "The Rabbit," she details the view of meat through the vitrines across from the tailor's shop. In "The Doctors," I know exactly the type of office where the gynocologists met with patients (and lovers.) When Barnes portrays country scenes, they are not painterly like one gets from Thomas Hardy in Wessex. No, her scenes are impressions, foggy, neither upstate NY, nor Normandy, nor Armenia. The houses are strangely magnificent, but always a but gloomy, like an abandoned mansion recently re-occupied, a place to arrive and see, but not to stay. Her characters have foreign names and their ideas are unconventional. Nothing and no one seems properly suited to its place. And this adds to the disorientation. She is masterful at creating a quiet disorientation.

She leaves ambiguities in sentences where she could have easily made the action clear. She inserts and addresses "Madame" in several stories which makes it unclear if the narrator is addressing a listener or the female protagonist. She will make statements that could equally apply to one character or another. But even as this ambiguity litters her stories, I followed the stories well. Only one story, "Who Is this Tom Scarlett" left me puzzled at the end.

I'm extremely glad I read this collection. She definitely is worth reading but it is important to understand the trauma this woman brought to her writing. If, like me, this literary figure intrigues you, this collection is a great point of entry.

[Yasmin M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this audiobook like an ambience music. The narrator has a very toffee-like speech, sort of like in French with their “liaison”. I enjoyed it, but could not stay on top of the storylines. It’s weird that they have stayed with me though. The feeble indecisive boy, the duchess, the doctor, that old farmer. Weird book, enjoyable.

[Gillian Haggerty]

Not sure I understood a single story. Transcendent writing tho

[Samson L · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me it went a bit hit-or-miss between stories, but god did barnes have a knack for a character description. “Character Description” is a bit of a misnomer here; her florid introductions to her characters and their quirks, voices, teeth, noses, smells, and favored turns of phrase give you a feeling you’ve known them your whole life in just a paragraph, but some of these descriptions extend out into such lucid and ornate detail that they become an entire story unto themselves. Many of these stories had me wanting so much more, but some had me counting down the pages until the next. Did a very good job of taking my mind anywhere other than my dumb store job where i do nothing, especially when I only had 15 minutes at a time to get away with not looking busy. Great read overall.

Favorite Stories:
• Smoke
• Indian Summer
• The Rabbit
• No Man’s Mare
• The Perfect Murder

[Sophia Eck]

I am Alien to Life, to me, is definitely a grander exploration of the precise development of unique and unsettling characters more than a totem pole in the camp of narrative fulfillment. In these stories, Barnes artfully posits countless uniquely branded and subtly unsettling characters, and drops them into often non-contextual settings and situations, leaving you deeply intrigued and wanting more. Her characters reminded me of the unseemliness of the protagonists of novels like The Glutton or Perfume; outwardly and seemingly unremarkable, but harboring deeper sinister elements. Barnes, in this collection, works primarily in the concise yet conflictingly open-ended, and each story gave the feeling of entering varying theater showings for five minutes in the middle of a show you know nothing of prior, but now feel you need to know more.

[Oscreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Characters written like this are worth reading.

[Travisimo5 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting, enigmatic short fiction. I am so grateful to the editor Merve Emre for bringing this collection to the world. I may have never encountered this otherwise- as I’ve not come across the author’s name before in my seeking. One that I shall revisit.

[Claire Zavoyna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and weird, different but all the same. I imagine she'd be friends with Agatha Christie. I am questioning everything/

[Anna B · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The water was full to the edge with water-lily pads and Moydia said it was a shame that women threw themselves in the Seine, only to become a part of its sorrow, instead of casting themselves into a just-right pond like this, where the water would become a part of them.”

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up as a treat between Mason Dixon and Against the Day. I've been wanting to pick up
Djuna Barnes' Nightwood for some time, so this seemed like a fun way to dip my toes into her general work.
There is an unbelievable efficiency of prose and narration here - stories start deep, end early, and you are left with blinding afterimage of the characters described. There is something alien about the structures here - the stories feel complete, but they do not feel like stories a human would tell about their peers. Fantastic work overall, I really cannot wait to read Nightwood.

[Umar Tosheeb · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is one of those books, at least for me, that has to be re-read many times to understand its subtle and true meaning. Women, mostly in their forties and fifties, feature prominently in all the short stories. The story that I liked the most, or was the easiest for me to read, was about a 53-year-old woman who had, until that time, lived a solitary life, discovered herself, and lived a colorful life. 

[Roxane Dumontheil · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories are definitionally “no plot, just vibes” and heavy on dialogue that feels play-like in its intensity and theatricality, which is right up my alley. Nearly every story features one or more horse or other animal, and characters dying, in love, doubting their religion, or questioning their place and purpose in the world. I enjoyed the writing and the stories but they quickly got very repetitive and it felt like I was reading the same one over and over again.

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spooky, eerie, strange energy to these stories. Most all of them center around women in middle age (awesome!) and they have an eerie energy to them. My favorite story of the bunch was Indian Summer about Madame Boliver, who is finally hitting her stride at 53 years old. As it goes with most story collections I loved some stories but some others didn't speak to me as much. All and all I really really loved this collection!

[Senna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the stories were interesting and well written, but all the short stories that each had so many characters in them and then also nicknames on top of that made it hard to comprehend at times. I think the only stand-out short stories to me is Smoke and The Terrorist.

[les · Rating 5 out of 5]

for its language itself, it is unique and precious. its fever-dream quality of a horrible and fascinating malady only adds to it, lynchian while preceding the word lynchian. much like nightwood, i absolutely loved this, and will need to very slowly come back to it.

[Sara Rezaee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very strange book, I like some of the stories, disliked some but mostly didn’t have a clue what they mean. Writing style is very nice though, feels like reading a poem. I may get back to this book later and reread it but for now it is not my cup of tea.

[Rachel Kowal]

Love how many older women are featured in these weird little stories.

[Max Thibault · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't really have anything to say about it, it just wasn't for me.

[Rose Jeanou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorites:
- Oscar
- No Man’s Mare
- The Perfect Murder
- Smoke
- Aller et Retour

[Daphne Zanni · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely loved it ♡

[sarah]

plodded through this one slowly. preferred the back half of the collection, but i’m refraining from giving this a rating because i feel as though i may have missed something

[Katherine Seidl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird and disconcerting, but lovely and introspective all at once.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

dark poetry
not much plot but lots of feelings through detailed impressions

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aller et Retour was fav

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

really well edited collection

[Maryam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely need to reread this

[may · Rating 4 out of 5]

meus contos favoritos: indian summer, dusie e the perfect murder

[aymee brock · Rating 4 out of 5]

djuna barnes you are so weird i love you