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The Selected Works of Djuna Barnes
A selection of work by the American writer Djuna Barnes. It consists of her novel "Nightwood", a collection of short stories entitled "Spillway", and a verse play, "The Antiphon", which she completed shortly before her death in 1982.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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About the author
Djuna Barnes
91 books567 followersDjuna 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 24, 2021
3.5/5
Let's start with Nightwood, which in this selection came last, and thus came best. Much like Mishima's Confessions of a Mask, I really don't see how people who aren't queer would resonate with this. True, the way that Barnes bends over backwards in some foolish cross-comparison with antisemitism during her tale of trans women and women loving women calls to mind the mirroring of dehumanizations under the overarching kyriarchy, so someone who exists in another Othered format could see the portraits of loving/stalking and body/spirit and recognize them as lives lived on the other side of the railroad tracks. T.S. Eliot stood by this piece for decades, but that one's own wrestlings with the seedier side of things have grown rather infamous by now, if not any more interesting, so I'll let him say his thing in his introductions and take myself to less objective pastures. I remember the first time around taking the common route of being enamored with the doctor and little else, but the time I spent between then and now has been filled with many an engagement with other tales of queerdom, and it was the topsy turvy manner of witnessing sheer mundanity become an all consuming goal in the face of surviving the status quo's myriad ways of hunting us for sports (along with a reading of The Night Watch where as always, one wonders whether the coincidences are ingenuity, or ingénue) that I realized that all the other, seemingly less brilliant characters are likely Barnes in some ways, for once, being honest. So, I watched the three fates, or the maiden, mother, and crone, or figures in a dream dreamt by a being making do with the parts assigned to it and crying out for the days of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' when it was possible to castigate the gods in a certain manner and earn the punishment of being changed into the seeming 'opposite' form, for worse or for better. I could go on, but it'd be more efficient for me to do so in the review of the individual work, and I'd rather resign(/delight) myself to the thought of reading the work for a third time before I go about that. In short, once, there was a world without marriage, without reconstructive surgery, without pronouns, but perhaps only the ones we might recognize these days as 'known.' Fictional fetuses may bitch and moan all they like about gender politics in well regarded pieces of 21st century lit, but I've seen the histories of such lived out for the last two millennia and more, so I have no time to waste on those who see themselves losing their grip on the chokehold of reality and become determined to take everyone else down with them.
To men she sent books by the dozen; the general feeling was that she was a well-read woman, though she had read perhaps ten books in her life.Eight years or so ago, I penned a blathering mess that somehow was popularly deemed fit to pass as a review for a work called Nightwood. Since then, I've officially taken hold of the reins of the personhood that I caught mere glimpses of between the pages way back when, but I've also accrued a great deal more awareness of the personhoods of others. So, while the first consolidated my grasp on this selection's contained novella far beyond I might have dreamed myself capable of while trawling through the 1001 and sometimes following my quivering antennae to futures unknown, the second has made me sick to death of archetypes styled in the usual vein of European solipsism, and Barnes, unfortunately, would not be what she was without a simpering dose of that. Such a development combined with my instinctive tastes means that my estimation fell along the usual lines: strongest for the wayward novella, so-so for the short stories, weakest of the play, the last of which I followed up my finishing of by looking up further information in hopes that I wasn't actually understanding what exactly was going on. Alas, when it comes to works such as these, the world is too slow and I am too quick, so while I've tipped up the rating to the higher side of things, know that that is almost entirely supported by the beginning short stories and the ending yawp, with the middle drama contributing some in terms of certain lines of prose, certain acknowledgements of historical influence, and in general certain efforts made. Finally, if you find this to be a very confusing paragraph for a so-called "review," rejoice! You're likely getting an idea of the experience you'll have with the collection entire.
Let's start with Nightwood, which in this selection came last, and thus came best. Much like Mishima's Confessions of a Mask, I really don't see how people who aren't queer would resonate with this. True, the way that Barnes bends over backwards in some foolish cross-comparison with antisemitism during her tale of trans women and women loving women calls to mind the mirroring of dehumanizations under the overarching kyriarchy, so someone who exists in another Othered format could see the portraits of loving/stalking and body/spirit and recognize them as lives lived on the other side of the railroad tracks. T.S. Eliot stood by this piece for decades, but that one's own wrestlings with the seedier side of things have grown rather infamous by now, if not any more interesting, so I'll let him say his thing in his introductions and take myself to less objective pastures. I remember the first time around taking the common route of being enamored with the doctor and little else, but the time I spent between then and now has been filled with many an engagement with other tales of queerdom, and it was the topsy turvy manner of witnessing sheer mundanity become an all consuming goal in the face of surviving the status quo's myriad ways of hunting us for sports (along with a reading of The Night Watch where as always, one wonders whether the coincidences are ingenuity, or ingénue) that I realized that all the other, seemingly less brilliant characters are likely Barnes in some ways, for once, being honest. So, I watched the three fates, or the maiden, mother, and crone, or figures in a dream dreamt by a being making do with the parts assigned to it and crying out for the days of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' when it was possible to castigate the gods in a certain manner and earn the punishment of being changed into the seeming 'opposite' form, for worse or for better. I could go on, but it'd be more efficient for me to do so in the review of the individual work, and I'd rather resign(/delight) myself to the thought of reading the work for a third time before I go about that. In short, once, there was a world without marriage, without reconstructive surgery, without pronouns, but perhaps only the ones we might recognize these days as 'known.' Fictional fetuses may bitch and moan all they like about gender politics in well regarded pieces of 21st century lit, but I've seen the histories of such lived out for the last two millennia and more, so I have no time to waste on those who see themselves losing their grip on the chokehold of reality and become determined to take everyone else down with them.
It's a gruesome thing that man learns only by what he has between the one leg and the other! Oh, that short dangle!In terms of the play, you can look up a figure named Beatrice Cenci and the track that many a creative piece of media has taken since then in diminishing the revolutionary aspects of the story and amping up various apolotical torture porns in their place. If, after that, you refuse to understand my lack of tolerance for such, that's your problem, not mine. As for the short stories, it was rather wondrously strange to read Barnes alongside a collection that is still in the running to garner a rare five star from me (pretty sure the last short story collection to get such from me was put together by a rather "down to earth" writer known as Flannery O'Conner), so I found myself actually having to try to equal due to two rather phenomenal short story styles instead of scrapping the bottom of the barrel of my enthusiasm. One Barnes story, 'A Night among the Horses,' has made me mildly on a general level but deathly keen whenever I remember it level to read Equus, just to see whether my inordinately fierce hunch has any merit; another, the titular 'Spillway' of the set, could easily make for an interesting novel, a cross between The Scarlet Letter and The Magic Mountain, but as there would be no Barnes prose to fuel, one wonders at the chance of utter futility. Neither of them nor the others came anywhere near to 'Nightwood,' but my predisposition for the longer piece gets in the way of such estimations on a fundamental level, so all I can do is signal that, in one way or another, that the shorter pieces do indeed in some way signal towards the longer, so those looking for a less monumental introduction to Barnes could do much worse than taking on some of these.
Why is it that you want to talk to me? Because I'm the other woman that God forgot.I certainly didn't plan on rereading 'Nightwood' this year. All that happened was, I saw the familiar name, I saw the workable publication year for my challenges, and into my keeping this copy went. I'd like to think that, as a result, the work suffered less from untethered expectations, so while my increased clarity this time around meant that I wasn't (as) wordlessly enraptured, I took what I could get in as great a degree as I'm capable of. Barnes indulges too much in the WASP habitus of her time for me to stand fully behind her, but even now, nearly a decade after I first seriously engaged with her, I can't say that I've read anything that could fully replace her contributions to literature, so while I'm not about to smugly sling about the unspoken consecrations that lead some unfortunate souls to pretend a devotion to "difficult" writing and hate it all the more once the peer pressure has passed, I'm also not going to put her behind me. I'm here, I'm queer, and amidst all the romcoms and happy endings that are deemed permissible to show so long as the cash grab is adequate, I find myself drawn to the unspoken nights, the diabolical days, the living and the loves protected by nothing and no one but a rag by the bedside and a shot in the dark, a time that the Nazis of yesteryear would do their best to burn any trace of and the upstanding US citizens of today would simplify to the point of noxious oblivion. Not all of us are free, and so long as that's the case, none of us are free. Barnes wrote both what she knew and what she thought she knew, and while I can't say I always like her for it, somehow, I must always love her for it nonetheless.
She is myself. What am I to do?
November 4, 2023
Antiphon *** -- One can easily get lost in the exquisitely strange language of this play. Words and images come from all directions, the topic of discussion bounces around, and some things just plain don’t make sense. All of that is wonderful, but it feels a bit wasted upon a thin plot and flat characters.
I don’t know much about Djuna Barnes, or her intent for Antiphon. It’s hard to find an affordable copy of the work, let alone any information online about it. The language has the feel of Gertrude Stein’s playful wanderings, with asides and wrong words and odd quotes.
The characters seem to have immense difficult talking to each other, and, honestly, it’s not clear that they actually do communicate. It feels more like characters are involved in separate monologues that only vaguely touch on each other. A single subject or topic is rarely focused on for more than a couple lines.
It almost has the sense of a stream of conscious play in which the characters reveal their inner thoughts, but I don’t think that was the intent. The lines don’t have the introspective voice of someone talking to themselves.
All of that gives the work a wonderful weirdness that I greatly enjoyed, but it feels wasted on some kind of Freudian family-drama plot and shapeless characters. The danger of having obscure language is that much of the dialogue could be spoken by any character. If that were the intent, that would be fine. In fact, it would have been fascinating. But I didn’t get that sense. Perhaps some kind of authorial voice is meant to dominate, rather than the characters’ voices. (Or, no voice at all.)
This is a fascinating work for those who like experimental drama and language that stretches the boundaries of meaning. Although it pushes the limits, it does seem to stay within the bounds of narrative. It tells a story though rather strangely.
I wish though it were more focused. This would make an excellent one-act play.
But it is what it is. If you want to explore the boundaries of meaning, I recommend Antiphon. (02/21)
Nightwood **** -- What a strangely overwrought yet underdeveloped work! Again, Barnes’ language is far-ranging and odd, with long similes that twist and turn through different topics so that it’s hard to understand what they are all about. (If they are about anything.) The novel eloquently combines beautiful lines with knots of nonsense.
Yet amid this swirling language, the characters and plots are, for the most part, pretty thin. The person at the center of it all, Robin Vote, is ephemeral. She’s irresistibly attractive, yet tall and awkward. She hardly talks, but everyone around her can’t let her be. Of all the rather grainy characters, she is the least vivid and least developed. Other characters remark throughout the novel how impossible it is to know Robin. Readers agree.
The most vividly created character is Dr. Matthew O’Connor, an unlicensed doctor who serves as the unfrocked confessor for various characters. This unusual, cross-dressing man is given to long, racist rants that amuse his friends, but really seem to make little sense. However, he is at the center of the novel.
The work is often touted as one of the first lesbian novels, depicting the love triangle between Robin, Nora and Jenny. But that aspect of the novel is really the least interesting and least important thing to me. The LGBTQ aspects of the novel are presented as a matter of fact, with no fuss or outrage or need for justification. These women were in love and this is what happened.
The untamed language and wry, often laugh-out-loud-funny observations of the characters are the best part. Jenny is subject of particularly withering, Wildean commentary. Imagery of woods, memory, decay, and night abound. The novel is full of wonderful and strange lines that I underlined. It’s hard to pick out just several that accurately depict the novel.
As I noted, it is strange novel. It’s doesn’t meet the normal definition of a good novel – vivid characters, compelling action, etc. But neither does Ulyssess. It’s the language, however, that is the focus. In the context of this closed-in world, the words twist like the characters themselves, unable to escape their own minds. They are also unable to reveal themselves.
If language is as important to you as character and plot in a novel, I highly recommend this book. If you like novels that are daring and experimental, you’ll probably enjoy this. (10/23)
I don’t know much about Djuna Barnes, or her intent for Antiphon. It’s hard to find an affordable copy of the work, let alone any information online about it. The language has the feel of Gertrude Stein’s playful wanderings, with asides and wrong words and odd quotes.
The characters seem to have immense difficult talking to each other, and, honestly, it’s not clear that they actually do communicate. It feels more like characters are involved in separate monologues that only vaguely touch on each other. A single subject or topic is rarely focused on for more than a couple lines.
It almost has the sense of a stream of conscious play in which the characters reveal their inner thoughts, but I don’t think that was the intent. The lines don’t have the introspective voice of someone talking to themselves.
All of that gives the work a wonderful weirdness that I greatly enjoyed, but it feels wasted on some kind of Freudian family-drama plot and shapeless characters. The danger of having obscure language is that much of the dialogue could be spoken by any character. If that were the intent, that would be fine. In fact, it would have been fascinating. But I didn’t get that sense. Perhaps some kind of authorial voice is meant to dominate, rather than the characters’ voices. (Or, no voice at all.)
This is a fascinating work for those who like experimental drama and language that stretches the boundaries of meaning. Although it pushes the limits, it does seem to stay within the bounds of narrative. It tells a story though rather strangely.
I wish though it were more focused. This would make an excellent one-act play.
But it is what it is. If you want to explore the boundaries of meaning, I recommend Antiphon. (02/21)
Nightwood **** -- What a strangely overwrought yet underdeveloped work! Again, Barnes’ language is far-ranging and odd, with long similes that twist and turn through different topics so that it’s hard to understand what they are all about. (If they are about anything.) The novel eloquently combines beautiful lines with knots of nonsense.
Yet amid this swirling language, the characters and plots are, for the most part, pretty thin. The person at the center of it all, Robin Vote, is ephemeral. She’s irresistibly attractive, yet tall and awkward. She hardly talks, but everyone around her can’t let her be. Of all the rather grainy characters, she is the least vivid and least developed. Other characters remark throughout the novel how impossible it is to know Robin. Readers agree.
The most vividly created character is Dr. Matthew O’Connor, an unlicensed doctor who serves as the unfrocked confessor for various characters. This unusual, cross-dressing man is given to long, racist rants that amuse his friends, but really seem to make little sense. However, he is at the center of the novel.
The work is often touted as one of the first lesbian novels, depicting the love triangle between Robin, Nora and Jenny. But that aspect of the novel is really the least interesting and least important thing to me. The LGBTQ aspects of the novel are presented as a matter of fact, with no fuss or outrage or need for justification. These women were in love and this is what happened.
The untamed language and wry, often laugh-out-loud-funny observations of the characters are the best part. Jenny is subject of particularly withering, Wildean commentary. Imagery of woods, memory, decay, and night abound. The novel is full of wonderful and strange lines that I underlined. It’s hard to pick out just several that accurately depict the novel.
As I noted, it is strange novel. It’s doesn’t meet the normal definition of a good novel – vivid characters, compelling action, etc. But neither does Ulyssess. It’s the language, however, that is the focus. In the context of this closed-in world, the words twist like the characters themselves, unable to escape their own minds. They are also unable to reveal themselves.
If language is as important to you as character and plot in a novel, I highly recommend this book. If you like novels that are daring and experimental, you’ll probably enjoy this. (10/23)
June 20, 2018
This collection contains Barnes' short stories, her play The Antiphon, and her novel Nightwood. I skipped The Antiphon. There is a great contrast in style between the crisp and precisely mapped short stories and Nightwood, which is famously, and for me at times exhaustingly, dense and gothic in its prose. Despite my shortcomings as a reader, it contains many moments of clear brilliance, and I'm looking forward to a second reading to further come to grips with it.
September 21, 2009
i'm reading a copy of spillway, but it's not listed here in the catalogue. GR doesn't seem to have many djuna barnes titles...
this collection of stories will feel familiar for those who have read nightwood, djuna barnes' celebrated novel. a dark, gothic tone (byron has always seemed one of barnes' possible influences...although i find barnes to be funnier) hangs over most of the characters, despite their location on paris' lemon streets...
this collection of stories will feel familiar for those who have read nightwood, djuna barnes' celebrated novel. a dark, gothic tone (byron has always seemed one of barnes' possible influences...although i find barnes to be funnier) hangs over most of the characters, despite their location on paris' lemon streets...
September 20, 2014
There were a few interesting stories in "Spillway", but not enough for me to recommend reading it.. Reading "The Antiphon" was an arduous task. I kept hoping "Nightwood" would be worthwhile, but while some of the characters were interesting and I'm sure it was a risky novel when published, it just frustrated me.
June 4, 2008
This is the only edition to own if you can get your hands on it . Mine is now rag-eared but this version of "The Antiphon," which was the second published, remains the superior to all others.
Read
November 28, 2008Someone I've long meant to read; finally getting around to it!
February 7, 2013
Read three plays. Ugh.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews