Excerpts
For those of you who like books that kick ass through language, let me recommend Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (published in 1937)
The perfume her body exhaled was of the quality of that earth-flesh, fungi, which smells of captured dampness and yet is so dry, overcast with the odor of oil of amber, which is an inner malady of the sea, making her seem as if she had invaded a sleep incautious and entire. Her flesh was the texture of plant life, and beneath it one sensed a frame, broad, porous and sleep-worn, as if sleep were a decay fishing her beneath the visible surface. About her head there was an effulgence as of phosphorous glowing about the circumference of a body of water—as if her life lay through her in ungainly luminous deteriorations—the troubling structure of the born somnambule, who lives in two worlds—meet of child and desperado. (pgs. 34-35)
Tags: djuna barnes, nightwood
Love this book! Love this author. I highly recommend “Spillway and Other Stories” as well.
one of my favs of all time – also get the Dalkey copy, which has all the bits Eliot cut out of Pr
Love this book! Love this author. I highly recommend “Spillway and Other Stories” as well.
I used to work at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library when I was 20 or so. Part of my job was sorting through old file cabinets and trashing stuff. I found some ancient correspondence between Djuna Barnes and her editor — a really fascinating letter in which I recall she expressed deep concern about whether her books would be remembered or not, and whether *she* would be remembered or not. This was an original copy of the letter, signed and everything, just jammed in a file cabinet with a bunch of other junk documents (requests for access from researchers, etc). I showed the librarians and asked if it shouldn’t be archived or something (and if we even had her papers at Beinecke) and I was surprised at how indifferent they were. They told me to just put it back in the cabinet.
one of my favs of all time – also get the Dalkey copy, which has all the bits Eliot cut out of Pr
I loved spending time in the Beinecke when I was in college—just a wondrous wondrous place.
I used to work at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library when I was 20 or so. Part of my job was sorting through old file cabinets and trashing stuff. I found some ancient correspondence between Djuna Barnes and her editor — a really fascinating letter in which I recall she expressed deep concern about whether her books would be remembered or not, and whether *she* would be remembered or not. This was an original copy of the letter, signed and everything, just jammed in a file cabinet with a bunch of other junk documents (requests for access from researchers, etc). I showed the librarians and asked if it shouldn’t be archived or something (and if we even had her papers at Beinecke) and I was surprised at how indifferent they were. They told me to just put it back in the cabinet.
…the F: the troubling structure of the born somnambule
i’m wont to believe that most want books that kiss ass through language. readers thems a lazy bunch, laike people. in general.
I loved spending time in the Beinecke when I was in college—just a wondrous wondrous place.