On NPR's 'You Must Read This' feature...

Siri Hustvedt talks about Nightwood:

But the wonder of Nightwood is not only stylistic. It lies in the range and depth of feeling the words convey. There is irony here and humor, too, but in the end, the novel is a hymn to the dispossessed, the misbegotten and those who love too much. At one time or another, I suspect that those adjectives describe most of us.

A part of me was amused by Djuna Barnes' reply to Siri Hustvedt's letter. It offered a shadow of a glimpse into the cryptic mind of Djuna Barnes - though it answered nothing about how she came to live and die a recluse, in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village.

One afternoon, that same spring, I found myself sitting next to an elderly woman on the subway. She looked down at the volume in my lap, and said, "Oh, Djuna Barnes. I know her. Would you like to write to her?" She gave me the author's address, and I sat down to write a page-long testament to the power of Nightwood.

A year and a half later, I received a reply: "Your letter," Barnes wrote, "has given me great difficulty."

That was all. A couple of months later, I read in the newspaper that the 90-year-old Barnes was dead. I realized that her letter to me must have been one of the last things she wrote.

Sometimes it frustrates me to keep reading these tributes to books I want to read, but has yet to read.

Jeanette Winterson on Nightwood

A moment of synchronicity:

I was reading Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods this morning and I decided to revisit her tribute to Djuna Barnes' Nightwood.

It is a rousing laudation of an outmoded author, and so highly quotable it must be read in its entirety. Winterson is at her best when she is most impassioned. Rereading this tribute I am reminded why I love Winterson's writing.

But this is not about Jeanette Winterson. It is about Djuna Barnes. So, Jeanette Winterson, on Nightwood:

Nightwood has neither stereotypes nor caricatures; there is a truth to these damaged hearts that moves us beyond the negative. Humans suffer and, gay or straight, they break themselves into pieces, blur themselves with drink and drugs, choose the wrong lover, crucify themselves on their own longings and, let's not forget, are crucified by a world that fears the stranger - whether in life or in love.

In Nightwood, they are all strangers, and they speak to those of us who are always, or just sometimes, the stranger; or to the ones who open the door to find the stranger standing outside. And yet, there is great dignity in Nora's love for Robin, written without cliche or compromise in the full-blown, archetypal language of romance. We are left in no doubt that this love is worthy of greatness - that it is great. As the doctor, Matthew O'Connor remarks: "Nora will leave that girl some day; but though those two are buried at the opposite ends of the earth, one dog will find them both."

This line alone clinched the book for me: "Nora will leave that girl some day; but though those two are buried at the opposite ends of the earth, one dog will find them both."

Oh yes. Oh yes.

Peculiar, eccentric, particular, shaded against the insistence of too much daylight, Nightwood is a book for introverts, in that we are all introverts in our after-hours secrets and deepest loves.

This book is calling to me.