Nightwood as the most unfamous famous work Essays - Literature

Nightwood as the most unfamous famous work Nightwood is a modernist novel written by Djuna Barnes and it was published in 1936. The novel is organized into eight chapters and it deals with a number of controversies, such as homosexual relationships between women, as well as transexuality, both of which were a taboo at the time. The story revolves around Robin who was married to Felix and left him right after she gave birth to their son, Guido, just to start a romantic relationship with Nora, which ended just as fast. Not long after, Robin met Jenny, whom she also started a relationship with and also ended it very fast. All the characters confided in Dr. Matthew O'Connor, who was a fake doctor and also a transexual person who knew all their life stories and believed he was the narrator of the story. However, despite being praised by a number of modernist authors, among whom there was also T.S. Eliot who helped the author with its publishing, the novel was not as popular as other modernist works for a number of reasons. To start with, one of the reasons of the novel's unpopularity could be its complexity. The story itself does not have a chronological order, and we are simply introduced with all the characters mainly through Robin's life story. The story reveals very fast and in an unclear order, which makes it very difficult to understand. Furthermore, the novel lacks the descriptions of the environment, and there is the absence of a large number of naturalistic elements which are important for the story. Thus, it is difficult for the reader to create a picture of the setting of the story and also to make a connection between the place and the characters. On the other hand, it also lacks a narrative structure, as well as the narrator. Even though O'Connor is implied as the narrator of the story, due to his long monologues and his involvement in the story of every character, it can be said that the story does not even have a narrator. The story itself is slightly mixed and confusing and it is i mpossible to know every segment of the story and also to understand it or interpret it. It also ends in the confusing manner because there is no resolvement, no happy ending or any reasonable ending at all. Therefore, the story is extremely hard to follow which can be seen as another reason of its unpopularity. It recquires a number of readings, at least two to three to understand it and interpret it correctly. Perhaps this is the reason it is so repulsive to the readers and they simply refuse to read it because it takes a lot of time to understand it and nowadays, a large number of people prefer to read some less complicated works, as well as those that do not take too much time to read. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood . Harcourt Trade Publishers, 1936 Pera Geljic