Reception and Critical Analysis
Roger Austen notes that "the best known, most deeply felt, and generally best written expatriate novel of the thirties dealing with gay themes was Djuna Barnes' Nightwood.". Austen goes on to advance the notion that Barnes' depiction of Dr. O'Connor probably confounded a number of American readers because he was neither a "scamp or a monster" nor does he pay a "suitable penalty" for leading a "life of depravity.".
Due to concerns about censorship, Eliot edited Nightwood to soften some language relating to sexuality and religion. An edition restoring these changes, edited by Cheryl J. Plumb, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1995.
Dylan Thomas described Nightwood as "one of the three great prose books ever written by a woman," while William S. Burroughs called it "one of the great books of the twentieth century." It was number 12 on a list of the top 100 gay and lesbian novels compiled by The Publishing Triangle in 1999.
Nightwood is considered by Anthony Slide, a modern scholar, to be one of only four familiar gay novels of the first half of the twentieth century in the English language. The other three novels are Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar, Carson McCullers' Reflections in a Golden Eye, and Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms.
George Lamming quotes Nightwood in the epigraph to his 1958 novel Of Age and Innocence, which begins: "A strong sense of identity makes a man feel he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same."
Read more about this topic: Nightwood
Famous quotes containing the words reception, critical and/or analysis:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable rôle with the promise of rewards—material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the Garden of Eden.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“Analysis as an instrument of enlightenment and civilization is good, in so far as it shatters absurd convictions, acts as a solvent upon natural prejudices, and undermines authority; good, in other words, in that it sets free, refines, humanizes, makes slaves ripe for freedom. But it is bad, very bad, in so far as it stands in the way of action, cannot shape the vital forces, maims life at its roots. Analysis can be a very unappetizing affair, as much so as death.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)