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."
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