Nightwood

Nightwood

Well written I suppose. But for all its descriptive bluster, scandalous-at-the-time homoerotic themes, and lovelorn agonized characters, to me it comes off basically as pretentious romantic twaddle. Sometimes amusing, but, while less formulaic, it's no more serious than the chivalric romances that drove Don Quixote mad.

This is one of those books that defies rating. On the one hand, the dense, modernist, prose is baffling and exhausting, and there is a part of me that feels like it's just endless stuff, self-indulgently poured out on the page.

On the other hand, there are flashes where the meaning becomes clear, the book did leave me wondering and I do feel an urge to re-read it. So clearly there is something to the language that makes you want to pick it apart; like a puzzle that you keep going back to, even though it's frustrating.

It's easier to read than Ulysses! But then, Ulysses is unreadable so that may be damning with faint praise...

There are some very human characters here, hidden beneath the prose. It's important for being one of the few books of its time that depicted queer characters. It's essentially a tragic love story. I suspect you'll resonate with it more if you're in love with someone you shouldn't be, who makes your life hell, because it does capture that absolute, logic-defying, craving to be with them, even though it's destroying you. But from the outside, of course, that just looks idiotic and it's hard not to want to shake Nora and tell her to pull herself together.

Perhaps the impossibility of figuring out the prose is much the same as the impossibility of figuring out why we love people who hurt us, and has the same unendurable draw.