She looked down at the volume in my lap, and said, "Oh, Djuna Barnes. One afternoon, that same spring, I found myself sitting next to an elderly woman on the subway. Matthew O'Connor - a cross-dresser, petty thief, inveterate liar and tragic anti-hero. And I pored over the speeches delivered by my favorite character, the novel's bombastic but tender bard, Dr. I carried the book around with me, reread passages, pondered their meanings, and suffered with Nora Flood, whose liaison with the wild, amoral Robin Vote, becomes her abiding anguish. And yet, the story of passion and grief, of exile and loneliness, spoke directly to me, a young woman who, for some reason, had never felt she quite belonged anywhere. Nightwood is set mostly in a Paris Barnes knew intimately in the 1920s, a city inhabited by ex-pats, drifters and poseurs. It wasn't about my world - I had grown up in a small town in Minnesota and then moved to New York City. The spring after I turned 24, I discovered Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, a slender, dense novel that I read with the aching intensity of a person possessed.
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