Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes by Philip Herring (1995)

A biography of the eccentric author of Nightwood.

Nonfiction Review: Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes is disjointed and inconsistent, as is its subject. A decidedly unconventional and unenviable childhood led to an equally eccentric life. Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) could've given Tara Westover a run for her money and written the Educated of her day. Her life reads like, and became, a novel. Although prolific for a short period, today she's really known for one book, Nightwood, her novel about love in Paris during the Twenties. Despite a prickly personality she had many famous friends including James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Peggy Guggenheim, and Dag Hammarskjöld. Joyce gave Barnes the proof sheets of Ulysses, specially bound. Later she had famous fans such as Carson McCullers, Anäis Nin, Malcolm Lowry. She was an integral member of the American ex-pats in Paris, and from a single novel she created a lasting if cultish reputation. Djuna provided me a wealth of valuable information about the writer, her most famous work, and her acquaintances. I learned of a difficult childhood, an idiosyncratic personality, and the immensely autobiographical nature of Nightwood. Although that book is considered a landmark of gay literature, Barnes adamantly denied that she was a lesbian. I gained many insights, but at the end I was left with the feeling that this biography didn't really do her justice. There seemed to be gaps, the chronology was wonky, and there was just too much extraneous information. There are two primary pitfalls which biographers may encounter. One is the idea that the biographer is as important as the subject and so end up writing as much about themselves as who they're writing about. That's memoir, not biography. Get over your self-centered self. The biographer should be invisible except in the most necessary instances. The second is that after having done massive research for the book some biographers feel obligated to put all that hard work on the page, every bit of it, no matter how irrelevant, inconsequential, or insipid. Philip Herring misses the first trap, but falls resoundingly into the latter. There's too much pointless detail that adds nothing to the life of Djuna Barnes and simply distracts from the story we want to read. Too many pages devoted to events which and people who had only the most tangential connection to Barnes. Why detract from a life that stands on its own. Djuna could've been short, focused, and powerful, and would've been all the better for that. This is a good introduction, but somehow I suspect we're still waiting for the definitive biography of Djuna Barnes.  [3★]