These are first sketches that prefigure the later and greater work and, as such, they may be useful as an intro to the "Waste Land." Those with no desire to return to that godforsaken place will find these discrete bits more digestible and not lacking in Eliot's uniquely haunting music. Among my favorites are "Interlude in London" and "Oh little voices in the throats of men." For those interested in tracing the voices in Eliot's "echo chamber," there are copious notes detailing his allusions and borrowings.If you are a serious Eliot connoisseur, you will be tickled by his long-lost bawdy verse.

Eliot is known to undergrads and postgrads as the genius poet of "Four Quartets" and "The Wasteland;" a man who wrote some of the greatest and most confusing verse of the twentieth century. While the rewards of exploration into such poems are certainly great, it is perhaps a more human need for emotional comfort. The above, professional reviews focus on the small section of bawdry verse in the work, but the majority of this collection is devoted to the great, early emotional works of Eliot. The only familiar poem to most readers will probably be "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (with a previously unpublished extension) and a more perfect banner work could not have been chosen. The poems are beautiful, concise, imagistic, painful, somber, but most of all lonely. Here in his early years Eliot is not living in an academic world, simply the world--with love, hypocrisy, doubt, joy, and emptiness. To read the greatest poet of our centu! ry describe that which is greatly profound is a privilege, here to read him describe what is simply profound is a gift. I recommend this book over all other collections of Eliot's or anyone else's verse. If you were not one of the 11th graders who discarded Prufrock as a helpless reject, and instead saw him as a deeply lonely individual much like ourselves, this volume is for you. It will touch your life and make you just that much more complete.

I was very surprised that I got through this book. It is not every day that a person will pick up a collection of essays on Classical, Elizabethan and other types of literature, for enjoyments sake. Eliot really outdid himself with his reviews of the literature that he was surrounded by. The definite reads, if you do not want to go through all the essays, are the essays "Dante", "Hamlet and his Problems" and "A Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry". "Dante" is a beuatiful study on both the "Divina Comedia" and "Vita Nouva". "Hamlet" is a putdown on the play that everyone "loves" so much--with the exception of the writer of this sentence. "Dialogue" is a well crafted arguement of the essence of the poetic plays and how they fit into modern--it was written in 1922--times. This book is pure genius, although at points rather "holier-than-thou." Eliot was a genius and he makes sure to let you know it in his essays.

T.S. Eliot was the dominant figure in modernist literature not just because of his poetry, but also because of his criticism which changed our view of English literature in ways which can still be felt today. He resurrected the forgotten John Donne and had him eclipse John Milton as idol of poetry. He showed that Shakespeare was not the only playwright of his time. He was brillitant at explaining what made modernist literature different from its perdecessors.

Eliot's style is a pleasure to read compared to what passes as lit crit today. Many of his insights may seem outdated, but any student of literature will find fascinating views, especially about Elizabethan literature.

Although this play of 1950 was Eliot's first full-length comedy, he had made an earlier stab at the genre in the 1920s: "Sweeney Agonistes," a first-rate work that unfortunately remained unfinished and is now included in collections of Eliot's poetry. "Sweeney" was a jazzy, dark comedy with originality and verve; by comparison, "The Cocktail Party" is tepid indeed.

Even judged on its own merits, however, this play falls short. The first half is enjoyable enough: an unusually well-written English drawing-room comedy with serious overtones. The play begins to fall apart with the bizarre sessions of pseudo-psychotherapy in Act 2, and degenerates into overt Christian flag-waving by the final scene.

Yet the play is still well worth reading. It is more accessible that Eliot's earlier plays and was a surprise hit on Broadway when it first opened. It is still occasionally revived today; one production featured Nancy Walker in the plum role of Julia, a seemingly scatterbrained older woman. ("Salvation! The quicker picker-upper!")

In a world of appearances, a new species of peace-makers has been invented. The priest of old has disappeared. The psychiatrist has replaced him. He is there to listen to secrets, to sort out situations and to propose solutions to human problems. The very few that are worth it can become the saints of today, going to foreign desolate countries and helping people out of their difficulties, fighting poverty and diseases, bringing the christian faith to pagan people, living in suffering and dire hardship. The others are helped to adapt to our society, to be successful in this society without feeling the remorse or the fear that come along with it. They just become adaptable, supple enough to fit in a deeply dishumanized society. The psychiatrist is the go-between for such people.

This play is surrealistic and yet perfectly descriptive of reality. It is full of a new type of poetry, his poetry of love and hate, of a new type of drama, his drama of conflict-solving. T. S. Eliot manages to shift from the most superficial bourgeois drama to the deepest and serenest tragedy turned comedy. The path of these people is tragic in a way, but it ends in beauty or at least in harmony.

Yet I think T.S. Eliot would have been better inspired if he had gotten away from this bourgeois aristocratic society that is nothing but vain cocktail parties and superfluous appearances. The great poet he is could have been a better playwright.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I am personally not a fan of Eliot, due to the fact that I, most unfortunately, started off with "The Wasteland", which is, as I am sure anyone reading this review will know, is not exactly an easy read, especially at age 12. However, "The Cocktail Party" seems to grasp me still, days after I have finished reading it. It is such a witty, humorous comedy that mocks the modern ages, and pretty much everyone who seems to be a part of this insane, chaotic world (at least as I understood it). I recommend this for anyone looking a good book to do a book report on, or someone looking for the meaning of life and/or in need of serious 'ponder' over the universe in a philosophical, poetic, aesthetic way.

I am a college student who happens to be interested in the Modernist period of literature. I really enjoy T.S. Eliot's poetry, but like many others, agree that reading it can be a tedious and laborious project to undertake. This is what makes it wonderful though, isn't it? Southam's book really gives a reader new perspectives and may even validate thoughts that one may have about "The Waste Land" and other poetry written by Eliot. The way that Southam uses language to give insight into the poetry is really easy to understand and a pleasure to read whether you are interested for academics or pleasure.

I am a student, and had to present an explication of T.S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_. This work of Eliot's is entrenched in laborious detail that takes the reader from the text to the footnotes again and again. It becomes quite confusing and a bit irritating at times. This book, _The Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot_, was extremely helpful in that it construes Eliot's use of footnotes, and the allusions made within the work. It helps to clarify the questions lingering in the reader's mind, and allows for a more critical reading of the poem. I found it to be an insightful aid to my presentation, and would recommend it to anyone who desires an indepth study on any of Eliot's work.

First of all, this is a very difficult and laborious book to read. But it will be a very fulfilling experience for those who are seriously interested in poetry. Reading this book certainly shows us the range of allusions that T. S. Eliot used in his compositions. The variety of texts that T. S. Eliot mentions in "The Wasteland" reveals us the depth of spiritual struggle that the author has went through in order to write the poem. There are references to the Bible, eastern philosophy, literature from the antiquity to the present. There are also reference to some earlier writings by the author. Reading the commentary has shown me the richness to T. S. Eliot's writings that are otherwise difficult to see. With the careful analysis of "The Waste Land, one sees that it is not simply about a struggle of modern life, but it encompasses wide range of philosophy and literature that are involved in the spiritual struggle one must face in this modern world.

Eliot's penultimate play (and second comedy) is markedly different from his earlier efforts. It is well-written but decidedly less poetic: although printed in verse form, the sound is almost conversational. In addition, Eliot's usual Christian themes are here allegorical rather than explicit. The handling is quite skillful: there is none of the ham-handed "X stands for Y, you morons!" that mars so many allegories. One can easily dig down into the Christian messages if desired, but the play is also satisfying at the top level.

By the standards of Eliot's output as a whole, a rating of 3.5 stars is more appropriate than 4. One can regret the loss of intensity in the writing while still enjoying the play itself.

This book is wonderful. I truly loved it. It was the most interesting piece of work!

Gordon began her research in 1970. Her first book, Eliot's Early Years, was published in 1977 and its sequel, Eliot's New Life, in 1988. This present book is the result of further research and new information (much of which came to the author in response to her earlier publications), including new access to Eliot manuscripts; confidential letters regarding Eliot written by Emily Hale to close friends; Mary Trevelyan's unpublished memoir of her close friendship with Eliot; and a bundle of Eliot's letters which were rescued from an English pig farmer who was about to destroy them.

I read Eliot's "The Hollow Men" at age 15, and was transfixed by the intellectual and emotional force behind the words. I still am, but I have not gotten around to reading any biograpy of his before now. I have read a couple of his other poems. This author's approach to the subject, through an autobiographical reading of many of his later works, makes me want to finally get around to reading his major works. It also makes me want to read other biogrraphies of him, in order to get fresh angles on him and his writing.

Is George Eliot the world's greatest novelist? There's certainly an argument to be made, based on her classics Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, which feature characters as complex and vividly, bafflingly alive as those of Shakespeare.

Yet today she seems curiously unread and under-appreciated, certainly in comparison to her contemporary, Charles Dickens. This has long mystified me, but perhaps I've found the solution in Mill on the Floss.

Seemingly the best known of her books, Mill on the Floss is certainly the one most frequently taught in high schools and colleges. And it's probably enough to guarantee that most students forced through it or its Cliff Notes won't bother with her again.

Not that it's a bad book. If you like Eliot, you'll find plenty of her riveting, obsessive characterization and dramatic psychology here. But along with these come a fractured, frustrating structure, a dearth of narrative drive, and endless passages of phonetic, "naturalistic" rural accents. Not to mention an ending so out of left field it seems to belong to an entirely different story. Unlike Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, or even early but more successful novels like Adam Bede, Mill on the Floss is work, and its rewards are more modest.

Mill on the Floss seems to rate the academic attention because of its autobiographical elements, perhaps for its dazzling heroine, rather than its overall quality. So don't let an underwhelmed response to this fascinating if flawed book keep you from the rest of her amazing work -- she might be the best novelist out there.

The Mill on the Floss has one of the most appealing young girl characterss of all 19th c. literature--Maggie Tolliver. The relationship between her and her brother is at once beautiful, horrible, and probably indicative of much that was true for boys and girls in 19th century England. Whenever I read the book (and I've read it a few times), I am again in love with Maggie, delighted with the people around her, and saddened by the heavy events that bring her down. George Eliot doesn't pull punches--when you've read one of her books, you know you've been somewhere else, experienced something powerful

In THE MILL ON THE FLOSS George Eliot provides an insightful and intelligent story depicting rural Victorian society. Set in the parish of St. Ogg's, Maggie and Tom Tulliver endure childhood and young adulthood while experiencing the harsh realities of poverty, devotion, love, and societal reputation. I emphasized greatly with Maggie as I have experienced some of her own lived experiences. I truly loved every chapter of this book and didn't want it to end. It is indeed very rare that I have this type of reaction to a book. Although this book was published during the Victorian era, it's amazing how Eliot's prose flows virtually unobstructed. The reader is given a rare glimpse into rural life during the 19th century and is treated to how strictly structured society was then. I am now a fan of Eliot and look forward to reading her other novels.

Bottom line: THE MILL ON THE FLOSS is an excellent novel. Enjoy!

This book was a little difficult to understand especially if you don't comprehend the way Shakespeare wrote his plays. You should really research the story of Thomas Becket before reading this also. The story starts off as a celebration of the returning of the Archibishop after being gone for seven years. As you read on it gets a little more interesting. If you like action or suspense there is plenty of it in the second half of this play. When two of the King's knights have a confrontation with the Archbishop Thomas Becket, the following day the knights return with orders to kill the Archbishop due to the disagreements he had with the king such as the disagreement of the coronation of the king's son, overall this was an okay book, though I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

This 1935 play is a gem in English drama.

First, the tone, the style, the poetry are purely shakespearian. It gives the play a power it would otherwise never have. The biblical inspiration is not at all clear or direct. There are four tempters and temptations whereas Jesus only had three temptations and one tempter.

The play does not only recall the martyrdom of Thomas Becket. It shows he probably sinned, committed the sin of pride or vanity, though with the best intention : to establish the church as the supreme ruler. Yet this event is also the first fight between the English crown and the church, a fight that will culminate under Henry VIII with the creation of the Church of England.

The play is also a clear argumentation in favor of that extreme act for several reasons. One, sympathy for the underdog is not justice. Two, the killers were absolutely disinterested and were to be banished after the act. Three, this murder was necessary to strengthen the King's power, hence the country. Four, Thomas was a « monster of egotism » verging into mania and he committed « suicide while of unsound mind ».

But the play is a lot wider than that. It defends the simple people who suffer all the time. It defends those who possess some fraction of truth, for which it is worth dying if necessary. It advocates the most total and radical freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom to defend one's ideas to the bitter and bloody end that society will necessarily impose.

Finally it shows that England has three levels of power : the King, the barons and the church, and one level of constant fear and suffering, the people, the labourers. Here the church is curbed to the King's power. Later on the King's power will be curbed to the barons' power with John Landless, and that will be the beginning of parliamentary power, of democracy. Thomas Becket refuses to go that way, hence slowing down history by strengthening the King only and leading England into centuries of strife among barons and between two families to control the throne as the only source and center of power. Parliamentarism will only succeed fully in the seventeenth century. Thomas Becket's choice could have been different, from a political point of view that he refuses from the very start.

Was it a sacrifice for nothing ? We can ask the question because the people will go on suffering for ever and ever, no matter what, in this vision of history.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

T. S. Eliot's short play, Murder in the Cathedral, was originally written for the Canterbury festival and tells the story of the murder of Archbishop Thomas Beckett (1118-70) by Henry II's henchmen. It is essentially an extended lyrical consideration of the proper residence of temporal and spiritual power, of the obligations of religious believers to the commands of the State, and of the possibility that piety can be selfish unto sin.

Beckett is one of the more interesting characters from history. Rising from a lowly birth in the Cheapside section of London, largely thanks to the patronage of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1154 he became both archdeacon of Canterbury and Henry's chancellor. Theobald expected him to defend the prerogatives of the Church, but instead he became fast friends with Henry, partook of a sybaritic lifestyle, and extended the power of the State at the expense of the Church. So when Theobald was succeeded by Beckett, Henry expected to have a compliant ally running the Church, but instead Beckett adopted an ascetic lifestyle and became a fearsome defender of the rights of the Church. After dividing on many minor issues, matters came to a head when Henry tried exerting the authority of Crown courts to punish clerics who had been convicted by ecclesiastical courts. Henry determined to reign him in, put Beckett on trial for misappropriating funds while serving as Chancellor, and Beckett was forced to flee to France.

The play opens as Beckett returns to Canterbury in December of 1170, after seven years in exile. Four Tempters approach him, separately, and offer him reasons why he should cease to resist Henry. The first Tempter offers the prospect of physical safety if he will go along to get along :

The safest beast is not the one that roars most loud, This was not the way of the King our master! You were not used to be so hard upon sinners When they were your friends. Be easy, man! The easy man lives to eat the best dinners. Take a friend's advice. Leave well alone, Or your goose may be cooked and eaten to the bone.

The second offers worldly power, riches and fame in the service of the King :

King commands. Chancellor richly rules, This is a sentence not taught in schools. To set down the great, protect the poor, Beneath the throne of God can man do more? Disarm the ruffian, strengthen the laws, Rule for the good of the better cause, Dispensing justice make all even, Is thrive on earth, and perhaps in heaven.

The third offers him an alliance with the barons and the opportunity to work against the King :

For a powerful party Which has turned its eyes in your direction-- To gain from you, your Lordship asks. For us, Church favour would be an advantage, Blessing of Pope powerful protection In the fight for liberty. You, my Lord, In being with us, would fight a good stroke At once, for England and for Rome, Ending the tyrannous jurisdiction Of king's court over bishop's court, Of king's court over baron's court.

The final Tempter, who may be the Devil himself, offers Beckett the chance to supplant the King, but with a caveat :

Fare forward to the end. all other ways are closed to you Except the way already chosen. But what is pleasure, kingly rule, Or rule of men beneath a king, With craft in corners, stealthy stratagem, To general grasp of spiritual power? Man oppressed by sin, since Adam fell-- You hold the keys of heaven and hell. Power to bind and loose : bind, Thomas, bin, King and bishop under your heel. King, emperor, bishop, baron, king : Uncertain mastery of melting armies, War, plague, and revolution, New conspiracies, broken pacts; To be master or servant within an hour, This is the course of temporal power. The Old King shall know it, when at last breath, No sons, no empire, he bites broken teeth. You hold the skein : wind, Thomas, wind The thread of eternal life and death. You hold this power, hold it.

THOMAS :

Supreme, in this land?

TEMPTER :

Supreme, but for one.

And so Beckett resists this blandishment just as he has the others, but then the fourth Tempter cannily tempts him with his own dream, the desire for martyrdom :

What can compare with glory of Saints Dwelling forever in presence of God? What earthly glory, of king or emperor, what earthly pride, that is not poverty Compared with richness of heavenly grandeur? Seek the way of martyrdom, make yourself the lowest On earth, to be high in heaven. And see far off below you, where the gulf is fixed, Your persecutors, in timeless torment, Parched passion, beyond expiation.

Here Thomas Beckett realizes the peril of his own soul :

Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain: Temptation shall not come in this kind again. The last temptation is the greatest treason To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

If he selfishly seeks martyrdom out of a personal desire for immortality, rather than selflessly accepting the risk of death while defending what he believes is right, then he will commit treason against the very Lord he is supposedly serving.

In Part Two of the play Beckett is confronted and murdered by Four Knights, acting at the behest, explicit or otherwise, of Henry. Beckett had further antagonized Henry, upon his return, by opposing the coronation of Henry's son. This prompted the King to his infamous utterance : "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" On December 29, 1170, four knights of his court assassinated Beckett inside the Canterbury cathedral, turning an already heinous act into a cause celebre throughout Christendom. Eliot uses this section of the play to explore the possibility that Beckett was actually wrong in his argument with Henry.

In their initial confrontation the Knights are quite worked up, but Beckett answers reasonably :

THE THREE KNIGHTS :

You are the Archbishop in revolt against the King; in rebellion to the King and the law of the land; You are the Archbishop who was made by the King; whom he set in your place to carry out his command. You are his servant, his tool, and his jack, You wore his favors on your back, You had your honours all from his hand; from him you had the power, the seal and the ring. This is the man who was the tradesman's son : the back- stairs brat who was born in Cheapside; This is the creature that crawled upon the King; swollen with blood and swollen with pride. Creeping out of the London dirt, Crawling up like a louse on your shirt, The man who cheated, swindled, lied; broke his oath and betrayed his King.

THOMAS :

This is not true. Both before and after I received the ring I have been a loyal subject to the King. Saving my order, I am at his command, As his most faithful vassal in the land.

But is that "Saving my order" which sticks in the craw of royalists, the idea that Beckett owes a higher duty to the Church, on some things, than to the Crown. Just as the Knights are about to strike him down they are interrupted by some priests and Beckett has time to prepare himself for the now inevitable end, though the priests urge him to hide :

PRIESTS (Severally) :

My Lord you must not stop here. To the minster. Through the cloister. No time to waste. They are com- ing back, armed. To the altar, to the altar.

THOMAS :

All my life they have been coming, these feet. All my life I have waited. Death will come only when I am worthy, And if I am worthy, there is no danger. I have therefore only to make perfect my will.

Beckett can now sense that he is approaching the proper attitude of selflessness, that he is truly accepting martyrdom in defense of the ideas and ideals of the Church, rather than selfishly seeking martyrdom for personal reasons of fame and glory. So when the Knights return and the priests propose barring the doors, he says :

Unbar the doors! throw open the doors! I will not have the house of prayer, the church of Christ, The sanctuary, turned into a fortress. The Church shall protect her own, in her own way, not As oak and stone; stone and oak decay, Give no stay, but the Church shall endure. The church shall be open, even to our enemies. Open the door!

Indeed, so long as the Church stood for a higher set of ideals, separate from petty political concerns, it did endure and served a vital function in society. This endurance depended on the willingness of men like Beckett to sacrifice their all for these ideals, eschewing political power and wealth and running the risk of offending the temporal powers.

Eliot, however, does not leave it at that. He also allows the murd

Djuna Barnes' short modernist novel Nightwood (1936) is one of the genuine odd ducks of 20th century literature. Written in an uneven, semi - comic, and baroque style, the book is more likely to impress young readers rather than older and more experienced individuals who have lost their appetite for decadent romantic entanglements. Nightwood is certainly an original work, and Barnes' vision of the factors shaping human destiny - especially time, heritage, and evolution - are uniquely expressed. But despite its fluidity of language, many of Barnes' seemingly brilliant observations concerning life, consciousness, and human suffering are more specious than acute, which is important, since Barnes' emotionally marooned cast is badly in need of answers, wisdom, and salvation.

Hiding under the text's antique lathering is a sparse, skeletal plot, one top heavy with philosophical speculations but reflecting little grasp of basic psychological truths about human nature. Nora Flood meets and falls destructively in love with passive - aggressive Robin Vote, a strange, corpse - eyed, and inexplicably charismatic woman who, despite marriage and motherhood, is spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally adrift in the world. When their affair evolves into a love triangle, Nora turns increasingly for advice to charlatan doctor and Greek chorus Matthew O'Connor, a poverty - stricken alcoholic who is pleasurably inclined towards homosexuality, transvestitism, and self - demoralization ("I'm a lady in no need of insults," "I was born as ugly as God dare premeditate"). Significantly, all of the book's characters are in some way stunted, crippled, or pathologically predisposed.

Barnes excels at dramatizing the failure of romantic love, especially the kind that displays active neurotic factors, elements of codependence, and spontaneous psychological transference. Those pages which detail Nora's isolation and sad obsession with her abandoning lover are deeply felt, haunting, and moving indeed.

In "The Squatter," Barnes spends an entire chapter fulfilling a personal vendetta by brilliantly depicting widow Jenny Petherbridge's status as a rapacious black hole and non - entity. Jenny is ugly ("she had a beaked head and the body, small, feeble, and ferocious, that somehow made one associate her with Judy," "only severed could any part of her been called "right"), stupid ("when anyone was witty about a contemporary event, she would look perplexed and a little dismayed"), incapable of establishing her own values ("Someone else's wedding ring was on her finger...the books in her library were other people's selections...her walls, her cupboards, her bureaux, were teeming with second - hand dealings with life...the words that fell from her mouth seemed to have been lent to her"), spiritually empty but power hungry ("she wanted to be the reason for everything and so was the cause of nothing"), and lacks poise, maturity, and dignity ("being one of those panicky little women, who, no matter what they put on, look like a child under penance," or, as O'Connor calls her, "a decaying comedy jester, the face on a fool's - stick, and with the smell about her of mouse - nests"). Barnes makes an excellent case for the argument that it is not the powerful that are to be feared, but the weak, frustrated, and incapable.

Robin the "somnambulist" is also lengthily described, largely via the use of symbols and metaphors: throughout the text, the boyish, bird - named Robin is described in animal, vegetable, and mineral terms. When first encountered, Robin, who is later recognized as a kindred spirit by a wild circus animal and a ferocious dog, is found lying unconscious in a small apartment crowded with a superabundance of plant life. Barnes describes Robin's abode as "a jungle trapped in a drawing room" and Robin as the "ration of the carnivorous flowers."

The flamboyant, limp - wristed ("his hands...he always carried like a dog who is walking on his hind legs"), dirty - kneed, rhetoric - spewing Dr. Matthew O'Connor, the book's most famous character, is a figure of high camp whom today's readers are more likely to find mildly distasteful rather than shocking. O'Connor is given an entire long chapter in which to pontificate ("Watchman, What Of The Night?"), though the chapter reflects badly on the wounded Nora, whose continuous exclamations of "But what am I to do?" and "What will become of her?" and "How will I stand it?" reduce her from the genuinely tormented human being of earlier chapters to a one - dimensional cartoon damsel in distress.

Intelligent, perceptive readers are likely to find one passage in every five that sounds profound and poetically illuminating like the others, but means absolutely nothing on careful examination (for example: "Your body is coming to it, your are forty and the body has a politic too, and a life of its own that you like to think is yours. I heard a spirit new once, but I knew it was a mystery eternally moving outward and on, and not my own.") Despite Barnes' often incredible use of language, the ultimate effect of Nightwood is one of shallowness, slickness, and almost hysterical distance from its own primary sources. When compared to other literary books written by women also primarily focused on women, such as the five novels of Jean Rhys or Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat, Nightwood seems sketchy, brittle, and, as one critic said about Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales, seemingly more concerned with mystification than with genuine mystery. Though bold and intrepid as a beautiful young big city journalist, and later as an expatriate modernist writer living among the Parisian glitterati, Barnes closed the door on the rest of the world in very early middle age, and became a notorious New York City recluse known primarily for bitterness and explosive outbursts of anger. Readers of Nightwood, with its essential focus on theoretical, airy philosophy rather than psychological home truths, may find clues as to how Barnes's life went sorrowfully wrong.

There are few books that can be safely called classics--and out of those, fewer are as deserving of the term as Djuna Barnes' 'Nightwood'. Elegant and mesmerizing, difficult and beautiful, it is a measured and balanced work of art.

Another reviewer said this wasn't a 'celebration of lesbian love'--this much is true. What makes this book truly remarkable is that it *doesn't* set any boundaries--hearts are fickle, hearts are cruel, and every character in the novel is inflicted with his/her own brand of emotional anxiety. Barnes makes no distinction between 'lesbian' love and any other--it is as normal, and as abnormal, as any other human affection. That alone makes this book a classic (but of course, the writing too is intoxicating). In fact, what is truly surprising (to me, at least!) is that despite her exquisite elegance, Djuna Barnes manages to take such a no-nonsense approach to human emotions. She never seeks to simplify anything--and makes her work difficult for the reader in the most rewarding of ways. (I mean that she doesn't let us get away with pre-conceptions or romantic illusions. She manages to make the imperfect reality as arresting as the myth of perfection.) Most of us, in our lives, don't *really* know what we're doing, or what we feel. Barnes makes her characters real by putting them through the same confusing maelstrom of experiences--where one emotion often morphs into another--love into indifference, respect into insecurity, and so on. There are no answers--there is only endurance--endurance of others, endurance of ourselves.

I don't want to be more specific and give out details of the plot. This book has to be experienced to be believed...

First, I should tell you what Nightwood isn't. It's not acelebration of love between women, or of the glamour of Paris, or ofmodernism's traditionally spare aesthetic. It is, however, a wonderful book, which will probably try your patience but will repay your efforts with the pleasure of reading some of the most wonderful writing to have been produced this century. Djuna Barnes, born in the US, spent some twenty years in Europe, during which she wrote innovative journalism, a novel (Ryder), short stories, poetry and plays, and, slowly, the autobiographical fictional narrative that was finally published as Nightwood in 1936. The novel was hard to place, and finally published by no less of a modernist luminary than T.S. Eliot, then working at Faber and Faber.

Barnes' novel chronicles a love affair between two women: Nora Flood, the sometime "puritan," and Robin Vote, a cipher-like "somnambule" -- sleepwalker -- who roams the streets of Paris looking for -- well, it's not quite clear, but it's a fruitless quest she's on. Nora finds herself roaming the streets too, looking for Robin, but, like most of the characters of the novel, she bumps up against Dr Matthew O'Connor instead. O'Connor, an unlicensed doctor from the Barbary Coast, dominates much of the novel with his astounding barrage of anecdote, offering a stream of stories that all point, ultimately, to the sublime misery of romantic obsession. The love story (if it can even be called that) is framed by the history of Felix Volkbein, a self-styled Baron who marries Robin early on, and whose family tree provides the structure on which the rest of this dawdling narrative hangs.

But nothing I say here can give you a sense of Barnes' dense, lyrical prose, and quite amazingly complex and beautiful writing: you simply have to puzzle over the book yourself to experience perhaps the most idiosyncratic novel produced by an American writer between the wars. It's a dark, melancholy story, with much detailed description of the decaying expatriate lifestyle Barnes herself (sometimes) enjoyed. The final chapter of the book has been regarded as controversial, opaque, and/or vaguely pornographic: Eliot wanted to exclude it when the novel was first published. It might certainly surprise you, and perhaps dismay you if you want to see all threads neatly tied together at the end. But I've read this book several times, and have never regretted it for a moment.

Martha Cooley's first novel is definitely accomplished, but I found the middle third of the book to be quite arduous. While it had at first seemed wonderful that the characters were T.S. Eliot fans, it soon became annoyingly pretentious when they quoted Eliot to refer to events or emotions in their lives. Particularly harrowing was the middle third of the book which is a seemingly endless series of journal entries from a manic depressive? woman who quotes Eliot without cease and obsesses over the holocaust and her lost heritage. This section could definitely have been re-worked. The central "mystery" of the novel, if it can be called that, is very unengaging and I felt utterly deflated by the end. I resold the book the first chance I got. The concepts were interesting, as was the smooth prose style--but the parallels being drawn between the lives of the characters and that of T.S. Eliot were strained and the "madness" passages were overwrought and finally, tedious.

This is a book I picked up on the recommendation of book store staff; I am glad I did so. This is also a book that deserves part of both the scorn and praise heaped on it by other Amazon reviewers.

The problem with the book is that the plot is too carefully contrived. The book requires three parallel lives - the wife of the archivist, the wife of T.S. Eliot, and a graduate student poet. The plot is written with parallels too close to be believable; it is as if the author did not trust us to make the connections. However, the use of Eliot's poetry - as well as that of Auden and LeRoi Jones - make the overdone plot interesting.

The strength of the book is putting the "big questions" of life into emotional life rather than intellectual life - self-identity, religious conversion, and responsibility/guilt - are tied to marriage, fear, work ethics, child rearing, jazz ...
The author has the good sense to raise the questions without offering answers. Rather than answers, she often illustrates possible answers from Christian, Jewish, and assimilated Jewish perspectives.

As for the reviewer who objected to the "ivory tower intellectual" description of University employees (e.g. the archivist), I dare say that as a long-time University employee, that there certainly are some. That is to say that the archivist has a reasonable and consistent portrait and his immediate boss seems well-grounded in administration.

This isn't one of the top ten novels of the century but it is entertaining and will leave some ideas to chew on when your done.

It is amazing how Martha Cooley has succeeded in dealing with such serious topics in such a passionate way. She shows a great capacity of vision in her confrontation with important themes: the terrible inheritance of the Shoah, questions of faith and conversion, the life and poetry of Eliot... an exceptional book that involves you emotionally in a constant crescendo of suspense. "The Archivist" tells the story of Matthias, a quiet and solitary librarian, and of Roberta, a young poet whose interest in religious conversion leads her to T.S. Eliot's letters to friend Emily Hale, written during the years Eliot was wrestling with problems of marriage and faith. The relationship between Matthias and Roberta creates an intensity of emotions that makes this novel a valuable and rare experience, leaving the reader with a new insight about memory and desire.