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S. Eliot’s introduction, framing the novel as a “nano-text” whose effects accumulate through repeated reading. Winterson emphasizes the book’s demanding modernist language, stressing that it conveys meaning rather than information and creates its own shifting world. The text links Nightwood to themes of diaspora, exile, and unsparing intensity in love, situating Robin Vote’s Paris among fading social worlds, endurance, and defiance in the face of suffering.",{"@graph":69,"@context":121},[70,84,104],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":10,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/story-novel/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/nightwood-prefaceintroduction-table-of-contents/319434/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":98,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":99,"interactionStatistic":100},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/nightwood-prefaceintroduction-table-of-contents/319434.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Rowan","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-20",true,{"@type":101,"interactionType":102,"userInteractionCount":4},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":103},"ViewAction",{"@type":105,"mainEntity":106},"FAQPage",[107,113,117],{"name":108,"@type":109,"acceptedAnswer":110},"What do Jeanette Winterson and T. S. Eliot emphasize about reading Nightwood?","Question",{"text":111,"@type":112},"Winterson describes it as a “nano-text” whose significance builds over long periods, and Eliot argues it requires reading more than once because the second reading feels different. Both highlight Nightwood’s lasting, transformative impact.","Answer",{"name":114,"@type":109,"acceptedAnswer":115},"How is Nightwood’s language characterized in the introduction?",{"text":116,"@type":112},"The prose is described as narcotic and meaning-driven rather than focused on conveying information. Winterson contrasts Nightwood’s language with traditional narrative clarity.",{"name":118,"@type":109,"acceptedAnswer":119},"What themes are highlighted in the discussion of Nightwood’s story and characters?",{"text":120,"@type":112},"The text frames the characters as exiles and links the novel to a modern diaspora. It also presents love as intense and unsparing, with tensions shaped by desire, predation, devotion, and suffering.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":123,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":125,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":127,"site_id":62},319434,1789943933,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":130},{"doc_id":127,"user_id":131,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":132,"doc_module":4,"category_id":8,"category_name":10,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":133,"file_id":134,"file_url":135,"file_type":136,"file_size":137,"view_count":4,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":138,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":128,"read_time":143},1099514067415,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/100002539d78ffe74a7?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1779092875211072502","DJUNA BARNES NIGHTWOOD  \nPREFACE BY JEANETTE WINTERSON  \nINTRODUCTION BY  \nT. S. ELIOT  \nA New Directions Book  \nTo  \nPEGGY GUGGENHEIM and  \nJOHN FERRAR HOLMS  \nCONTENTS  \nPreface by Jeanette Winterson Introduction by T. S. Eliot  \nBOW DOWN  \nLA SOMNAMBULE  \nNIGHT WATCH  \n“THE SQUATTER”  \nWATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?  \nWHERE THE TREE FALLS  \nGO DOWN, MATTHEW  \nTHE POSSESSED  \nBiographical Note  \nPreface  \nCertain texts work in homeopathic dilutions; that is, nano amounts effect significant change over long periods of time.  \nNightwood is a nano-text.  \nIt is, in any case, not quite two hundred pages long, and more people have heard about it than have read it. Reading it is mainly the preserve of academics and students. Others have a vague sense that it is a Modernist text, that T. S. Eliot adored it, that Dylan Thomas called it “one of the three great prose books ever written by a woman,”(accept the compliment to DB, ignore the insult directed elsewhere), that the work is an important milestone on any map of gay literature—even though, like all the best books, its power makes nonsense of any categorization, especially of gender or sexuality.  \nNightwood is itself. It is its own created world, exotic and strange, and reading it is like drinking wine with a pearl dissolving in the glass. You have taken in more than you know, and it will go on doing its work. From now on, a part of you is pearl-lined.  \nIn his Introduction, Eliot talks about the necessity of reading Nightwood more than once—because the second reading will feel very different to the first. This is true.  \nIn our society, where it is hard to find time to do anything properly, even once, the leisure—which is part of the pleasure—of reading is one of our culture-casualties.  \nFor us, books have turned into fast food, to be consumed in the gaps between one bout of relentless living and the next. Airports, subways, maybe half an hour at bedtime, maybe something with the office sandwich, isn’t really ideal. At least at the cinema, or at the theater, or at a concert, or even in a gallery, some real time has to be set aside. Books have been squeezed in, which goes a long way towards explaining why our appetite  \nfor literature is waning, and our allergic reaction to anything demanding is on the rise.  \nNightwood is demanding. You can slide into it, because the prose has a narcotic quality, but you can’t slide over it. The language is not about conveying information; it is about conveying meaning. There is much more to this book than its story, which is slight, or even its characters, who are magnificent tricks of the light. This is not the solid nineteenth-century world of narrative, it is the shifting, slipping, relative world of Einstein and the Modernists, the twin assault by science and art on what we thought we were sure of.  \nThat is why, in Nightwood, Baron Felix represents a world that is disappearing. It is why he is so confused about the world he must live in, and why his son Guido is a kind of holy fool. As Gertrude Stein put it so well,“There is no there there.” You can read this twice—as a comment on matter, and a warning against consolation.  \nThere is no consolation in Nightwood. There is a wild intensity, recklessness, defiance in the face of suffering. All the characters are exiles of one kind or another—American, Irish, Austrian, Jewish. This is the beginning of the modern diaspora—all peoples, all places, all change.  \nDjuna Barnes’s 1920s/30s Paris is a Paris on the cusp of leaving behind forever the haute world of Henry James, taken from Proust. That is a world where the better people dine in the Bois, and where open horse-drawn carriages still circle the park. It is in this world that the eager hands of Jenny Petherbridge first claw at Robin Vote, the American whom we meet passed out dead drunk in one of the new class of “middle” hotels, designed for a new kind of tourist—definitely not of the old world of servants and steamer trunks.  \nSeedy Paris o","cbCaic3twz3HYYVS","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaic3twz3HYYVS","pdf",988367,142,"English","# Preface\n# Introduction by T. S. Eliot\n# BOW DOWN\n# LA SOMNAMBULE\n# NIGHT WATCH\n# “THE SQUATTER”\n# WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?\n# WHERE THE TREE FALLS\n# GO DOWN, MATTHEW\n# THE POSSESSED\n# Biographical Note","[{\"question\":\"What do Jeanette Winterson and T. S. Eliot emphasize about reading Nightwood?\",\"answer\":\"Winterson describes it as a “nano-text” whose significance builds over long periods, and Eliot argues it requires reading more than once because the second reading feels different. Both highlight Nightwood’s lasting, transformative impact.\"},{\"question\":\"How is Nightwood’s language characterized in the introduction?\",\"answer\":\"The prose is described as narcotic and meaning-driven rather than focused on conveying information. Winterson contrasts Nightwood’s language with traditional narrative clarity.\"},{\"question\":\"What themes are highlighted in the discussion of Nightwood’s story and characters?\",\"answer\":\"The text frames the characters as exiles and links the novel to a modern diaspora. It also presents love as intense and unsparing, with tensions shaped by desire, predation, devotion, and suffering.\"}]","Nightwood - Preface/Introduction - Table of Contents | PDF",219]