“I used to think,” Nora said, “that people just went to sleep, or if they did not go to sleep that they were themselves, but now” -she lit a cigarette and her hands trembled-“now I see that the night does something to a person’s identity, even when asleep.” Night-Life On Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes Lindsay Lerman

Like all great novels, it is a living organism that becomes a dark mirror to whomever is reading it.

It is a book that I believe is experienced by every reader differently. If you are also a lover of the nontraditional novel in all its forms, I highly recommend you also check out Nightwood by Djuna Barnes. She mentioned she felt she could write an essay about it and I said PLEASE DO OMG. About a week later she told me she had already finished reading it and was so happy I had given it to her. I sang its praises and insisted she take it home with her. It is one of those lit nerd books that not many people hear about but Lindsay literally is one of those lit nerds. We drank some wine, read some Tarot cards, talked about life, about being writers, she perused my deskside bookshelf and, just as Nightwood had jumped out to me it jumped out for her. A novel, like Nightwood, that is very much a novel and very much something indefinable in how it dives deep into the interior world of its characters, leaving the reader haunted and raw from the experience. Her novel I’m From Nowhere, which we published last year, was a breath of fresh air. She is one of the authors we have published with CLASH Books. She was acting as an outside examiner for a student at the college I once attended, in one of the many odd synchronicities of life. One of such friends who just happened to be traveling up to Vermont, which is not too far north, was Lindsay Lerman. I was welcomed to my new home by a moveable feast of family and friends coming over to help me housewarm. I recently moved from New Hampshire to upstate New York.

Djuna barnes books