Let me back up a bit. Before hearing of this book, I was unfamiliar with Barnes. Not only have I not read any of her work, but I don't think I'd even heard her name prior to this book. But she was a queer writer working mostly in the first half of the 20th century. She's been called "the most famous unknown of the century" because she was immensely talented and very highly regarded among the literati, but because her work generally focused on queer and sometimes racy scenes in the early 20th century, it was often considered pornographic and, thus, illegal in many areas. Curiously, though, many of the stories she wrote -- particularly the most outrageous among them -- were, in fact, autobiographical. She would often excise her demons in the written word, though few would believe what she wrote.
And this is why the book starts with Barnes' grandmother before she was born. Seeing Barnes' life in isolation without the context of her family history, one might easily think she was sadist and a nihilist, maybe with a touch of narcasism thrown in for good measure. But in fact seeing how she was raised -- the emotional abuse, the raging narcacism of her grandmother, the incest, the gaslighting... -- it's a wonder she didn't have even more problems in her life. She did spend a lot of time in self-imposed isolation, but I'm surprised she gave anyone the time of day with the background she had!
The narrative does hop around a bit, largely following Barnes' life as an adult with flashbacks to her childhood. And while Macy never expressly comes out says so, justaposing the different time periods like that does an excellent job showing readers why Barnes acts in ways that often seem somewhere between chaotic and self-destructive. Strangely, though, she seems engaging and innovative enough with others in her circle that they remain close with her. And it's an impressive circle to be sure, including the likes of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, and Peggy Guggenheim. The book is something of a who's who of 1920s Bohemenism.
It was actually this cast that gives rise to my biggest criticism of the book. Many of these people coming in and out of Barnes' day-to-day life will make oblique references to something they're doing, but without much in the way of detail. Which makes sense here -- the book is about Barnes, after all -- but I recognize just enough of these bits to understand they're real references, but that leaves many of the ones I'm unfamiliar with as giant question marks. The book already clocks in at over 300 pages, so it's not fair to expect Macy to cover every one of these instances in more than a cusrory fashion, but it did prove frustrating to keep wanting to have the broader story stop so I could find out about this or that tangent.
Macy pretty unashamedly loves his subject, but he doesn't flinch from portraying her failings as readily as her strengths. As I said, he does use the narrative structre to explain some of Barnes' problematic behavior, but he doesn't use it as any sort of shield to excuse it. Indeed, Barnes herself doesn't seem to use it as an excuse either, even after recognizing how traumatic her upbringing was and how her family continues to emotionally abuse her from afar.
And while the story does paint Barnes' death as something of a last, righteous stand against conventionality and conformity, the downward tragectory she has in the last few decades of her life clearly mark it as a tragic one.
I don't doubt that I wouldn't have liked Barnes as a person if I'd have known her. Far too much chaos energy that led to or exasperated many of her problems. I try to keep that out of my life as much as possible, thank you very much. But I did enjoy and appreciate learning about her, and the importance she has in the queer canon of literature. Djuna: The Extraordinary Life of Djuna Barnes came out a while ago, so you should be able to get it through your favorite bookstore. It retails for $24.99 US and was published by Street Noise Books. The publisher provided a digital copy of the book for this review.
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