Final Thoughts On Nightwood

It ends well. And left me with the feeling that, yes, I'd been dealing with real literature. 

Of course it's not really a novel- or rather, no more of a novel than Ulysses or the Waves- meaning it's about language more than it's about people or society or whatever. 

It's one long authorial monologue; The characters speak in the same voice as the omniscient narrator and are placed at such a distance from us- as if viewed through a reversed telescope- that we  hardly care for them. 

And is the story gripping? Do we strain to know what happens next? No, of course we don't.

I have brushed the surface. This is a rich, thick, deep, clotted text.  It invites study. 

Is This Jane Austen?

This is the Rice portrait of the teenage Jane Austen which is being sold at Christie's today. 

Is it authentic ? 

Hmmmmmm. 

It's supported by oral tradition but...

...Some people think the frock is all wrong for the 1780s.

Short of going back in a Tardis we're never going to know.

But it's pretty, isn't it?