Final Thoughts On Nightwood
Apr. 19th, 2007 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloIt 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.
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.
