User Profile

I took my time with this one. This is a fictionalized autobiography; some of the literary figures and adjacent queer figures of the time were recognizable despite the name changes. It also offered a glimpse into the gay bar and salon scenes of early 20th century Europe.

A truly heartbreaking read, it's a plea for at least tolerance and at best celebration of lesbian relationships disguised under the plausible deniability of a novel. Our protagonist loses her idealism, her innocence, her home, and her hopes for the future, spurred on solely by the notion that she could change minds and hearts through being a respected writer. Even the small moments of hope here still have a patina of fear and trepidation. She walks the tightrope walk of defiance vs protectiveness.

Despite its bleakness (the title is apt), I really enjoyed this and felt held by this. It's incredible how much has changed but also how much things haven't. I could see my friends and myself in much of this.

This feels like a good place to pause on my perusal of 20th-century queer women in literature and switch gears for a while.

Barnes' fascination with womens' internality - their madness, their melancholy, and their wit - is conveyed so idiosyncratically in these short stories. I feel like her poetic prose lends itself well to the format.

I still very much want to revisit her novel "Nightwood" since I feel it will speak to me now more than it did in my early 20s. I sometimes struggle to drop in or to not rush through short story anthologies, but I got a lot out of savouring these. Some of them are a bit opaque, but that's 19th/20th century modernism, baby.

Her handling of grief in a few of these really stood out for me, the beauty and neurosis of it.

"The question, then, might be not what do female masculinities borrow from male masculinities, but rather what do men borrow from butches?"

A recommendation from my co-worker who I have kind of a two-man book club going with. This feels like a good follow-up to "Sex Variant Women In Literature", which I read earlier this year. Excited about this one.