Djuna: The Extraordinary Life of Djuna Barnes

Lovingly drawn, in a broad style reminiscent of Persepolis and other self-serious histories, with only splashes of maroon across Djuna's hair to break up the grayscale. The landscapes and backgrounds are meticulously drawn, while the people are often splashes of white and black suggesting their profile and emotion more than their features.
Macy's biography is too relentlessly chronological for its own good. And while he throws around the word genius, he never offers an explanation. A biography of Joyce would dwell on his human and humorous characters, the astounding command he demonstrated of the Western canon. Hemingway's biography would dwell on terse prose and doomed, fighting men. What exactly did Djuna Barnes offer the world that show more no one else could?
I've spent days laboring through 310 pages, and I still don't know. show less

I'm a little torn by my rating because I do feel that Djuna Barnes is someone worth learning about, but the execution of the book just had a few too many stumbles for her charisma to overcome.

Barnes is an LGBTQIA+ icon who knew most everyone in the Modernist movement and the "Lost Generation" social scene of the 1920s and 1930s. She broke into writing as a journalist, became known for her illustrations, short stories, and novels, but ultimately evolved into a prickly and reclusive cult celebrity.

The first third of the book has some energy as Barnes uses her talents to climb out of anonymity and a messed up family situation, but the parade of celebrity cameos, the sidelining of her career by a toxic relationship, her growing bitterness show more and some mental health issues, make the back end of the book -- and her very long life -- a bit of a trudge.

Unfortunately, the chronology of the book gets a little squishy at times with flashbacks and the vague passage of decades, and this dramatization is a little careless with historical figures and facts.

The narration gives the impression of a nonfiction work, but the author breaks out of the objective tone a few times to interject some personal asides, including the fact that he is completely making up one celebrity encounter just because he wanted it to happen. In another scene, John Steinbeck shows up in Paris in the 1920s yelling how he is the author of The Grapes of Wrath -- which wasn't published until 1939 -- even though my brief research indicates he was attending Stanford and living in either California or New York at the time, not going to Paris until the 1940s.

Creator Jon Macy is a bit too obsessed with all of Barnes' famous acquaintances, shoehorning in around fifty of them. Usually, they are fully named, but a few are left to be worked out by only their first name or nickname, including Rudolph "Silas" Glossop, Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, Isadora Duncan, Harry Macelhone, and Dan Mahoney (inspiration for Dr. Matthew O'Connor in Barnes' Nightwood). And for some reason John Ferrar Holms is called John Holmes.

Macy seems like a genuine fan of Barnes, and his enthusiasm is almost contagious, but the book is just a bit too long and too willing to "print the legend." show less