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gannent's review against another edition
challenging
funny
medium-paced
3.25
I could have used a much more heavily annotated edition. The jokes I did get were great, but there’s a lot I didn’t. It is essentially reading an almost 100 year old lesbian inside joke, so I expected it to be a bit confusing. But disappointed that this edition had no annotations or footnotes outside of the introduction.
laura_sonja's review against another edition
3.0
I can't say that this was a "good" or "enjoyable" read but it does end with the Natalie Clifford Barney character's tongue, which survived her cremation, placed upon an altar and still "flicker[ing] to this day'
drcaligari's review against another edition
3.0
some parts are funny and all but this wasn' the enjoyable read i thought it was gonna be. more useful as a historical tool as to understand the paris lesbos crowd a bit better, their humor and dynmic. its nice to imagine them cracking at the inside jokes. and its amazing to see this side of lesbianism so proud, lightweighted and in campy satire in contrast to radclyffe's well of loneliness from the same period. natalie clifford barney and djuna barnes were big brained for this
meganmilks's review against another edition
4.0
this is kind of a parody of women's magazines of barnes' time period, combined with a satirical lesbian conversion narrative. pretty awesome. great illustrations. lots of inside jokes that i didn't get, but that i recognized as having had the potential to be very very funny, had i, in fact, gotten them.
paperrcuts's review against another edition
4.0
Sweet May stood putting on her last venereal Touches while Patience Scalpel held forth in that divine and ethereal Voice for which she was noted, the Voice of one whose Ankles are nibbled by the Cherubs, while amid the Rugs Dame Musset brought Doll Furious to a certainty.
“What”, said Patience Scalpal, “can you women see in each other? Where is the Parting of the Ways and the Horseman that hunts? Where”, she reflected, “there is Prostitution and Drunkeness, there is bound to be Immorality, or I do not count the Times, but what is this?”
“And”, said Dame Musset, rising in Bed, “that’s all there is, and there is no more!”
“But oh !” cried Doll.
“Down Woman”, said Dame Musset in her friendliest, “there may be a mustard seed!”
“What”, said Patience Scalpal, “can you women see in each other? Where is the Parting of the Ways and the Horseman that hunts? Where”, she reflected, “there is Prostitution and Drunkeness, there is bound to be Immorality, or I do not count the Times, but what is this?”
“And”, said Dame Musset, rising in Bed, “that’s all there is, and there is no more!”
“But oh !” cried Doll.
“Down Woman”, said Dame Musset in her friendliest, “there may be a mustard seed!”
2000ace's review against another edition
3.0
I found this silly little book in the stacks of the UGA library, and read it in about an hour. Some of the women mentioned in its pages were followers of G.I. Gurdjieff in Paris in the twenties, and it is mostly because of my interest in them that I picked it up. As spoofs go, I prefer the one of Milne's When We Were Six, anonymously written and published in the twenties under the title of When We Were Rather Younger.
I know Barnes did not write hers as a spoof of a particular book, but it still fits the general parameters. Not bad to fill an odd hour, but not good enough to invest much more than that.
I know Barnes did not write hers as a spoof of a particular book, but it still fits the general parameters. Not bad to fill an odd hour, but not good enough to invest much more than that.
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