Ryder
by Djuna Barnes
Ryder can be described as an autobiographical novel, but one closer to the oblique strategy of Samuel R. Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand than to the strategy of Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues.
It can also be described as a multigenerational saga, since Julie, the character whose key translates to Djuna Barnes, is shrunken into her family tree both textually and graphically, virtually disappearing from the last quarter of the book.
Least misleadingly, Ryder can be described as a miscellany, each chapter a set piece, arranged in approximately chronological order, though each independent piece may range through time as it will.
Copyright 1996 Ray Davis, except for excerpts from the art of Djuna Barnes