Was Nightwood ahead of its time?

Honestly I see no reason to read any further (little more than halfway through, about 90 pp.) in Djuna Barnes's novel Nightwood (1936), once a cult novel much admired by avant-garde readers and writers, at least in the 60s abd 70s, but today just a weird curiosity. Yes, DB does create some scenes and moments - for example a harrowing description of Doctor Matthew's sixth-floor walkuip apartment, where his visitor finds him dressed in a woman's flannel nightgown and wearing a woman's wig - shocking! - but DB does little with the scenes she establishes - in a way she's a classic example of telling not showing, her descriptions of scenes and personalities are just that - but they never evolve before us, never develop into any recognizable semblance of a narrative or plot - and in the end, or at least in the middle - I don't understand any of the characters, I don't understand their inter-relationships, if any, and I don't care what might or might not be developed or revealed in the 2nd half of the novel. As noted yesterday, this novel comes with a foreword by none other than T.S. Eliot, who notes that this book is best read as poetry rather than fiction. Maybe so, and there are some affinities w/ The Waste Land, but as a poem it lacks nuance and precisions; I think it's best read as a satire, and readers may see a similarity to the highly comic novels of Flann O'Brien - though not as funny, too much "in earnest." TSE famously supported the work of many of his friends, and perhaps he was friends w/ DB or perhaps his publishing house was hers as well, I'm not sure, but there is a sense of log-rolling here. His praise was overdone (which he may have subtly recognized in the second, one-paragraph intro he wrote to a subsequent edition). Nightwood is one of those peculiarities that once seemed ahead of its time and now seems behind the times, without ever quite pausing in the middle.