Scan barcode
pturnbull's review against another edition
3.0
"What a curious, extraordinary woman," said legendary editor Maxwell Perkins after reading Anais Nin's diaries. And that is the case--she is one of a kind. She's a literary temple whore, a married demi-monde, a polyamorous modernist writer. She's been castigated for valuing sexual pleasure highly, for breaking taboos, and for the lies and deceit that facilitated her love life. She formed intense relationships with men, juggling three of them in this diary, and developed long-lasting, mutually beneficial and enriching relationships with them. Like most women who refuse to conform to patriarchal norms of sexuality, and who seek life on their own terms, she has been both ridiculed and worshiped, both admired and scorned by critics, readers, and other women. This set of diaries, covering 1937-39, are, above all, simply a diary, the one place where Nin could confess her amorous experiences, and where she worried about and expressed her grievances with her inner circle, which was quite large, including Henry Miller, Gonzalo More, Hugh Guiller, Jean Carteret, Lawrence Durrell, her mother, brother, father, and more.
Nin has been criticized for her lack of interest in politics, which, considering the time this book was written, seems shameful and self-absorbed to contemporary readers. But considering her nature, her choice of Gonzalo More as a long-term lover and the one at the center of her thoughts, the one she loves most intensely during these years, could be Nin expressing her political side. More was a communist and anti-fascist; Nin supported him and his wife Helba Huerta, nursed them both, and staved off his self-destruction for a time, making it possible for him to be a part of the communist fight against fascism going on then in Paris. Living through a man in this way would not have been unusual for a woman of her time. Unfortunately, Nin does not explore her relationship with More as a form of her own political expression, though she admires his identity as a revolutionary. This book includes a surprising digression about Marxism, which she admires for its organizing principle and for its potential to relieve human suffering. This is a shock, coming as it does from a woman who repeatedly states that politics bores her.
Nin valued individuality too much to ever get caught up in a mass movement of any kind. She rejected the horror and brutality of the world, and turned inward, valuing love and passion above all else. Even so, towards the end her diary seems written as if she thought its pages might hold the last words she ever puts to paper. With this she was clear-eyed, anticipating the potential annihilation of all she held dear--civilization, art, relationships, and creation.
I could not read every word of this book. It got tiresome to read her interior monologue, rarely livened by dialogue or by another's point of view. Some of it, like the astrology, just seems silly today. And yet...she may be the first woman who put words to experiences that others find shameful. She lifts them up like jewels, using her full literary powers to describe them. Despite the lies and falsehoods that maintained her double and triple lives, Nin wrote the truth, and for that she continues to find an audience, fascinated by her individuality and the enormous power of her personality.
Nin has been criticized for her lack of interest in politics, which, considering the time this book was written, seems shameful and self-absorbed to contemporary readers. But considering her nature, her choice of Gonzalo More as a long-term lover and the one at the center of her thoughts, the one she loves most intensely during these years, could be Nin expressing her political side. More was a communist and anti-fascist; Nin supported him and his wife Helba Huerta, nursed them both, and staved off his self-destruction for a time, making it possible for him to be a part of the communist fight against fascism going on then in Paris. Living through a man in this way would not have been unusual for a woman of her time. Unfortunately, Nin does not explore her relationship with More as a form of her own political expression, though she admires his identity as a revolutionary. This book includes a surprising digression about Marxism, which she admires for its organizing principle and for its potential to relieve human suffering. This is a shock, coming as it does from a woman who repeatedly states that politics bores her.
Nin valued individuality too much to ever get caught up in a mass movement of any kind. She rejected the horror and brutality of the world, and turned inward, valuing love and passion above all else. Even so, towards the end her diary seems written as if she thought its pages might hold the last words she ever puts to paper. With this she was clear-eyed, anticipating the potential annihilation of all she held dear--civilization, art, relationships, and creation.
I could not read every word of this book. It got tiresome to read her interior monologue, rarely livened by dialogue or by another's point of view. Some of it, like the astrology, just seems silly today. And yet...she may be the first woman who put words to experiences that others find shameful. She lifts them up like jewels, using her full literary powers to describe them. Despite the lies and falsehoods that maintained her double and triple lives, Nin wrote the truth, and for that she continues to find an audience, fascinated by her individuality and the enormous power of her personality.
More...