Anais Nin

The attention to detail will astound you! Very readable, and although it is second hand you wouldn't think so!

GREAT BOOK FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN ANAIS NIN

El libro y el tiempo de envío perfectos. En cuanto al contenido se trata de un estudio muy detallado y completo que permite comprender mejor lo que se plasma en los Diarios. Muy recomendable para entender la personalidad de Anaïs Nin.

A brilliant 'unmasking' of a woman who was compelled to create a fantasy life that ran parallel to her real one. Anais Nin may have thought that she was one of the greatest writers of her age - to me, reading this book and looking at some of her own writings, she comes across as a real-life Madame Bovary, endlessly compelled to try to live out different fantasies (in Nin's case ranging from the pure young Catholic girl to the wild femme fatale to the devoted wife to the 'celebrity' author), dropping each as they failed to satisfy her. Bair, with amazing patience and thoughtfulness, has gone over Nin's own writings, the writings of those close to her and interviewed practically everyone who knew Nin to try to find out the truth about this woman who can now be viewed as a forerunner of our modern 'celebrity' culture. What we get is a fascinating, though often rather depressing read, comparing what was really going on in Nin's life to the myth she promoted to the outside world.Whatever one thinks of her writings (personally I'm not so keen!) Nin's life is certainly a treasure to a biographer. Bair covers it all, from Anais's troubled childhood in Paris and unhappy relationship with her father Joaquin (a musician of note, a friend of Ravel and De Falla, but in private a brutal autocrat), her adolescence with her mother and brothers in America and time spent as a model, her marriage as a shy 'child bride' to banker Hugo Guiller, and their years in Paris, where Nin, bored with being a banker's wife and frustrated in her attempts to write, developed a new career as a femme fatale and mistress of Henry Miller and psychoanalyst Otto Rank among others - in addition, she seduced her own father, with whom she had a short affair. Forced to flee Paris due to the rise of fascism, Nin and her husband returned to New York, where she continued to maintain a string of lovers (who tended to get younger as she got older), published a few novels, and finally, in the 1940s, began a cross-continent relationship with a young actor-turned-forest ranger, Rupert Pole, who she bigamously married in the 1950s. After years of declaring herself one of the most undervalued writers of the age, Nin finally became a celebrity in the free-thinking 1960s with the publication of severely edited volumes of her vast diary, which she had kept since childhood. Her last years were a rapid ascent to fame, horribly cut off when she died of cancer in the early 1970s.Bair creates a vivid picture of Paris in the 1930s and New York in the 1940s and 50s, and as always in her biographies brings her vast cast of characters vividly to life: from the 'Shakespearean rogue' Henry Miller to women writers like Rebecca West and Lesley Blanch, to the gentle and tormented Otto Rank and Anais's two husbands, who inexplicably continued to adore her no matter how badly she behaved. Bair makes you want to go on reading about Anais Nin, even when she's behaving at her worst. Bair received a lot of criticism for her treatment of Nin, about whom she is certainly more critical than De Beauvoir, but I think on the whole Bair's remarks about Anais Nin are fair: she sounds an incredibly selfish, and not particularly nice person, though Bair makes it clear that in her own fashion Nin was capable of strong affections (she clung to her first husband for most of her life, for example, even when treating him appallingly, and later was very generous to her various proteges), and that Nin's traumatic childhood may have been a major factor in how she turned out. Eventually, one can't help admiring Nin for persisting with her writing and for keeping going, no matter how much one might criticize her behaviour to others.My only criticisms of the book are that there is very little writing about Nin's novels (to find out more about them I had to buy them myself - I got the impression Bair is none to keen on them) and - and this is not Bair's fault - that some of the later chapters of the book, especially those dealing with Anais's bigamy, could drag a bit: ultimately, not a huge amount happened to Anais in the 1950s and 60s beyond her dealing with her bigamous relationship. I ended the book coming to the conclusion that the woman who wanted to 'offer the world one perfect life' had in fact a not-too-satisfying life, and limited herself a great deal largely because of her immense desire to be adored and thought perfect: the man who became her 'perfect' partner, Rupert Pole, actually does not sound tremendously interesting or exciting - his main attractions for Nin were his good looks and his devotion to her. This biography didn't make me think that Nin was a particularly gifted artist or even a particularly special person. But at the same time it was a fascinating and quite sympathetic account of someone who needed to create 'a dreamworld' to live in as they couldn't face reality. Definitely recommended and it's a shame the book isn't in print any more.

My intial reaction when starting reading Deidre Bair's biography of Anais Nin was to wonder what Anais Nin ever did to harm the book's bitter author. Bair's tone is exceedingly condescending and her narrative judgemental rather than analytical. What could have been the most in-depth, accurate biography of Anais Nin ever to be written reads instead like a moralistic warning by a betrayed wife.For what Bair writes is well-researched. She had access to most of what Nin ever wrote, including her diaries stored under lock and key at UCLA, letters to her family and friends, and journals left in the care of Rupert Pole. Still, Bair cannot seem to help interpreting Nins actions instead of simply accepting whatever motives she had for betraying her first husband, Hugh Guiler, rewriting a novel or even working as a psycholanalyst. If we are to believe Bair, Anais Nin was a compulsive liar without any real talent as a writer, and a nymphomaniac to boot.The most infuriating thsesis of Bair's is that a diary is no longer to be regarded as "truthful" if edited by its author several times. True to what, one might ask? I must argue that if I write something in my own diary and add to, or alter, my account of an event or emotional state at a later time, it is still my diary. As my diary, it is my perrogative to change its contents at my own will. What I write there need neither be objective nor entirely realistic. If Bair expected the God given truth and objective, historical accounts of events of the twentieth century in Anais Nin's diaries, she was obviously doomed to be disappointed from the start. As for her complaints of Nin's "egoism" and "self absorbtion" in the diary, I must once again wonder what she expected. My diary contains my opinions and stories about my own life and things that effect me. If that makes a person egoistic, then I suppose most people who keep diaries are guilty of that sin.The most interesting part of Bair's biography is her account of how Nin managed to keep a husband on each coast of the United States for twenty years. Although much of the narrative should be taken with a pinch of salt, it is interesting to read how such a situation was at all possible. Also, Bair's detailed account of the cancer that led to Nin's death is frightening, but more sympathetic and factual than the rest of the book. If only Bair could accept her subject matter as complex and let it speak for itself as such, her book would be at the top of my list of must-reads for Anais Nin fans. Given the spitefulness with which the book was written, however, I would suggest that the serious scholar read the available early diaries as well as diaries 1-7, the unexpurgated diaries and a few of Nin's novels, thus forming their own opinions before reading Bair's work.

An honest biography, warts and all of a truly unique woman. Meticulously researched the later chapters quite bring tears to ones eyes. It sadly also serves as a stark warning to those who overindulge in sexual activity with multiple partners. There can be a terrible price to pay. Fortunately we can still enjoy the skilled literary work of this great erotic writer