Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin (1931-1932)

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Summary: A great writer, an evil distrubed woman....
Review: She is a great writer and her insights into how one feels upon discovering that lovely madness of one's personel erotic sensuality is lovely and worth reading. But what many Nin fans forget is that she is a user and grand manuplator who brags about how she lies and "destroys" men. Nin would herself admit that she was never very brave or honest in her diary's. Read one of the two biographys published on her life to see the truth about Nin. A great writer, an evil destrubed human being.

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Summary: An engaging read. More than a peek into Nin's psyche.
Review: The reader will have a sense that they are inside Nin's head after reading this fascinating excerpt from her 1931-32 diary. I found myself completely drawn into Nin's descriptions of her joys and losses stemming from multiple relationships with the men in her life. The diary allows the reader to witness the unfolding of Nin's sexuality and makes for, at times, a very stimulating read. It is also interesting to observe Nin's sense of feminism (at the risk of placing this term in an era where it didn't exist) as she struggles to decide whether a woman can love more than one man at once, and whether she deserves the luxury (and pain)that these relationships bring her. If you like this one, try "Fire," Delta of Venus, and Little Birds (erotic fiction), as well as Nin's other unexpurgated diaries.

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Summary: Intense!
Review: This book totally absorbed me. It is amazing! Its like she created a whole new language in her diary. Anais Nin has this amazing ability to take you into her strange wonderful world where every moment is ultra-intense. I've never read anything even remotely like it.

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Summary: A simply beautiful book!
Review: This diary is a true, well written account about a fascinating time in the life of Anais Nin. If you've never read Anais before, this is a great book to start with, especially for anyone who's a fan of Henry Miller, the decade of the thirties, and anything Paris. Her day-to-day accounts of her thoughts are an enlightening look at a life most of us only can only dream of living.

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Summary: Introspective, Exhausting, Harrowing
Review: This is from Anais Nin's diary. It is the most detailed introspective work I have ever read; Anais lays her soul bare with no reservations. She is shameless, and at the same time magnificently dignified. However, her confessions do not titillate, for they are heart-wrenching cries for help. She is 29 and married. Her husband is a banker--very stable and secure and devoted--but she yearns for excitement and danger. She is infatuated with her cousin, Eduardo, and frequently fantasizes about making love with him. And then she meets Henry Miller, and his wife, June. She thinks Henry is crude and unfeeling, but she finds June utterly fascinating; she thinks June is the epitome of feminine beauty and allure, and gentleness and understanding. The friendship escalates, and she experiences her first lesbian lovemaking with June. But as she penetrates June's psyche deeper, she intuits that June is manipulative and shallow. Then June leaves for New York. And there is only Henry. After much hand-wringing, Anais makes love with Henry. And there begins her downward spiral. A classic addictive relationship, Anais shouts out how wonderful Henry is, how she would gladly be his slave, and then a few pages later she vows to break it off with him, that he is not what she had thought. A few more pages, and she again rejoices over their lovemaking. She enrolls herself into psychotherapy, in the hopes of sorting out her riotous feelings. She becomes attracted to her therapist, and schemes to seduce him. She fans the flames of her attraction to her cousin. She makes love to her husband with renewed vigor, based on what she's learned in bed from Henry. And then she's off to Henry's apartment, where they raise the roof with their countless climaxes. This book contains several very insightful observations about human nature, but its chronicle of emotional demise is what lingers in the reader's memory. This book is arguably an even graver portrayal of the minefield of adultery than is Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Lastly, on a practical note, this book can be exhaustingly repetitive--Henry, Henry, Henry--and the sex is not nearly as good as in Delta of Venus.

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Summary: anais anais
Review: when i was 17 anais nin tore open my senses read this boo

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Summary: Anais: self-titled all-round Wonder-God
Review: Whilst Nin certainly has a talent for stringing together passionate words into readable text I can think of nothing else to admire in this book. It is, allegedly, the "true" recollection of Anais Nin's affair with Henry Miller and obsession with his wife June. Excerpts from her journal, we are supposed to believe. As I began reading this book I initially felt, despite my knowledge of Nin as a person, that I could be in for an interesting and sordid ride as Anais tore apart her life, her husband's, and everyone else's around her as she undertook some sort of sexual odyssey which females today are supposed to admire. She has enjoyed a reputation for one of the world's first notable feminists. This could have been an interesting read. But what I soon found in this book were the lying words of a woman who hid her insecurity by repeatedly attempting to convince herself and anyone who would listen how wonderful and beautiful she is. About half way through, it becomes blatantly apparent that she is at the very least grossly exaggerating the more positive aspects of her relationships with the other characters: the amounts of times we are meant to believe, for instance, that Henry tells her she is beautiful, brilliant, ten times the human being he is, the only thing that matters, perfect, without fault, glowing, the brightest woman to ever exist, his entire world, the one that has changed his world, etc etc - well, NO ONE is that fantastic. And according to Anais, everyone seems to think of her that way. Any fault prescribed to herself is a mistake, or something said to upset her driven by the other's jealousy at her beauty or something similar. Of course it has come out now that Nin has lied abominably in many of her diaries. Gore Vidal (Palipsest) says that lying in the end became her first, not second, nature. Perhaps this foreknowledge made me pick out her lies more easily than if i had not known. People may read this review and mark it unfavourably due to my negativity, but the fact remains: this book is the words of an immature, lying woman, and if you look past the flowery language, it is easy to perceive.