A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953

Like many others, I have been fascinated with and frustrated by Anais Nin for many years, since reading the first volume of her expurgated diary in 1977.This volume of letters enables the reader who has already read other versions of the Nin-Miller story to form additional conclusions about what might actually have happened. Because the letters were sent into the possession of others, they were less subject to the constant revision and reinvention that bedevils all attempts to determine objective facts about the mercurial Nin.If you are not already an amateur historian of literary trends of the 1930's, fear not. The letters are worth reading as an introduction to Anais Nin and Henry Miller as well, for they depict a real-life romance conducted by two who absolutely relished the game and were highly articulate in dramatically different ways.

Whatever you may think of her writing, Anaïs Nin was definitely a femme fatale. Henry Miller was, he claimed, the "happiest man alive." Together, Nin and Miller created a literary language for sexual fulfillment; she in a diary whose original form still remains unpublished, he in novels banned in both the United States and England until court cases in the early 1960s permitted their publication and turned Miller into something Nin had already achieved: the status of a cult hero.Nin and Miller met in Paris in 1931. Miller, an aspiring novelist, wanted to meet the banker's pretty wife who had sung the praises of D.H. Lawrence and whose books had been deemed "pornography" outside of France. Neither Nin nor Miller, at that point, had published much. Their mutual interest, as they freely admit, was in sex and in each other and, consequently, they began a long affair.It was during this affair that both Nin and Miller produced their finest writing--the writings that would eventually become Nin's two diaries and her novel, House of Incest, as well as Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Black Spring. Each believed in, and nurtured, the others genius and Miller wrote that Nin's diary would take its place "beside the revelations of St. Augustine, Petronius, Abelard, Proust and others."Miller, only forty-one, but already somewhat down-and-out, fascinated the twenty-nine year old Nin, whose vague yearnings filled the many pages of the diary she had been keeping since the age of ten. "He's a man who makes life drunk. He is like me," she mused. Nin and Miller, however, were not alike. One of their most essential differences was a difference typical between men and women--Nin censored herself, while the world censored Miller.Published in 1963, Nin's diary caused a literary sensation. It was begun as a letter to her father, a man who abandoned the family when Nin was only ten, and it remained intensely private. Revised into frequent distortions, the diary was a record of a compulsion to conceal as much as of a quest for feminine fulfillment. A mixture of fact, fantasy and calculated lies, Nin's editor asserts that the diary nevertheless presents a "psychological" truth. Kate Millett hailed Nin as "the mother of us all" and the women's movement immediately embraced her writings. Author Erica Jong said that no woman had told "the story of women's sexuality" more honestly than had Nin.Despite the praise, if we read between the lines, while still observing Nin's frenetic whirl from bed to bed, we come to realize that she was really never satisfied. Her insatiable appetite aside, Nin was, at heart, a prudish libertine. Her childhood molestation by her father, whom she, herself, seduced as an adult a year after meeting Henry Miller, seems to have contributed greatly to her private inhibitions. Although she flitted from bed to bed she sadly confessed, "I am hellishly lonely." Instead of sex, Nin longed for "what I give Henry: this constant attentiveness."I

How much deeper can you get into a person's complexities and simplicities, understand the origin of their joys and frustrations, their motivators and their fears, if not by reading the letters they wrote to one another, and, in this case, one of their best friends and lovers? This is a powerful door to Anais' heart and soul, and even more powerful than her diaries itself. Because here you get deep into one of the most significant periods of her life, the many years she let her own life and self entwined with Henry Miller's. Indispensable reading for anyone, even more for those who admire Anais and Miller as ordinary people who loved each other, or as writers ahead of their time, unafraid of other people's opinions. Immerse yourself: you're gonna want to sink.

You'll laugh, cry, and find yourself feeling a little like a voyeur at times when reading this book. The letters are so personal, and so alive with intense emotion that if you read this book along with the diary dates that correspond to the letters, you'll get a little more insight into what was really going on. This is the kind of reading that once you get started, it's hard to put down, and you'll find yourself marvelling at the images that Henry and Anais concoct.

This book gives the reader a candid glimpse into the lives and minds of these two literary geniuses. Erotic, intelligent, and sensitive, this book will turn on your every emotion and awaken your soul.