Anaïs Nin in Paris and in Ann Arbor

Author Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) lived in Paris from 1924-1940, and was famous for her relationships with a variety of literary, psycho-analytic, and artistic figures there, especially with the American author Henry Miller. I was thinking about Paris and the writers' presence in the cafés of Paris, especially at the Dôme, which she frequented.

No matter where she was or what she was doing, Anaïs Nin constantly took notes in her diaries, a series of notebooks that were always with her wherever she went. A heavily edited multi-volume version of these diaries, published from 1966 through 1974 brought her to the attention of the growing feminist movement. Many women who were "raising their consciousness" embraced her as a feminist spirit who defied the male point of view that predominated literary publications of the time. 

Anaïs Nin's feminist credibility was boosted by the editing decision that all traces of her husbands (one of them a lifelong husband who supported her Bohemian Paris existence, the other a bigamous husband whom she lived with later in a separate parallel life in California) were completely omitted from the published versions of her diaries. In the 1970s, many of her obscure writings, especially her erotic writings, were also published or republished in popular editions.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1973. At the peak of her popularity, Anaïs Nin made a splashy appearance in Ann Arbor; I attended her lecture at an overcrowded auditorium on the campus. I remember her, a small figure in a large dark-colored caftan. I remember her calling on the audience (virtually all women) to repeat her name three times: ANNA--EES, ANNA-EES, ANNA-EES, to be sure it would be pronounced correctly, because, she said, women were naming their daughters Anaïs. 

I wonder what happened to those babies, and if they still have that name. The Ann Arbor library has several clippings from that time, as well as images of our most famous mural in which Nin is pictured with several other writers:  https://aadl.org/taxonomy/term/38810

Another find from my attic. Other than rearranging my shelves, I doubt if I have touched these since the 1970s.

What's happened to the reputation of Nin now? An article in the Guardian a few years ago explains that brief quotations from her pontificating works have become ubiquitous as Internet memes! This long article traces her various lives -- including the double life she led in the 1950s, when married to two men at once, and caught when both of them claimed her on their income tax returns. 

The conclusion of the article:

"To blur the boundaries of life and fiction, as Nin did, has gone beyond being an acceptable tactic of experimental writers, and is now practiced by reality-television producers and popular novelists alike. Similarly, for a woman to write about her sex life hasn’t been shocking since the invention of Blogspot. Self-publication, too, has lost nearly all of its stigma, thanks to the fact that 'real' writers and civilians alike are expected to do it.

"Her polarizing personality, too, would have been at home in 2015: Nin was once called a 'narcissist' for gadding about in eye-catching thrift-shop costumes and dramatic makeup. Nowadays, that’s the day-to-day work of celebrities. The close personal connection Nin sought with her fans – toward the end of her life, she abandoned writing so that she could answer every one of her thousands of fan letters – is now the entire purpose of social media....

"The rehabilitation of Nin is taking place not because her work has changed, but because the world has changed to make room for her work. Like many great and 'mercilessly pretentious' experimentalists, she wrote for a world that did not yet exist, and so helped to bring it into being."

In the ongoing July event at Tamara's blog, there have been very few mentions of Nin and her many works about Paris, though she would be a wonderful source for this event, so I thought I would share these few thoughts of mine.

Blog post © 2021 mae sander.