Customer Reviews

Anais Nin: A Biography

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I read many Amazon reviews of this book (mostly negative) but bought it anyway, hoping for an in-depth look into the life of Anais Nin. What I got were details covering everything about her life except WHY she loved the men whose selfishness Bair details ad nauseum. I never could figure out why Anais loved Gonzalo or Rupert, men she was with for decades. Bair talks only of how they demanded money and how Anais resented them. Dig a little deeper, please!

It seems the author did not care to present her subject as anything but a psychologically frail moron, a fool. This unwillingness/inability to provide any important insight into the reason for these particular lengthy love affairs makes the on and on repetition of how they demanded her money, her time, etc. become quite boring and meaningless. Also, since nearly EVERY man Anais met seemed to demand that she share any money she got with them, was this how all men were during this era? There was no context in which to discern what was happening to Anais and why. Overall, factually informative but emotionally disappointing.

This book left me mixed. I learned more about the truth behind Anais Nin than I ever learned in reading all of the diaries--expurgated and unexpurgated--but I can't understand Bair's out-and-out loathing of Anais Nin. If you don't at least find her fascinating, why not write a biography about someone else? This book was filled with cynical biographer asides such as, "The house was always cold and her clothes were shabby. What a better way to lift her spirits than to throw a dinner party!" Really. I expect more from People Magazine.

Of course anyone who knows a smidgeon about Anais Nin would never call her flawless. She was deeply, deeply flawed. And a responsible biographer should point out the flaws. But I felt like I was on the subway with a gossipy neighbor who wouldn't shut up about everything she didn't like about another woman. Let it rest. What's disappointing is that, from a research perspective, this was the best piece I've read about Anais Nin. Ms. Bair did her homework--hence the three stars.

You won't find better research about Anais Nin than in Ms. Bair's book. If you want to know about Anais Nin, read it. But try to be cognizant of Ms. Bair's apparent jealous little sister attitude.

I give Deirdre Bair high marks for her book. Sure, it can be disillusioning to those of us who discovered Anais Nin when we were impressionable youth and admired her for her creative and adventurous life. But I think that in her approach to understanding Nin, Bair was not vicious, jealous, or working from other motives of disrespect. She had the cooperation of Nin's family, friends, and lovers and had access to materials unavailable to others. The length of the book, the amount of materials she studied, and her helpful and thorough notes for each chapter convince me she cared about her subject and presenting Nin's life accurately. I think the book gives a very sensitive assessment of who Nin was. Some of what the book reveals is disappointing, but that is more about Nin than Bair. I appreciate that Bair didn't try to be a psychologist or literary critic- she stuck to doing a thorough job as biographer, working with as many primary sources as possible. Nin is an especially complex subject and I believe Bair did her justice, not trying to simplify, glorify, denigrate or disregard those contradictions and deceptions Nin wove into her life. Instead, she dignified Nin by taking her on as a woman whose life was fascinating, who was a compelling person, and who didn't need- in life or death- to stay hidden behind a facade.

Bair's hardcore feminism only occasionally gets the best of her here, I believe. She does spend a good deal of this book making her subject out to be a deluded, dishonest, self-centered person, but I have little doubt that's what Anais Nin was. She was also talented, intelligent, generous, and had lots of other good qualities. No person is a saint, and that's what Bair exposes. Her research is solid (in my view) and her view of Nin is clear-eyed. There isn't much more you can ask from a biography, except for good writing, and that exists here as well. After I read this I reread a lot of Nin's diary, and I was impressed by the multi-angled perspective the biography had helped me to acquire. None of the pleasure I take in Nin's writing was dulled by Bair's analysis. The question of Nin as feminist is one that I think Bair has an OK handle on, as well, far more so than most modern feminists (but still not wholly correct).

If you are too dreamy about Nin, you won't like this, but if you want to delve into her as a real person, a human being, beyond the self-centered perspective intrinsically inherent in her diary, this is a terrific place to start.

Like many young adults I was fascinated and inspired by Nin's Diaries when I read them in the seventies. Lately I've been rereading them along with Bair's biography. I was aware that Nin's life was more complex and checkered than what she described, so I came to Bair's book for a more objective account. I think Bair succeeds and without the venom some reviewers here ascribe to this work.

As to the deeper understandings of what really made Nin tick, Bair speculates at times, but the mystery largely remains. However, I find this typical of biographies.

After reading reviews that denounced this biography as slanted and lacking objectivity, I approached it with skepticism and wariness. However, I agree with many other reviewers here that Bair's writing was, indeed, often tinged with subtle sarcasm and judgement. Her disdain for Anais Nin's behavior seems to have compromised her journalistic integrity on many occasions, giving the work more the feel of a tawdry gossip rag than an objective examination of the life of a deeply disturbed yet profoundly fascinating woman.

I've read all versions of all of Nin's published diaries, knowing that even the so-called "unexpurgated" versions were heavily edited and rewritten in many instances. I was hoping to find, in Bair's work, more about the psychological tickings of Nin that sent her careening thru her life in search of levels of love and adoration that I'm not sure are even possible among human beings. Bair never touched thoroughly on the breakdown of the relationship between Anais Nin and her Self, which was most disappointing, since that breakdown was surely the major antagonist behind Nin's inability to live an integrated life.

If Bair's purpose was to examine ALL facets of Nin in a consistently objective and honest manner, perhaps it would have been better served had she focused more on the WHYs of Nin's self-obsession, pathological behavior and her emotional and spiritual stagnation, and the subsequent sabotaging effect they all had on her fictional writing. Bair's methodical and repetitive listing of each and every one of Nin's indiscretions and lies gets old very quickly and leaves the reader wishing for much more than the book as a collective whole ever delivers. Anyone who has genuinely explored Anais Nin knows that her life was about more than her affairs and sexual dalliances. Devoting a majority of the biography to that one facet of Nin did her a severe injustice, at the least. It's like saying that the ocean is just a big body of water and neglecting to mention all of the life that flourishes beneath the surface.

The book succeeds in illustrating Nin's incredibly distorted perception of her life and reality (hers and other's). I often felt disturbed after reading it, even having read Nin's "unexpurgated" diaries previously. The book also succeeds in portraying everyone in Nin's life as duped buffoons who deserve our sympathies for having suffered Nin's manipulations. Bair failed to point out even once that they were all adults who had the freedom at all times to choose whether or not to accept Nin's outrageous behavior.

Nin's claim that she was a liberated woman is frightening and sad; she lived in self-perpetuated chains all of her life precisely because she was NOT liberated. I've often wondered what more she might have accomplished had she looked her fears square in the eyes, once and for all, and vehemently stared them down.

When I was 18 (many years ago), I discovered the Nin diaries & was intoxicated. Little did I know the true story behind the text! This exhaustive bio reveals the real Anais, petty, vain, & in the end, I think one must conclude amoral; look I'm no prude, Nin's husband Hugo was complicit in his shabby treatment, but the affair with her father, the seduction of her married analysts, & finally the late term abortion would be difficult to explain away as poetic licence, or the brave action of a "liberated woman." Still, I cherish the diaries because, although they are not the "true" in the strictest sense, the writting remains rich & has a validity apart from its flawed author. This lively bio is well worth the read.

I can understand why people find this biography alienating. Deidre Bair certainly sheds no tears for Anais Nin; her tone is cool and detached at best. There is nothing inherently wrong with this detachment; in fact, coolness is infinitely preferable to heroine-worship and gushing, and I think Bair must have wanted her book to work as a sane, clear-eyed counterpoint to the self-mythology and pop phenomenon of Anais Nin, as well as counterpoint to the rhapsodic narcissism and half-truths that permeate her diaries.
Nonetheless, Bair's detachment occasionally spills over into open dislike of Nin; sentences prickle with moral judgment, ironic rebuke. It is always starkly noticeable when this happens because of Bair's otherwise crisp, self-effacing restraint. The Nin that emerges here is at best a spoilt, manipulative, vain and egocentric little child in need of a good slap across the face; at worst, she's a monster capable of inhuman callousness and indifference. This image is derived partly from fact, true; but there is no objective organization of facts, and these facts are largely unmitigated by humour or any attempt to probe Nin's deeper psychology. All Nin's acts are attributed to base motives - she's a narcissist, she's selfish, she's a manipulator. I've no doubt Nin WAS guilty of all these charges; but in writing the story of a woman like Anais Nin, so fascinated with human psychology and with the possibilites of life beyond moral demarcations, it is the duty of her biographer to probe deeper, to look beyond, even if they do not absolve Nin of her crimes.
As a result, Nin does not really emerge in this pages; it seems like an shopping list of her follies and cruelties rather than a exploration. Bair seems to have little affinity with Nin, and you begin to wonder why she's writing the book at all; obviously, it's not essential a biographer adores their subject (it's probably better they possess a healthy skepticism); but Bair does not even esteem Nin as much of an artist.
So you begin to feel guilty about reading this book. It seems hypocritical, to condemn Nin while enjoying a salacious tour of her very colourful life. It makes Bair seem simultaneously judgmental and scurrilous, an untenable position. Nevertheless, Bair does possess one great virtue as a biographer: she's self-effacing. Her writing and personality does not intrude excessively, except in occasional moments of moral censure; and Nin's life was so full of incident and glamour that you're propelled from page to page regardless. It's great to have the biographical facts of Nin's life as a means of decoding her diaries to some extent, which are so full of self-myth and hyperbole that it can feel like wading through the raptures of a schoolgirl's mind. I think Bair was afraid to engage fully with Nin, believing critical distance was the way of giving this inevitably salacious biography (anything about Nin is inevitably salacious) a sense of validity and rectitude. She shouldn't have bothered with this pretence of scholarly dignity; she should've just admitted that her - and our - interest in Nin is voyeurism and titillation, love of her extremes and her glamour and her erotic knowledge, and that she's our heroine, not our object of revulsion. Anyone who picks up this biography wants to identify with Nin to some extent - this does not mean unqualified endorsement of everything she did.
Bair should let her imagination roam a bit - or else she should stick to subjects like de Beauvoir and Beckett, whose stature and gravity no one is going to dispute.

An extremely disappointing biography. Deirdre Bair skates along the surface of a very complicated, deeply neurotic, but talented and interesting woman, and makes no effort to explore the depths of Nin. Bair claims in the introduction to have attempted to write objectively, but what continually shines through the book is her dislike of Nin and her judgements of her as lazy, spoiled and unethical. Bair writes with all the finesse of a frustrated boulevard press contributor and is simply out of her area of competence here. Nin is a fascinating person, both in a literary and psychological sense, and the fact that she was so manipulative, a pathological liar, and a bigamist should make a delving into her psyche all the more rewarding. Bair does not seem to know how to delve and I am not so sure she even knows what the psyche is. I would not recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more than who Nin had sex with or the tricks she pulled on Hugo.

This biography was well researched and well written. Bair did not drag Ms. Nin through the mud like an article in the National Enquirer. Ms. Nin was a bigamist, had multiple extramarital affairs, a sexual relationship with her father and sought psychiatric counseling on a regular basis. This may be fodder for scandal sheets, but this is how Ms. Nin lived. Bair's biography was a fair and honest appraisal of a very interesting woman. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Nin's life. The book was by far more enlightening than the film Henry and June.