Customer Reviews

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

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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Nin and Miller created a literary language for sexual fulfillment; she in a diary whose original form still remains unpublished, he in novels banned in both the United States and England until court cases in the early 1960s permitted their publication and turned Miller into something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."

In the "Black Lace Laboratory," as Miller's apartment was dubbed, Nin and Miller conducted literary and erotic experiments, prompting Nin to write him a thinly disguised warning to herself, "Beware just a little of your hypersexuality!" Toward the end of his life, unable to write about women except as prostitutes, Miller claimed not to know what the sexual revolution was about, saying that he had always loved and honored women. Nin agreed, saying that Miller was a romantic, rather than a rake. At eighty, Miller confessed that far too many people engaged in sex without love.

Basking in the warmth of Nin's caresses, her skilled editing of his work, and the material possessions she lavished upon him, Miller wrote prolifically and with a rare genius. Eventually, his romance with Nin faded (or warmed) into friendship, but the legacy of their literary teamwork remained: In 1974, Nin was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Los Angeles Times names her Woman of the Year in 1976, the same year Henry Miller received France's Legion d'honneur. The 1990 movie, Henry and June is a chronicle of Miller's affair with Nin, which later became a triangle involving Miller's wife, June.

Nin and Miller have become cultural icons. Nin is the focus of women's study courses as well as being included in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Miller and his work need no comment. Although both Nin and Miller were pioneers of free speech and sexual freedom, and both helped to forge a new literature and a new culture, the ultimate emptiness of their lives, with its attendant lack of depth and meaning point to the futility of their attempt to wrest security and happiness from sexuality alone.

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.

What a provocative read! Having read all of Nin's diaries and fiction, I felt that this book filled in the missing gaps of her life. I came away admiring her perseverence in achieving the goal of publishing her writing. I felt I finally understood how she and Miller drifted apart after having had such a burning, passionate, intense beginning to their long love affair. Alas, they were both mere mortals just as you and I! If you love Nin or Miller, you'll be thoroughly entertained by this book.

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.

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.

Forget Nin's works of fiction, the journals, letters, and life are truly worth experiencing over and over again for their honesty, passion, and viewing the internal turned external for our benefit. Everyone knows of Miller's and Nin's relationhip, through "Henryand June" if anything, but it is through this work that we see them less as romantic figures and more as humans capable of the idiocy, devotion, and prolongation of things we should all end and just don't for whatever reason. This is a great buy if you are a lover a letters. Reading "Fire" is a must, however.

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.

After reading Stuhlmann's poignant introduction, it was impossible for me to read any further. Stuhlman included a few lines of the correspondence between Henry Miller and Anais Nin. After reading just these few lines and seeing the depth of love between these two people, I felt that reading their letters would be like taking a photograph that steals the soul of the subject.

Maybe later I will be able to read their letters, but not now.

("No, if I have not written about Louveciennes it is only because I am not writing history, I am making it. I am so aware of the fateful, destined character of this Louveciennes...What I was thinking tonight is that Louveciennes becomes fixed historically in the biographical record of my life, for from Louveciennes dates the most important epoch of my life." -- Henry Miller. We all have a Louveciennes. Mine was Pateley Bridge.)

This was fun to read. Both Miller and Nin are masters of graceful prose, and both were extremely lusty individuals.
What made it especially interesting to me was that I had just read Henry and June and Incest, which are Nin's diary entries of the same period. What was revealed was that at the same time Miller was wracked with jealousy and suspicion that Nin might be having an affair with Otto Rank she was indeed having an affair with Otto Rank. Both of them took as lovers whoever they wanted, and there was a bit of friction over that. This book can't be beat for intense emotion beautifully expressed.

Big fan of these two, but more of a Henry Miller fan personally. The letters bring Henry Miller out of his fiction/novels and bring him into the realm where Nin was in writing her Diaries. Good for that reason, two lovers but volatile ones. Testing sexual boundaries is a touchy thing, after all.