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The Novel Of The Future Paperback – June 30, 1986

by Anaïs Nin (Author)

4.4 14 ratings

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In The Novel of the Future, Anaïs Nin explores the act of creation—in literature, film, art, and dance—to arrive at a new synthesis for the young artist struggling against the sterility, formlessness, and spiritual bankruptcy afflicting much of modern fiction. Identifying those trends which she finds most destructive in modern fiction (reportage, the substitution of violence for emotion, and the growing cults of ugliness, toughness, and caricature), Nin offers, instead, an argument for and synthesis of the poetic novel.

Drawing upon such related arts as filmmaking, painting, and dance, Nin discusses her own efforts in this genre as well as the development of such writers as D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Marguerite Young, and Djuna Barnes. In chapters devoted to the pursuit of the hidden self, the genesis of fiction, and the relationship between the diary and fiction, she addresses the materials, techniques, and nourishment of the arts, and the functions of art itself.

Print length

212 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Swallow Press
Publication date

June 30, 1986
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0804008795
ISBN-13

978-0804008792
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) was one of the most unique literary figures of this century. As a novelist she was distinctly catalytic, and her life-long diary resembles no other in the history of letters. Her books have been translated in a dozen languages.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Swallow Press (June 30, 1986)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 212 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0804008795
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0804008792
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches

Customer Reviews:
4.4 14 ratings

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Anaïs Nin

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Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) was born in Paris and aspired at an early age to be a writer. An influential artist and thinker, she wrote primarily fiction until 1964, when her last novel, Collages, was published. She wrote The House of Incest, a prose-poem (1936), three novellas collected in The Winter of Artifice (1939), short stories collected in Under a Glass Bell (1944), and a five-volume continuous novel consisting of Ladders to Fire (1946), Children of the Albatross (1947), The Four-Chambered Heart (1950), A Spy in the House of Love (1954), and Seduction of the Minotaur (1961). These novels were collected as Cities of the Interior (1974). She gained commercial and critical success with the publication of the first volume of her diary (1966); to date, fifteen diary volumes have been published. Her most commercially successful books were her erotica published as Delta of Venus (1977) and Little Birds (1979). Today, her books are appearing digitally, most notably with the anthology The Portable Anais Nin (2011).

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Tiffany Elizabeth

Carry this one with you.

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2022

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NIN, like her contemporaries, was not affected by form. This novel is like having a Picasso above where you dream.

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Kathryn

Timeless methods to enhance creativity.

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2019

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Nin doesn't disappoint with views and ways to move one's self along in pursuit of the most creative...

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Nadia555

In defence of the poetic novel

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2017

This book is Nin's attempt at a comprehensive literary criticism. Written in 1968, this work is dated rather than oracular (as you might expect). Nin considers her own approach to novel writing and the diaries, and personally I found her openness here to be invaluable to understanding her work. For example, she claims that her diaries underwent almost no revision, which would have withered them; whereas she was more mindful of the craft of writing when writing her novels. Nin considers the works of her influences (Lawrence, Proust, Barnes); and her lesser-known contemporaries such as Marguerite Young and Maude Hutchins. Nin's position is clear: she favours surrealism, love, emotion, the subconscious, eroticism, and subjective experience in writing, stripped of "upholstery" so that we may focus on the drama. She warns that future novelists may use the electric blender as a musical note, and that this is a misuse of the novelist's power. Overall, I found this book to be quite readable and enjoyable for its own sake. I'd recommend this book to Nin scholars and anyone interested in the writing process, as it had many valuable tips and insights.

2 people found this helpful

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creaturefeature

This Future Was Yesterday

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2008

This book, a manifesto of sorts, is probably of most interest for close followers of Nin's work. Written in 1968, the book serves as an exploration and defense of Nin's creative process, and while it was probably fairly engaging at the time, "Of the Future" definitely feels a little dated today. Nin is perhaps best known for her erotic short fiction, and all of her work develops from a commitment to bringing the unconscious substratum of experience into the forefront of the reader's perception, "to proceed from the dream outward" and, fundamentally, to write about what's really going on within the mental and emotional worlds of her characters.

Throughout this book Nin periodically rails against the stuffiness and insincerity of writers and artists preoccupied with conventional realism. Mostly, however, she devotes herself to repeatedly stressing the importance of integrating psychoanalytic and surrealist insights into contemporary art, of exploring and communicating the subjective experience. What she is basically arguing for, though she doesn't seem to realize it, is post-modernism.

This is why the book feels dated: in the past few decades we've already seen, in frequently overblown variations, both the positive and negative ramifications of the kind of art and writing that Nin is arguing so enthusiastically for here. There are definitely some perceptive observations, insights and rewarding anecdotes throughout the book, but the reader will have to work for them, trundling along through what amounts, in part, to an argument for the validity of her own output. I've read one of Nin's novels and was quite impressed, but the lengthy excerpts from a number of her works included in "Of the Future" don't seem to make for very good demonstrations. She talks quite a bit about her own work in this book, and for the devoted reader there appears to be lots of good stuff here. For me, though, it was a little too self-concerned and really rather boring.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect is that much of what Nin calls for is an assertion of independence and individuality in response to the stifling conformity of life in 1950's post-war America. Now, existing as we do in a hyper-individualistic, narcissistic world culture, we may actually begin to imagine the trajectory of the "novels of the future" as a re-envisioning and return to the collective, to a new articulation of community and possible balance between extremes...

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The Novel Of The Future Paperback – June 30, 1986

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