A little Parisian orphan girl goes to live with a very special family Where do you find the sweetest girls in all of Paris? Nobody knows, because they keep their special little family hidden in plain sight! But when fate offers five-year-old orphan girl Anaïs an unlikely chance to join them, she takes the leap. Starting the adventure of her life and forever changing that of many others. Of course she has A LOT to learn if she wants to fit in with her new family. But Anaïs is determined, and with a lot of love and help from her newfound family, she learns to do things she never thought possible.
The diarist’s account of her life in the early 1920s explores “the conflict she felt between artistic longings and her pre-ordained female fate” (The Detroit News). Continuing the journey of self-education and self-discovery she began in Linotte, Anaïs Nin discloses a part of her life that had previously remained private. She discusses the period in which she met Hugo Guiler, the young man who later became her husband, and made the wrenching transition from the shelter of her family to the world of artists and models. She also reveals the struggle she faced between her expected role as a woman and her determination to be a writer—a negotiation that still poses difficulties for many of us almost a century after Nin wrote this diary. “Through sheer nerve, confidence, and will, Nin made of the everyday something magical. This was a gift, indeed, and it’s a fascinating process to witness.” —The Christian Science Monitor With a preface by Joaquin Nin-Culmell
Anaïs Nin: A Myth of Her Own traces Nin’s literary craft by following the intimacy of self-exploration and poetic expression attained in the details of the quotidian, transfigured into fiction. By digging into the mythic tropes that permeate both her literary diaries and fiction, this book demonstrates that Nin constructed a mythic method of her own, revealing the extensive possibilities of an opulent feminine psyche. Clara Oropeza demonstrates that the literary diary, for Nin, is a genre that with its traces of trickster archetype, among others, reveals a mercurial, yet particular understanding of an embodied and at times mystical experience of a writer. The cogent analysis of Nin’s fiction alongside the posthumously published unexpurgated diaries, within the backdrop of emerging psychological theories, further illuminates Nin’s contributions as an experimental and important modernist writer whose daring and poetic voice has not been fully appreciated. By extending research on diary writing and anchoring Nin’s literary style within modernist traditions, this book contributes to the redefinition of what literary modernism was comprised, who participated and how it was defined. Anaïs Nin: A Myth of Her Own is unique in its interdisciplinary expansion of literature, literary theory, mythological studies and depth psychology. By considering the ecocritical aspects of Nin’s writing, this book forges a new paradigm for not only Nin’s work, but for critical discussions of self-life writing as a valid epistemological and aesthetic form. This impressive work will be of great interest to academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies, literary studies, cultural studies, mythological studies and women’s studies.
The House of Incest, Anais Nin's famous prose poem, was first published in Paris in 1936 and immediately drew attention from the era's prominent writers, including Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell. While written in English, it is considered a landmark work in the French surrealist tradition and one of the most unique books in 20th century literature.
A revealing look at the life of this “extraordinary and unconventional writer” during the mid-1920s (The New York Times Book Review). In this volume of her earlier series of personal diaries, Anaïs Nin tells how she exorcised the obsession that threatened her marriage—and nearly drove her to suicide. “Through sheer nerve, confidence, and will, Nin made of the everyday something magical. This was a gift, indeed, and it’s a fascinating process to witness.” —The Christian Science Monitor With an editor’s note by Rupert Pole and a preface by Joaquin Nin-Culmell
Anaïs Nin made her reputation through publication of her edited diaries and the carefully constructed persona they presented. It was not until decades later, when the diaries were published in their unexpurgated form, that the world began to learn the full details of Nin’s fascinating life and the emotional and literary high-wire acts she committed both in documenting it and in defying the mores of 1950s America. Trapeze begins where the previous volume, Mirages, left off: when Nin met Rupert Pole, the young man who became not only her lover but later her husband in a bigamous marriage. It marks the start of what Nin came to call her “trapeze life,” swinging between her longtime husband, Hugh Guiler, in New York and her lover, Pole, in California, a perilous lifestyle she continued until her death in 1977. Today what Nin did seems impossible, and what she sought perhaps was impossible: to find harmony and completeness within a split existence. It is a story of daring and genius, love and pain, largely unknown until now.
A coming-of-age story a bout a young man called Stanley Spank who lives the life of a champion layabout with his best mate Jerry Dooley, supplemented by his hard-working parents, Greg a nd Brenda Spank. Stanley's life is one of endless days of nothing except for drinking, smoking, a nd fantasising a bout a life that seemed out of reach. Things change when Jerry lands a job a broad, leaving Stanley to rethink his own life choices, a nd out of a random a ct of desperation, a lucky break is bestowed upon Stanley that transforms his life. the self-styled lazy layabout is thrown into a world of glamour a nd fast women with lots of cash, a nd he is taken on a journey into the fast lane where, a long the way, he meets a beautiful girl called Ami. Stanley's life is turned a round, a nd the lure of earning good money a long with female a ttention a nd a lifestyle he could only dream becomes a complex moral dilemma. a fun tale of twists a nd larger-than-life characters, which a re interwoven into Stanley's journey of growth a nd experiences, the Life a nd Times of Stanley Spank will endear, delight, shock, a nd question the morality of his decisions a s this small-town boy becomes the centre of a lot of people's lives without realising it.
