From Publishers Weekly
Anais Nin (1903-1977) projected the image of a free woman designing her own life and world into something beautiful, but the multiple selves of her diaries, in Fitch's estimate, are fictive constructs. Tapping hundreds of interviews, library archives and Nin's unpublished erotica and fiction, Fitch ( Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation ) convincingly portrays Nin as a complex, neurotic artist, alienated from her own anger and pain, who worked out her neuroses through her art. She traces the psychological damage inflicted by Nin's father, who photographed her nude, beat her and seduced her in childhood, then seduced her again in 1933. Fitch ably reconstructs Nin's simultaneous romantic involvement with Henry and June Miller in Paris, and her bicoastal, bigamous life divided between Hugh Guiler in New York and Rupert Pole in California. Written in the present tense, a risky device that wears thin, and occasionally marred by rose-tinted Nin-like prose, this remarkably intimate, hypnotic, probing portrait nevertheless helps explain the charismatic power and abiding appeal of Nin. Photos. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
When Nin's diaries began appearing in the mid-Sixties, their popularity earned her a bigger audience than she had ever had. The question that always teased readers of the Franco-American novelist was whether and how her fiction depended on her life experiences. It is now generally acknowledged that her novels are pallid reflections of her own journey, detailed here by Fitch, author of Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation ( LJ 8/83) as well as literary guides to Paris. Fitch presents more than a sensational biography of a sensual woman, also depicting a tumultuous and harrowing life. From her early life, Nin suffered acutely, first after her father deserted the family, then during years of solitude and loneliness. As Fitch shows, her struggle to achieve as a woman and artist was arduous. Recommended for large collections and as a companion to Nin's diaries where they are popular.- Ali Houissa, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, N.Y.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
Fitch (Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, 1983) draws on Ana‹s Nin's voluminous self-revelations (150 volumes of diaries, correspondence, and fiction) to produce what the publisher says is the first biography of the French writer--and what turns out to be a wary and defensive work, the very antithesis of Nin's free spirit. Abandoned and deprived in childhood, Nin enjoyed an enduring marriage (for over 50 years) to Hugo Guiler--as well as a series of affairs with Henry Miller, Otto Rank, Gore Vidal, Edmund Wilson, even her own father (who had seduced her in childhood): with men and women of all kinds, culminating in a bigamous marriage to Rupert Cole that had her commuting between New York and California for at least 25 years. Nin dissected her own protean personality in endless psychoanalysis--to her both a religion and a hobby--and delighted in the deceptions, incarnations, and masquerades that she revealed in her diaries in a fascinating display of a personality constantly reinventing itself. In her lifetime, she inspired parodies, films, scholarly newsletters, dissertations, even a perfume, and served as a catalyst between Hollywood, academia, and the feminists, who competed for her attention even though she reviled much of what they represented, choosing to spend most of her life as a sex object. Here, in a work that focuses on her sex life, Nin comes off--perhaps unintentionally--as trivial and culturally insignificant. Fitch overinterprets at the beginning of her text and is excessively factual toward the end, seeming to have either abandoned her method or simply lost interest in her subject. In spite of her use of the present tense and some vulgar familiarities (``Every spring her sap begins to rise''; ``Desire makes her body ache''), the author seems uncomfortable with Nin. No substitute for Nin on herself. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs--not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Anais Nin was the ultimate femme fatale, a passionate and mysterious woman, world famous for her extravagant sexual exploits, most notably her simultaneous affairs with Henry and June Miller and her bicoastal bigamous marriages. In the mid-1920s, eager to break the confines of American Victorianism both as an artist and as a woman, Nin traveled to Paris, where she fell in with the legendary artistic and literary circles of the Left Bank."Nin's Diary", published over the years in numerous volumes, has been hailed as a breakthrough document by literary critics and feminists alike. Yet in the published diary, Nin did not lay bare her true self. She instead constructed a carefully stylized image of the woman the world knew as "Anais" while keeping her inner self hidden. In "Anais", biographer Noel Riley Fitch presents an honest portrait of Nin's passionate, tumultuous, and sometimes bitterly painful life. Fitch reveals, among other things, that behind Nin's coquetry was the desperate yearning of an abused and abandoned child. This, the first biography of Nin, complements, corrects, and demystifies the image that Nin so artfully crafted in her diary.

FROM OUR EDITORS

In her diary, Ana￯﾿ﾽs Nin revealed little of her inner self, choosing instead to construct a stylized image of the ultimate femme fatale. Here is an honest portrait of Nin's passionate, tumultuous, and sometimes bitterly painful life, documenting the woman behind the steamy love affairs, the extravagant sexual exploits, and the notorious bigamous marriages. Reveals Nin's childhood abuse & abandonment and the insecurity that resulted in an incestuous union with her father when she was 30 years old. B&W photos.

ANNOTATION

Anais Nin was the ultimate femme fatale, a passionate and mysterious woman famous for her extravagant sexual exploits and scandalous love affairs. In this long-awaited and meticulously researched biography, Fitch at last reveals the woman behind her own diaries. of duotone photos.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Anais Nin was the ultimate femme fatale, a passionate and mysterious woman, world famous for her steamy love affairs and extravagant sexual exploits, most notably her simultaneous affairs with Henry and June Miller and her bicoastal bigamous marriages. In the mid-1920s, eager to break the confines of American Victorianism both as an artist and as a woman, Nin traveled to Paris, where she fell in with the legendary artistic and literary circles of the Left Bank. For the rest of her long life she lived as a liberated woman - an author of more than a dozen books of fiction and erotica, an uninhibited lover of both men and women, and an independent figure within the avant-garde worlds of Paris, Los Angeles, and New York. Nin's Diary, published over the years in numerous volumes, has been hailed as a breakthrough document by literary critics and feminists alike. It is studied in universities across the country, and Kate Millett called it "the first real portrait of the artist as a woman." Yet in the published diary, for all its elaborate detail, Nin did not lay bare her true self. She instead constructed herself for her imagined readers, presenting on those pages a carefully stylized image of the woman the world knew as "Anais" while keeping her inner self hidden in a literary labyrinth of mirrors. Now, in Anais, the first intimate examination of Nin's life, biographer Noel Riley Fitch presents an honest portrait of Nin's passionate, tumultuous, and sometimes bitterly painful life. Fitch reveals, among other things, that behind Nin's coquetry was the desperate yearning of an abused and abandoned girl-child, a lifelong insecurity that resulted in an incestuous reunion with her father when she was thirty years old. A long-awaited account, this book will complement, correct, and demystify the image that Nin so artfully crafted in her diary.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Anais Nin (1903-1977) projected the image of a free woman designing her own life and world into something beautiful, but the multiple selves of her diaries, in Fitch's estimate, are fictive constructs. Tapping hundreds of interviews, library archives and Nin's unpublished erotica and fiction, Fitch ( Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation ) convincingly portrays Nin as a complex, neurotic artist, alienated from her own anger and pain, who worked out her neuroses through her art. She traces the psychological damage inflicted by Nin's father, who photographed her nude, beat her and seduced her in childhood, then seduced her again in 1933. Fitch ably reconstructs Nin's simultaneous romantic involvement with Henry and June Miller in Paris, and her bicoastal, bigamous life divided between Hugh Guiler in New York and Rupert Pole in California. Written in the present tense, a risky device that wears thin, and occasionally marred by rose-tinted Nin-like prose, this remarkably intimate, hypnotic, probing portrait nevertheless helps explain the charismatic power and abiding appeal of Nin. Photos. (Sept.)

Library Journal