I’m delighted to have the ever bubbly F. Leonora Soloman visiting me today, to talk about her love of Anais Nin – something I totally understand.
Over to you hun…
I feel so honoured to be invited to guest post on Kay Jaybee’s blog today! I remember meeting her at Eroticon and her infectious good energy, and was not surprised to read this post on her blog, entitled Thank you Miss Nin. I am not surprised that so many of the writers that I love are grateful to Anaïs Nin.
Nin was a writer that I was familiar with peripherally, because when I was in bookstores before I had read her myself, I saw her name in the N section.
I started reading her fiction after a recommendation by one of my friends in college, who was an amazing artist, and light goth. She was telling me a story about a breakup she had, and how she was paralyzed by it: in a dark room with candles, chain smoking and not eating or bathing. She told me this on the advent of her new boyfriend, who I identified before she even knew she liked him. We were terribly romantic, what can I tell you?! But I started reading Anaïs, and read more of her than I read any of the romantic poetry I was assigned for my English class. I even used the Henry and June movie, as part of my final project in my screenwriting class. Henry and June remains a movie that I can have on in the background just to soothe me.
Anais Nin – courtesy theredlist.fr
There was a biography written about her years ago, the bio apparently berated Nin for not addressing the war that was going on at the time–WWII–instead writing journal entries about her relationships. I think to this day, that is one of the most infuriating things that I have ever read.
When we ponder why erotica authors are held to such a high standard, that authors of other genres are not held to that is one thing. But when you attack what someone journals about? What is more sacred than what is going on in our minds? Who has any right to judge that? Nin was journaling as a child, and some of what she journal-ed was fantastical. In ways she was in her own world, her perception almost crystal. It is her observations that makes her writing so literary. Her prose is poetic in ways that some poetry is not. Reading her depictions about how she actually fell in love with in her journals, and how her characters fell in love in her fiction leaves me breathless and swirling. To feel that alive! Her words are still so alive to this day! It allows us as artists, to feel free to create from our worlds whether actual or imagined.
My own blog quotes Nin:
I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another.
I feel the same, and I would not want it any other way…
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You can find out all about F. Leonora Soloman at her web site- is fdotleonora.wordpress.com
Her work can be found in a growing number of anthologies, including the forthcoming Chemical Sex, and Spy Games.
Many thanks for visiting today hun! I love the quote you’ve chosen – one of my favourite as well.
Happy reading,
Kay x