Who was Anais Nin?
” The author is Maryanne Raphael whose piece “An Afternoon with Anais Nin” is included in A Book of Mirrors. Raphael studied writing with Marguerite Young and has written several books including Runaways, America’s Lost Youth with a Preface by Nin. Finally, Professor Anne Salvatore of Rider University has edited a collection of essays devoted exclusively to Nin’s fiction. “Nin’s Narratives” provides an admirable and much-needed focus. The authors of the essays are varied, ranging from “old-timers” to graduate students. All three of these works hold the promise of bringing new insights to Nin’s writings and attracting new readers. So rich, daring and provocative a personality as Anais, with a large, challenging, original body of work to her credit, predictably invites an equally large and diverse response. There are the morally indignant shock troops, obsessed with her life and disinterested in her writings: Deirdre Bair, and Nancy Zee Scholar, author of the harshly deprecatory Twayne b
