Book Notes: The Diaries of Anais Nin

Anaïs Nin’s early journals focus on her life in Paris in the 30s, with the threat of World War II looming. She was not only central to the world of artists and writers and intellectuals of that (in)famous Paris scene, she was somewhat of their den mother. She was the one to buy Henry Miller a typewriter and get his first book published. All the while she was toiling away at her own novels. She kept the journals as a way to record observations of life she might spin into fiction later, and her notes on the lives of those artists are a treasure trove for anyone struggling with the creative life.