The Crafty Reader by Scholes Robert E

Author:Scholes, Robert E. [Scholes, Robert E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300128871
Publisher: YaleUP
Published: 2001-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

Nin’s diary is indeed monstrous, both large and essentially shapeless—not confused or disorganized but constantly reorganized and rewritten to the point where a single definitive edition of it is almost impossible, except as a kind of hypertextual mélange of versions. For example, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, volume 1, 1931–1934, covers the same time period as Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (which covers mainly the year 1932), and Incest: From “A Journal of Love” (which claims to be The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1932–1934). The implication is that there is a single “unexpurgated” diary somewhere, from which these versions are excerpts or sections, but it is impossible to put them together into a single sequence at those points where they could be expected to match up.

The central episode of Incest is Nin’s affair with her father in June of 1932. The erotic exploits lovingly detailed in this volume are not there in the published Diary, but there are other differences that cannot be explained by simple expurgation. For example, during this incestuous romance, which the expurgated version treats as a simple “visit,” there is a moment when some mail arrives. The expurgated version has it this way: “When Samba the Negro brought the mail on a silver platter, my father said, ‘Take them away. We have no need of anyone in the world’” (1994, 238). Incest tells it this way: “When the servant presented the mail and Father saw letters for me, he said, ‘Am I going to be jealous of your letters, too?’ (214). The expurgated version includes things left out of the unexpurgated (Samba the Negro and the silver platter), and the unexpurgated represents Nin’s father’s statement as a jealous one rather than a romantic one. There is a formal or textual monstrosity here, that has nothing to do, really, with the expurgation of sensational material and everything to do with the essential shapelessness of this textual material, which refuses to recount a single version of the events it purports to be recording from life.

There is also, to be sure, a monstrosity of content here—or perhaps what might better be called a monstrosity of presentation, in which both what is narrated and how it is narrated contribute to the monstrous quality. That is, Nin here offers us a story of events supposed to be culturally horrifying—a lovingly detailed sexual encounter between father and daughter—presented in language much more polite than that used by Henry Miller in a moment of metaphysical musing. This monstrosity is essentially personal. It concerns private life. But Nin insists on recording it, meaning ultimately to publish it in some form or other. Uttering the unspeakable in prose that is neither brutal nor vulgar: that is Nin’s way. But there are ramifications to Nin’s project that will have to be followed out with some patience if we are to understand the monstrous richness of her enterprise. Without claiming to follow all of these pathways, or even to have traced

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