Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932)

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Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932)

3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 · rating details · 4,675 ratings · 283 reviews

This bestseller covers a single momentous year during Nin’s life in Paris, when she met Henry Miller and his wife, June. “Closer to what many sexually adventuresome women experience than almost anything I’ve ever read....I found it a very erotic book and profoundly liberating” (Alice Walker). The source of a major motion picture from Universal. Preface by Rupert Pole; Inde

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Published (first published 1986)

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Aug 12, 2007 Teresa Jusino rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: readandreviewed

How does one review published diaries? According to literary merit? Though Anais Nin is a beautiful, insightful writer, I feel strange talking about her "writing style" when discussing a section of her journal. What I will talk about instead is the way that books often come into your life at a time when you need them. It happened to me once with 1984 (when I needed to crystalize exactly why writing was so important to me), then again with Everything is Illuminated (when I needed to be encouraged...more How does one review published diaries? According to literary merit? Though Anais Nin is a beautiful, insightful writer, I feel strange talking about her "writing style" when discussing a section of her journal. What I will talk about instead is the way that books often come into your life at a time when you need them. It happened to me once with 1984 (when I needed to crystalize exactly why writing was so important to me), then again with Everything is Illuminated (when I needed to be encouraged back into writing after I'd stopped for a long time).

I was inspired to walk into a bookstore and purchase Henry and June a week or two ago, because I've been doing a lot of self-examination recently, and having heard a lot about Anais Nin I thought her journals would be the best thing to accompany me on the beginning of my journey. Originally, I'd wanted a full volume of her journals, but everything was sold out, so I ended up buying Henry and June...and since I'd never read her before, I thought it would be a good introduction.

I am so grateful that this book came into my life when it did. All I knew about Nin before reading it had to do with the sex she had. People love to sensationalize, and so when one hears the name, Anais Nin, one automatically thinks "sexual awakening", "deviance", "erotica." What amazed me was how much we had in common outside of that - the insecurities, the way in which we see men and the world, the positive and negative aspects of a Catholic upbringing, and most importantly: the ongoing battle between loving submission and intellectual assertiveness; how difficult it is to be a strong woman while still holding on to one's emotional vulnerability. I learned so much from her insights...and while I won't be having three or four lovers any time soon (heh), I appreciate the spirit of adventure with which she tried to live her life. It's something I hope to emulate in my own way.
I cried (wept) as I read the last paragraph of Henry and June, because it magically captured exactly where I am at this moment in my life:

"Last night, I wept. I wept because the process by which I have become woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. I wept because my eyes were opened to reality - to Henry's selfishness, June's love of power, my insatiable creativity which must concern itself with others and cannot be sufficient to itself. I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly. I wept because from now on I will weep less. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence."

How did she know?
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Jun 24, 2007 Kelly rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Henry and June is the type of journal that makes me want to highlight passage after passage...since journals so often have the types of personal reflections that are hard to achieve in pure fiction.

I did get bored with it fast, though. Maybe because after the first few instances of lust, jealousy, psychoanalysis, and then more lust, jealousy, and psychoanalysis, it was pretty much the same events and observations repeating themselves in different forms. But then again, journals aren’t supposed...more Henry and June is the type of journal that makes me want to highlight passage after passage...since journals so often have the types of personal reflections that are hard to achieve in pure fiction.

I did get bored with it fast, though. Maybe because after the first few instances of lust, jealousy, psychoanalysis, and then more lust, jealousy, and psychoanalysis, it was pretty much the same events and observations repeating themselves in different forms. But then again, journals aren’t supposed to be designed to engage the reader—they’re designed to be self-fulfilling. So it’s kinda hard to complain about a journal from a reader’s standpoint.

Which brings me to wonder something about these writings. Nin shared her journal with several people—actually, most of the men in her life who she writes about read her journal at some point, with her permission. So I’m curious about how honestly she really wrote, knowing it could potentially be read by her subjects. It seemed honest/raw, but do we tailor things to the eyes of those who will be reading it? The same way we might be inclined to structure fiction according to a workshop we’re in, or which publisher we’re aiming for?

Nin says at one point in her journal that she no longer wants to write about her husband because she can’t do so honestly—that it’s like writing about God. You exalt someone and create a distance between yourself and that person, not wanting to say anything bad about them for fear of being blasphemous. In this case, it seemed to be Nin being attentive to her husband’s sensitivity and the tenderness she felt for him, even though her physical passion was found through Henry.

At one point in the journal her psychiatrist said to her: “You do not want weak men, but until they have become weak in your hands you are not satisfied.” Though he tended to make annoying generalizations, I think he really nailed that one. I was wondering if her passions were so intense toward Henry only because she couldn’t possess him completely. It seems so common, especially if you broaden it to everyday greed.

Because of her greed, Nin’s husband also nailed it when he said this to her: “Beware of being trapped in your own imaginings. You instill sparks in others, you charge them with your illusions, and when they burst forth into illuminations, you are taken in.”
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Jun 15, 2007 Kent rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: artists and desperate suburbanites

Think Madame Bovary without the rat poison. In the early 1930's - well before the heyday of the women's movement, Anais Nin could have listened to society's dictates of what a woman should do with her life. Instead, she lived fully on her terms. A sensualist, a feminist, a lifelong diarist; life and art always in concert. If the literal truth in her writing is, at times, questionable - as it is in most works of art - one truly knows that the opening paragraph of "Henry and June," an early diary,...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“O meu livro e o meu diário interferem um no outro constantemente. Eu não consigo separá-los nem reconcilia-los. Sou uma traidora com ambos” – Anaïs Ninn
Mesmo não sabendo até que ponto termina a realidade e começa a fantasia, e tratando-se de uma obra composta por excertos de um diário, ou seja, de uma vida, vou optar não por dar as minhas opiniões, mas as impressões que esta obra me transmitiu, aquilo em que me fez pensar.

O livro espelha 1 ano da vida de Anaïs, de finais 1931 a finais de 1932,...more “O meu livro e o meu diário interferem um no outro constantemente. Eu não consigo separá-los nem reconcilia-los. Sou uma traidora com ambos” – Anaïs Ninn
Mesmo não sabendo até que ponto termina a realidade e começa a fantasia, e tratando-se de uma obra composta por excertos de um diário, ou seja, de uma vida, vou optar não por dar as minhas opiniões, mas as impressões que esta obra me transmitiu, aquilo em que me fez pensar.

O livro espelha 1 ano da vida de Anaïs, de finais 1931 a finais de 1932, ano no qual a autora conhece e se envolve com o escritor Henry Miller. Nesse período conhece também June, mulher de Miller, pela qual desenvolve uma admiração obsessiva, que ela própria considera paixão. Penso que June foi o motor da relação Anaïs-Miller, é o elo que os une e a musa que os inspira e desinspira, tanto vivencial como artisticamente. É por ela que a relação começa e termina.

Anaïs começa por revelar alguma frustração em relação ao casamento, pois o marido apesar de ser um bom ser humano e de lhe permitir uma vida confortável, não a atrai nem a desperta intelectualmente, o que se acaba por manifestar na sua relação física, pois não nutre qualquer atracção sexual por Hugo.

Quando conhece Miller, esta realidade é abalada. Anaïs apaixona-se pelo seu génio, pela sua faceta sedutora e libertina, pelo mundo boémio e algo decadente que ele lhe apresenta…e aqui encontra os estímulos que procurava e que lhe permitem “tornar-se mulher”.

Assim, começa a transacção de vidas e experiências: Miller traz estímulos intelectuais e sexuais à vida calma de Anais, e Anaïs traz compreensão, segurança e alguma confiança à vida de Miller, que lhe permitem terminar o livro que escrevia na altura.

Pelo meio há jogos de mentiras, descoberta sexual, a ingenuidade de Hugo, psicanálise (diria mesmo um complexo de Electra), voyeurismo e diferentes tipos de amor … É um livro de descoberta de várias coisas, mas principalmente é a descoberta de si mesma por parte de Anaïs. É um livro sincero, profundo e egocêntrico, ou não fossem excertos de um diário… As contradições (amo, não amo / gosto, não gosto/ quero, não quero/desejo, não desejo), são constantes e enfatizam a introspecção e as dúvidas existenciais da autora. Um diário é, normalmente, um livro pessoal onde são expostas os factos, as dúvidas e emoções de cada um, sem qualquer tipo de filtro, e que fazem parte da natureza do ser humano. A diferença é que Anaïs tem uma sensibilidade na sua escrita que a torna quase poética

Durante este período, a autora passa por diversas situações que elevam questões de grande sentido, algumas das quais: será o homem naturalmente monógamo? Terá o homem uma orientação sexual única? A libertação sexual está directamente relacionada com a criatividade e a liberdade artísticas?

Sem dúvida que, sendo um livro de pequena dimensão, aborda uma densidade temática grande. Há muito por onde pensar… e muito para dizer…

É um livro inspirador, que não deixa ninguém indiferente e que nos remete para as várias camadas que nos compõem, do facto de sermos muitos num só eu, de sermos "um quarto com inúmeros espelhos" …
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Jul 17, 2012 Loederkoningin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs-and-biographies, about-obsession

It seems almost vulgar to hand out stars to a published journal, especially Nin's.
As tends to be the case with journals; you cannot ever get enough of indulging in your own thoughts, dreams, fears and daily struggles for as long as you live. While your self-absorbed musings are, harshly enough, far less interesting for everyone else.

Nin wrote dozens of journals. Henry and June covers the ones in which she, in her early thirties, lived outside of Paris with her husband, Hugo, and felt unsatisfi...more It seems almost vulgar to hand out stars to a published journal, especially Nin's.
As tends to be the case with journals; you cannot ever get enough of indulging in your own thoughts, dreams, fears and daily struggles for as long as you live. While your self-absorbed musings are, harshly enough, far less interesting for everyone else.

Nin wrote dozens of journals. Henry and June covers the ones in which she, in her early thirties, lived outside of Paris with her husband, Hugo, and felt unsatisfied with her life. Although Hugo, as a banker, could afford all the luxuries she wished for, she longed for excitement, self-exploration and sexual awakening. When she came across writer Henry Miller and, later, his wife June Mansfield, she was instantly drawn to the couple.

Nin's writings on her obsession with both Miller and Mansfield are, because of her intense emotions and exquisite writing, mostly a joy to read. Henry and June contains many big fat chunks of pure poetry. I found myself eagerly highlighting parts that I thought were moving. And kept falling in love with the way Nin, but Miller too, poured their thoughts into words. When Nin reads Miller from her own notes, she later writes down his response in her journal: "I could only write like that, with imaginative intensity, because I had not lived out what I was writing about, that the living out kills the imagination and the intensity, as happens to him." And when she, during their slightly awkward rendezvous, puts down in words how passionately she feels about Millers wife: "You are like me, wishing for a perfect moment, but nothing too long imagined can be perfect in a worldy way. Neither of us can say just the right thing. We are overwhelmed. Let us be overwhelmed."

How I would have gushed about Henry and June as a teenager. But even now, despite Nin's self-indulgence and continued confused musings (which can become a bit tedious), the strength of words and how they can out-rival deeds in depth and intensity, is awe inspiring. I think Hugo realizes this when he states that he is afraid to lose Nin to Miller; "for you fall in love with people's minds" ....and that's exactly it! Of course she does, is there any other way?

Yet, for me as a reader, Henry and June also became a little tiresome after a while. While Nin tirelessly philosophizes about her affairs and keeps formulating similar answers to her own questions, and her affairs vaguely drag on and play out, her everyday concerns began to strike me as repetitive and dull (criticism that is by no means fair, since this is, after all, an actual journal and not a fancily plotted adventure romance).
Although I admired and loved her poetic language, my own, probably more no-nonsense, approach to life sometimes clashed with hers. I therefore could never really relate to her, finding her overly dramatic and calculating. For example, after Mansfield and Nin fitted clothes together and Nin later, in a conversation with Miller, comments on how Mansfield liked her underwear, Miller replies: "What comes to mind when you say this is how did June know that you wore such underclothing?" I (Nin) said: "Don't you think I am trying to make it all more innocent than it was, but at the same time, don't go so directly at ideas like that or you'll never quite get the truth."
Couldn't she have, every now and then, simply replied something without that whiff of pretension? Something like: "A dirty mind is a joy forever Henry, but June and I just fitted clothes together the other day."

Still, secretly I'm glad that she did not.

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Apr 14, 2008 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Having first read this book at the age of 22, I have to say that my perspective on it 7 years later is dramatically different. I did not experience the profound liberation that I did when reading Henry & June the second time around. I once considered Nin to be a strong, sexually heroic figure, but now my opinion is that, during this time of her life, she was mostly confused, self-destructive and pawned her behavior off on the idea of naivity. Don't get me wrong, I feel that the love she expe...more

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Nov 21, 2007 Debby rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir-bio

I should have this book 9 years ago.

"Physical experiences, lacking the joys of love, depend on twists and perversions of pleasure. Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones." She later writes "The love of only one man or one woman is an enclosure." Interesting.

"Afterwords I pointed out to him how he had prevented all of us from living, how he had caused a living moment to pass him by. I was ashamed of his optimism, his trying to smooth things out. He understood. He promised to remember....more

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Oct 09, 2007 Lis rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2007-reads

While reading this I was thinking that anais is a narcissistic bitch, which i don't really necessarily hold against her. i'm sure it makes reading her journals more interesting than it would be otherwise. on one hand she comes off as so egotistical, spending the majority of her pages on how wonderful other people think she is. "oh, you are so beautiful... you are so wonderful... i love you more than i could ever love another woman... you are everything to me..." so on and so forth. on the other...more

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Aug 10, 2007 Venessa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I just started reading this last night and can NOT put it down. It's great. It's fascinating to read of Nin's famous sexual awakening. I'm not sure I'm reading THE DIARY in order....I couldn't find the original V1 on my library's shelf, so I grabbed this one and also INCEST, both of which were expurgated from the original published in 1966 because Nin didn't want the people who she was writing about who were still alive to feel weird when the public read about their adventures. So I guess since...more

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May 30, 2007 Katchoogranger added it · review of another edition Recommends it for: bohemians everywhere

What have I learned from Henry and June? I have learned that if I am going to have a flaming affair with Henry Miller, to avoid the crap out of his narcissistic, borderline-personality wife June. But that would be a fairly boring diary. After all, what's a diary about 30s Paris without a highly charged emotional and sexual menage?

28 year old Anais Nin yearns for creative and sexual awakening. Her eight year marriage to Hugo Gullier has become stale. Enter, Henry Miller, stage left. Henry is cru...more

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Feb 12, 2007 Feather Stolzenbach rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was very curious about Anais Nin after I saw the movie Henry and June, it was worth the read.

From the Publisher
Drawn from the original, uncensored journals of Anais Nin, Henry and June is an intimate account of a woman's sexual awakening. It covers a single momentous year - from late 1931 to the end of 1932 - during Nin's life in Paris, when she met Henry Miller and his wife, June. She fell in love with June's beauty and Henry's writing and, soon after June's departure for New York, began a f...more

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Dec 30, 2007 Alyssa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: the curious

Shelves: fiction, literature, favoriteauthors, modernclassics

Nin never ceases to grab my attention. Her poignant honesty, admitted indiscretions and frequent exagerations brightly light every page. I enjoy her writing for all of these things. In Henry and June, she explores love and the mysterious ability to feel it, on myriad levels, with multiple people at the same time. Her "sedately" bipolar, creative genius shines freely throughout the book, the layers of which add daily confusion, and vivid color to her life. A grand glimpse into the world of the 30...more

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Jan 02, 2012 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Henry and June" delves deepest into Anais Nin's relationship with the great American writer Henry Miller and as such is, to me, the best of Nin's "unexpurgated" diaries that mostly chronicle her many, many romantic/sexual relationships. It is here where she first meets Miller and his wife, June, and has intimate relationships with both of them as new worlds of sexuality open to Nin. Here her affair with Henry burns hottest.

Was Nin a creator or destroyer? A free, liberated and open woman or a se...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Kris Kipling rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Is Anais Nin a good writer? Ought we take her seriously? Apparently some do, but the description on the back of the Penguin edition about sums this book, culled from the "unexpurgated" diaries of Ms. Nin during the period in which writer Henry Miller and his wife June Masefield figure large on her horizon: it is a "compelling account of a woman's sexual and emotional awakening." If you don't groan at that charmless phrase, variations of which are so thoughtlessly used to describe any risque tome...more

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Jan 14, 2012 Kata S. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Anais Nin has been an idol of mine for a long time. There are few women of literary stature which I find relatable. As a young reader I cherished Judy Bloom. As an adult woman, I was thrilled to read Anais Nin. Intelligent, witty and sexually provocative.

I admire her supreme linguistic talent. Her writing, in whtever form, always maintains a powerful poetic lexicon. She made love most fervently when she held the pen in her hand. This excerpt from her personal journal is so very intimate, flux w...more

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Nov 04, 2011 Sarah Rouan rated it 4 of 5 stars

"A startingly white face, burning eyes. June Mansfield, Henry's wife. As she came towards me from the darkness of my garden into the light of the doorway I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth. Years ago, when I tried to imagine a pure beauty, I had created an image in my mind of just that woman. I had even imagined she would be Jewish. I knew long ago the color of her skin, her profile, her teeth.
...
Her beauty drowned me. As I sat in front of her I felt that I would do anyth...more

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Sep 07, 2011 Vanessa Wu rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I give it only four stars not because it is not an important, vital book, but because the journal entries are necessarily fragmentary, disjointed and a little hard to absorb sometimes.

This is a book that has to find you at the right time. You could easily become bored or restless reading it if you weren't in the right mood.

Nin was a beautiful writer and I often think she is misrepresented as a writer of erotica. What she wrote about so well was her sexuality, in all its complexity. In her stori...more

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Mar 22, 2013 Peggy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Through Nin's writing and life she explored the depths of sexuality and passion. Her diaries show that she identified and befriended many writers and artists before they became well-known. She wrote eloquently about the struggle to create in a society where that was not valued, and especially not for women. Her life view was twisted, I have no doubt of that, but her writing takes my breath away at times. She was also a pioneer in the self-publishing "little press" industry when she could not fin...more

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Sep 21, 2010 Marcie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

I love this book more than I can say. I read the entire book from cover to cover in my early twenties and recently have been slowly going back through it with a pencil (something I've never dared do to a book before).

It's not a book for everybody and I can totally understand why many people don't enjoy it. I certainly don't agree with everything Anais says or does, she definitely wallows in self-pity and self-righteousness, and she is frequently a walking contradiction to herself, but it is a jo...more

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Dec 10, 2009 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Anaïs Nin never ceases to amaze me. She quotes a letter from Henry Miller in Henry and June, in which he says of her writing:

"If it is not English, it is a language nevertheless and the farther one goes along with it the more vital and necessary it seems. It is a violation of language that corresponds with the violation of thought and feeling. It could not have been written in an English which ever capable writer can employ....Above all it is the language of modernity, the language of nerves, r

...more Anaïs Nin never ceases to amaze me. She quotes a letter from Henry Miller in Henry and June, in which he says of her writing:

"If it is not English, it is a language nevertheless and the farther one goes along with it the more vital and necessary it seems. It is a violation of language that corresponds with the violation of thought and feeling. It could not have been written in an English which ever capable writer can employ....Above all it is the language of modernity, the language of nerves, repressions, larval thoughts, unconscious processes, images not entirely divorced from their dream content; it is the language of the neurotic, the perverted, 'marbled and veined with verdigris,' as Gautier put it, in referring to the style of decadence...."

I could not agree more.
Nin is remarkably in touch with her femininity and through the course of Henry and June, she grows to be in touch with her own sensuality, and the reader grows with her. Henry and June teaches us about the passions and conflicts of love, the heart, the mind and the soul. We see a 30 year old Anaïs learning about her art, learning about sexuality and sensuality, learning about love, learning about marriage, learning about her urges for both men and women, learning about truth and lies, learning about passion, and even learning about psychoanalysis.
The diary contained in Henry and June only covers one year, from October 1931 to October 1932. In that year, Anaïs lives at least 5 different lives. With her husband: Hugo, the subject of her admiration: June, her lover: Henry, her friend and former lover: Eduardo, and her psychoanalyst: Allendy, we see Anaïs's great capacity for love and passion. She loves each of them for a different reason and in a different way, but none any less than another. She lies and exaggerates and keeps secrets in order to preserve her state of passion, but she never loses her piety or her kindness. She remains innocuous and ardent in her fervor to prevent hurt from coming to any of her loves. She realizes the almost incestuous nature of these relationships as well.

"The men I love, Hugo loves, and I let them act like brothers. Eduardo confesses his love to Allendy. Allendy is going to be my lover. Now I send Hugo to Allendy so that Allendy will teach him to be less dependent on me for his happiness. When I immolated my childhood to my mother, when I give away all I own, when I help, understand, serve, what tremendous crimes I am expiating-strange insidious joys, like my love for Eduardo, my own blood; for Hugo's spiritual father, John; for June, a woman; for June's husband; for Eduardo's spiritual father, Allendy, who is now Hugo's guide. It only remains for me now to go to my own father and enjoy to the full the experience of our sensual sameness, to hear from his lips the obscenities, the brutal language I have never formulated, but which I love in Henry. Am I hypnotized, fascinated by evil because I have none in me? Or is there in me the greatest secret evil?"

Anaïs is on a perpetual see-saw between supreme self-confidence and supreme self-doubt. Her image of herself is at once preternaturally accurate and fatally flawed. She realizes this and tries to examine herself in the light that others see her.
Throughout the year she spends loving Henry Miller, Anaïs tries at once to become June, to win June, and to alleviate the pain that Henry feels as a result of his marriage to June. She considers herself his wife, although they are both legally wed to other people. She cares for him mentally, physically and emotionally. She becomes obsessed with him in her attempts to nurture his writing. He loves her, but feels that he is not strong enough to leave June for her. By the end of the diary, we see that he is, in fact, too weak. We also see that Anaïs is not willing to leave Hugo, either. Though they are both vastly changed by this liaison, neither Henry nor Anaïs changes his or her situation overall.(less)

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Jun 26, 2009 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I first started this book I loved it. The way she described being with her lovers was so beautiful and sensual. I could relate to the way that Anais felt the need to explore sexually and liberate herself. The more I read though, the more I began to see her as selfish. It took me so long to read because the more I read the more I was getting annoyed with what can only be described as her incessant whining. At first I thought her relationship with Henry was something beautiful and artistic; i...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Colin N. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Henry and June" is composed of the the diary entries of Anais Nin during 1931-32 when she had an affair with Henry Miller and became infatuated with his wife June. Having read Henry Miller, I was interested in getting a take on him from a woman's perspective. The book is also important as a feminist work that addresses female sexuality in a time when such things were not so frankly discussed in literature.

At the risk of angering all of the other people who reviewed this book and loved it, I re...more "Henry and June" is composed of the the diary entries of Anais Nin during 1931-32 when she had an affair with Henry Miller and became infatuated with his wife June. Having read Henry Miller, I was interested in getting a take on him from a woman's perspective. The book is also important as a feminist work that addresses female sexuality in a time when such things were not so frankly discussed in literature.

At the risk of angering all of the other people who reviewed this book and loved it, I really, really hated it. To start with the positive - the writing is decent, Nin can turn a good phrase and writes in a florid, but interesting style. And I am impressed, to some degree, with her passion for life, her willingness to sacrifice everything to really live. I wish that my life were as dramatic as she describes her experiences and relationships. I don't really meet people and think to myself, we will have a passionate affair and then she will destroy my life and have a profound impact on me forever. Which is the kind of thinking Nin has when she meets everyone.

That said, what I found most objectionable was that Nin has to be the most ego-centric person I have ever read and thoroughly unlikeable. The book is more a love story to herself then a love story about anyone else. She uses Henry, June, her husband, Eduardo, Allendy and everyone else to increase her own pleasure and feelings and entirely disregards the harm that she is causing to each. She professes to be concerned about them, but in reality everything relates back to her and her needs. Her explanation of having an artistic nature and needing freedom to love and live is a cop-out for extreme selfishness. If she really "loved" any of these men, I don't think she would act as she does. Even her descriptions of love are all about how love makes her feel, not her love for the other person. Her forays into psychoanalysis reveals the depths of this self-obsession, as she spends all of her time thinking and analyzing herself.

Also interesting that this book is often described as erotica. Much of the book is actually fairly tame in its description of sex and even the most explicit stuff has Nin describing how she felt afterwards and providing glimpses of her lovemaking. There are no real passages in which she fully describes any of her sexual encounters. So I am not sure why the book is labeled as such. It reads more like the diary of a woman infatuated with herself and all of her lovers, not anything titillating or pornographic.

So, interesting from a historical perspective, but not a book I enjoyed.

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Apr 26, 2010 Erin Santhouse rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"While it thunders and lightnings I lie on the bed and go through wild dreams. We're in Seville, and then in Fez, and then in Capri, and then in Havana. We're journeying constantly, but there is always a machine and books, and your body is always close to me and the look in your eyes never changes. People are saying we will be miserable, we will regret, but we are happy, we are laughing always, we are singing. We are talking Spanish and French and Arabic and Turkish. We are admitted everywhere a...more

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Aug 13, 2012 Inga rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

After I started reading the first volume of Anais'
expurgated dairy, I was a bit dissapointed, as I realized that there was really a lot missing in it! So I got a copy of this unexpurgated dairy. And it was worth it! Even the style of writing is different here: raw, ardent, passionate, not the mention the content itself. Anais' writing about her experiences is deeply profound, she perfectly catches and names her feelings and is sincere at least as much as she can.
However, the title of the book d...more

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Feb 26, 2013 Juliette rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Anais writes phenomenally. Every line I read was basically like some kind of poetry. She has a very complex and intelligent mind, her issues with her sexuality and inclination to infidelity stem from very simple and predictable places. Her husband Hugo is irrevocably in love with her, yet she still finds herself yearning for me under his care and financial security. When Anais meets Henry and June, another older married couple, she is completelyinfatuated by there behavior and passion. This coup...more

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Dec 30, 2007 ValerieLyn rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those who've already determined they like Nin's writing

Shelves: books-i-ll-never-finish

what IS all the hubbub, bub? i'm trying to find out...

three months later, i determine this book is totally boring. i know she's a seminal writer (groan...) in her genre, but whatever. the writing style and musings seem utterly self absorbed and kind of obnoxious.

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Sep 10, 2012 Andrew Wright rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

I have mixed feelings. I read this book at a painful period in my life, when I saw myself in Henry and my ex in June. That was appealing and uncomfortable for me at the same time, and comprised the bulk of my enjoyment of the book.

And yet, June, and even Henry, are barely represented compared to Anais herself. The voice of the diarist overflows the entire book, and seems it's only real accomplishment. I would assume precisely because this book is nothing more than a carefully culled diary that...more

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Jun 09, 2011 Hannah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, romance, erotic, non-fiction, favorites

Holy. Crap. For lack of better words.

This book took me (what?) three months to finish? Maybe more? It all muddled together in one mess of hot emotions...and after having finished it just a moment ago, the only time between being me turning on the computer in a flustered rush and logging in. And I'm shocked I finished it even that quickly. I felt possessed in reading this, dominated and entirely taken over in Anaïs Nin and her life...a life which is certainly unlike others, to say the least.

Throu...more Holy. Crap. For lack of better words.

This book took me (what?) three months to finish? Maybe more? It all muddled together in one mess of hot emotions...and after having finished it just a moment ago, the only time between being me turning on the computer in a flustered rush and logging in. And I'm shocked I finished it even that quickly. I felt possessed in reading this, dominated and entirely taken over in Anaïs Nin and her life...a life which is certainly unlike others, to say the least.

Throughout this diary Anaïs Nin had three lovers and one husband (four lovers if you'd like to include June.) Yes, all at the same time. And while it mainly focuses on her violent and all-consuming relationship with Henry Miller, it also revolves around her fleeting love with her own husband, her experimental one with her psychologist, angry and often passionless escape of Eduardo, and her deep, connecting feelings to Henry's very own June. It reaches levels of intensity in her honesty of feelings and her own quickly shaping moods that I felt almost sickened while reading it...sick, hungry, desirous, and very much turning into a little Nin myself.

I had first become interested in this diary after becoming an ardent D.H. Lawrence fan and reading a bit of Henry Miller as well, admiring and marveling at his crude genius. When I learned of Anaïs Nin, I was at once excited at the thought of it. D.H. Lawrence greatly affected her as well as Henry Miller, and I could picture in my head the three of them, sitting in a close circle, enveloped in intimacy, speaking in hushed whispers of things us mortal minds could never fathom, but they so easily and brilliantly took on. They are sexual creatures like none other, each so different, and yet so similar that I feel one can only truly respect this diary if you have read, experienced, and loved all three of their writings.

Throughout reading this, I would often fling it away, pressing my hands to my temples, and cry out to whoever was near me to hear it: "I can't take this anymore...I'm quitting, I'm putting the book down. Yes, forever this time. She's crazy, she's mad. They all are--I can't do it..."

And moments later, I would be seen away, painfully reading through this, as though I wanted nothing more than to be at peace, relieved and finished. Though once I did finish, I wanted nothing more than to be in her world once more...to let her poetry sink into me like a nightmare and sweet dream all at once. She is not for everyone--I find that very, very few could appreciate her. And I'll say the same for Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence, but I personally feel a certain liberation, an excitement and oozing feeling bordering on insanity upon reading from them. And that's what you're supposed to get from them--you're supposed to melt, drown with their own feeling, and thus creating your own. It's not enjoyable, it's not easy, and if you're willing to let yourself run wild into their world, then by all means...I beg of you, for from now and forever, I shall answer the question of "Whose your favorite writer?" with the certain answer of, "Lawrence, Nin, and Miller." (less)

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Jan 06, 2010 rachel rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, own, lgbtq

At the end of the book, Nin wonders something to the effect of whether or not she, Henry, and June are just three giant egos fighting each other for dominance. Although that's simplifying things, my annoyance with this book/her as a person in it was so great that I am tempted to say, "Yes, that's exactly it, good work Anaïs!"

It's a diary, so I shouldn't complain too much, but her vacillations of feeling every ten pages, only to arrive at the same feelings she had before she started to question...more

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May 17, 2009 Kristin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Henry and June - not my favorite Nin work, but full of some delicious little chunks of words . Funny how time and life change what words touch you most. Years ago when I read "Henry and June" - I put a star by the passage "Two afternoons which are branded on my body and my mind.....Come into my dilated body. I carry life. And you know it"

Now, after rereading and alot more living the words that speak to me the most "That is the weakest way of enjoying life: to let it whip you. By conquering miser...more

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About Anaïs Nin

French-born novelist, passionate eroticist and short story writer, who gained international fame with her journals. Spanning the years from 1931 to 1974, they give an account of one woman's voyage of self-discovery. "It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all." (from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, vol. I, 1966)

Anaïs Nin was largely ignored until the 1960s. Today she is...more

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Books by Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 2: 1934-1939

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Quotes from Henry and June: From "...

“I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.” — 942 people liked it

“Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.” — 852 people liked it

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title link	preview: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11557250-henry-and-june?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328342471l/11557250.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11557250-henry-and-june?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin by Anaïs Nin[/url]

Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932)

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