Delta of Venus, Anais Nin

Delta of Venus, by Anais Nin

Delta of Venus

To understand this book, I can add nothing better than what Anais Nin wrote in the Preface. This is a quote:

Preface

[April, 1940]
A book collector offered Henry Miller a hundred dollars a month to write erotic stories. It seemed Dantesque punishment to condemn Henry to write erotica at a dollar a page. He rebelled because his mood of the moment was the opposite of Rabelaisian, because writing to order was a castrating occupation, because to be writing with a voyeur at the keyhole took all the spontaneity and pleasure out of his fanciful adventures.

[December, 1940]
Henry told me about the collector…..
When Henry needed money for his travel expenses he suggested that I do some writing in the interim. I felt I did not want to give anything genuine, and decided to create a mixture of stories I had heard and inventions, pretending they were from the diary of a woman. I never met the collector. He was to read my pages and to let me know what he thought. Today I received a telephone call. A voice said, “It is fine. But leave out the poetry and descriptions of anything but sex. Concentrate on sex.”

So I began to write tongue in cheek, to become outlandish, inventive, and so exaggerated that I thought he would realize I was caricaturing sexuality. But there was no protest. I spent days in the library studying the Kama Sutra, listened to friends’ most extreme adventures.

“Less poetry,” said the voice over the telephone. “Be specific.” But did anyone ever experience pleasure from reading a clinical description? Didn’t the old man know how words carry colors and sounds into the flesh?

Every morning after breakfast I sat down to write my allotment of erotica. One morning I typed: “There was a Hungarian adventurer…” I gave him many advantages: beauty, elegance, grace, charm, the talents of an actor, knowledge of many tongues, a genius for intrigue, a genius for extricating himself from difficulties, and a genius for avoiding permanence and responsibility.

Another telephone call: “The old man is pleased. Concentrate on sex. Leave out the poetry.”

This started an epidemic of erotic “journals.” Everyone was writing up their sexual experiences. Invented, overheard, researched from Krafft-Ebing and medical books. We had comical conversations. We told a story and the rest of us had to decide whether it was true or false. Or plausible. Was this plausible? Robert Duncan would offer to experiment, to test our inventions, to confirm or negate our fantasies. All of us needed money, so we pooled our stories.

I was sure the old man knew nothing about the beatitudes, ecstasies, dazzling reverberations of sexual encounters. Cut out the poetry was his message. Clinical sex, deprived of all the warmth of love – the orchestration of all the senses, touch, hearing, sight, palate; all the euphoric accompaniments, background music, moods, atmosphere, variations – forced him to resort to literary aphrodisiacs.

We could have bottled better secrets to tell him, but such secrets he would be deaf to. But one day when he reached saturation, I would tell him how he almost made us lose interest in passion by his obsession with the gestures empty of their emotions, and how we reviled him, because he almost caused us to take vows of chastity, because what he wanted us to exclude was our own aphrodisiac – poetry.

I received one hundred dollars for my erotica. Gonzalo needed cash for the dentist, Helba needed a mirror for her dancing, and Henry money for his trip. Gonzalo told me the story of the “Basque and Bijou, and I wrote it down for the collector.

[February, 1941]
The telephone bill was unpaid. The net of economic difficulties was closing in on me. Everyone around me irresponsible, unconscious of the shipwreck. I did thirty pages of erotica.

I again awakened to the consciousness of being without a cent and telephoned the collector. Had he heard from his rich client about the last manuscript I sent? No, he had not, but he would take the one I had just finished and pay me for it. Henry had to see a doctor. Gonzalo needed glasses. Robert came with B. and asked me for money to go to the movies. The soot from the transom window fell on my typing paper and on my work. Robert came and took away my box of typing paper.

Wasn’t the old man tired of pornography? Wouldn’t a miracle take place? I began to imagine him saying: “Give me everything she writes, I want it all, I like all of it. I will send her a big present, a big check for all the writing she has done.” My typewriter was broken. With a hundred dollars in my pocket I recovered my optimism. I said to Henry: “The collector says he likes simple, unintellectual women – but he invites me to dinner.”

I had a feeling that Pandora’s box contained the mysteries of woman’s sensuality, so different from man’s and for which man’s language was inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored. D.H. Lawrence began to give instinct to a language, he tried to escape the clinical, the scientific, which only captures what the body feels.

[October, 1941]
When Henry came he made several contradictory statements. That he could live on nothing, that he felt so good he could even take a job, that his integrity prevented him from writing scenarios in Hollywood. At last I said: “And what of the integrity of doing erotica for money?” Henry laughed, admitted the paradox, the contradictions, laughed and dismissed the subject.

France has had a tradition of literary erotic writing, in fine, elegant style. When I first began to write for the collector I thought there was a similar tradition here, but found none at all. All I had seen was shoddy, written by second-rate writers. No fine writer seemed ever to have tried his hand at erotica.

I told George Barker how Caresse Crosby, Robert, Virginia Admiral and others were writing. It appealed to his sense of humor. The idea of my being the madam of this snobbish literary house of prostitution, from which vulgarity was excluded. Laughing, I said: “I supply paper and carbon, I deliver the manuscript anonymously, I protect everyone’s anonymity. George Barker felt this was much more humorous and inspiring than begging, borrowing or cajoling meals out of friends.

I gathered poets around me and we all wrote beautiful erotica. As we were condemned to focus only on sensuality, we had violent explosions of poetry. Writing erotica became a road to sainthood rather than to debauchery.

Harvey Breit, Robert Duncan, George Barker, Caresse Crosby, all of us concentrating our skills in a tour de force, supplying the old man with such an abundance of perverse felicities, that now he begged for more.

The homosexuals wrote as if they were women. The timid ones wrote about orgies. The frigid ones about frenzied fulfillments. The most poetic ones indulged in pure bestiality and the purest ones in perversions. We were haunted by the marvelous tales we could all tell. We sat around, imagined this old man, talked of how much we hated him, because he would not allow us to make a fusion of sexuality and feeling, sensuality and emotion.

[December, 1941]
George Barker was terribly poor. He wanted to write more erotica. He wrote eighty-five pages. The collector thought they were too surrealistic. I loved them. His scenes of lovemaking were disheveled and fantastic. Love between two trapezes.

He drank away the firs t money, and I could not lend him anything but more paper and carbons. George Barker, the excellent English poet, writing erotica to drink, just as Utrillo painted paintings in exchange for a bottle of wine. I began to think about the old man we all hated. I decided to write to him, address him directly, tell him about our feelings.

“Dear Collector: We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities.

“You do not know what you are missing by your microscopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood.

“If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent man in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing opium, wine.

“How much do you lose by this periscope at the tip of your sex, when you could enjoy a harem of distinct and never-repeated wonders? No two hairs alike, but you will not let us waste words on a description of hair; now two odors, but if we expand on this you cry, “Cut the poetry.” No tow skins with the same texture, and never the same light, temperature, shadows, never the same gesture; for a lover, when he is aroused by true love, can run the gamut of centuries of love lore. What a range, what changes of age, what variations of maturity and innocence, perversity of art…

“We have sat around for hours and wondered how you look. If you have closed your senses upon silk, light, color, odor, character, temperament, you must be by now completely shriveled up. There are so many minor senses, all running tributaries into the mainstream of sex, nourishing it. Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.”

POSTSCRIPT

At the time we were all writing erotica at a dollar a page, I realized that for centuries we had had only one model for this literary genre – the writing of men. I was already conscious of a difference between the masculine and feminine treatment of sexual experience. I knew that there was a great disparity between Henry Miller’s explicitness and my ambiguities – between his humorous, Rebelaisian view of sex and my poetic descriptions of sexual relationships in the unpublished portions of the diary. As I wrote in volume three of the Diary, I had a feeling that Pandora’s box contained the mysteries of woman’s sensuality, so different from man’s and for which man’s language was inadequate.

Women, I thought, were more apt to fuse sex with emotion, with love, and to single out one man rather than be promiscuous. This became apparent to me as I wrote the novels and the Diary, and I saw it even more clearly when I began to teach. But although women’s attitude towards sex was quite distinct from that of men, we had not yet learned how to write about it.

Here in the erotica, I was writing to entertain, under pressure from a client who wanted me to “leave out the poetry.” I believed that my style was derived from a reading of men’s works. For this reason I long felt that I had compromised my feminine self. I put the erotica aside. Rereading it these many years later, I see that my own voice was not completely suppressed. In numerous passages I was intuitively using a woman’s language, seeing sexual experience from a woman’s point of view. I finally decided to release the erotica for publication because it shows the beginning efforts of a woman in a world that had been the domain of men. If the unexpurgated version of the Diary is ever published, this feminine point of view will be established more clearly. It will show that women (and I, in the Diary) have never separated sex from feeling, from love of the whole man.

Anaias Nin
Los Angeles
September, 1976

My Thoughts:

This book contains fifteen erotic vignettes. By today's standards, they are quite mild erotica. Remember that Nin wrote them in 1940-41. The thing that strikes me about these erotic vignettes is that they are so well written, containing developed characters and interesting stories. They contain emotional connection, which was so important to Nin in her feelings and in her writing.

Elton John and Billy Joel, Face2Face Concert

Elton John and Billy Joel Face2Face Tour
Saturday, July 11, 2009 at 7:30 PM at Nationals Park, Washington, DC

This was their fourth Face2Face tour; the first one was in 1994, and their most recent one was in 2003. I had never before attended a rock concert, and when this concert was advertised, I decided to get tickets. I paid about $200 each for tickets; I felt that if I were going to attend only one concert, I would get good seats. The traffic was far, far worse than traffic to a Washington Nationals baseball game, but at last I was able to find a parking lot for $40, and by the time I found it, I was happy to pay the price.

Here are some of my impressions of the concert:

o Seeing the two of them together, it was clear to me why Elton John has sold 250 million albums, and Billy Joel 100 million (according to Wikipedia). Elton John's voice was powerful and resonant, and his on-stage performance was completely engaging, completely connecting with the crowd. Billy Joel's voice was weak (he had to shout into the microphone), and his on-stage performance was scattered and distracting, almost frantic at times. The crowd sat through much of Billy Joel's performance, unengaged, and stood through Elton John's performance with roars of approval for his music.

o Adding to the difference in the power of their voices was the difference in the back-up musicians. Elton John had five musicians in his group, including no brass, and Billy Joel had eight musicians in his group, including a great sax player and other horns. Still, Elton John's musicians seemed more powerful. It seemed that the additional musicians, especially the sax player, were needed to add power to Billy Joel's performance.

o Having gone to many baseball games over the years, I was surprised at the difference in the behavior of the crowd at the concert. At baseball games, the crowd does not move about very much. They go to their seats and stay there for the most part, watching the game. One is not distracted by crowd movement. However, at the concert, the crowd was like an ant hill throughout the entire performance -- constantly in motion, with streams of people, like ant streams, never ceasing. I was surprised that people paid a lot of money to attend the concert, but then moved about constantly, not watching the performers much. Indeed, the music seemed almost like background noise against all the motion.

o At baseball games, almost everyone eats food, particularly hot dogs. A lot of beer is sold, but the food is the most important thing. At the concert, almost no one was eating food, but an incredible amount of beer was consumed. It seemed that almost everyone drank beer throughout the entire concert. I have no idea how the people got home from the concert; they could not possibly have driven safely.

o Because of the age of the performers, a lot of the crowd was middle aged (50s and 60s), although a substantial portion of the crowd was younger -- 40s and 30s and even a few 20s.

o I was surprised that the two performers wore heavy clothes (as shown in the photo). The evening was not oppressively hot, but it was very humid. Yet, both of them wore jackets. By the end of his set, Billy Joel was soaked in perspiration, although I could not tell about Elton John. There is a YouTube clip of their performance in Toronto, and they wore the same clothes at the performance on Saturday night.

o The performance was about three hours in length -- one hour for Billy Joel, one hour for Elton John, and one hour together with all back-up musicians on stage together except the final four numbers, which were performed with no one on stage except Elton John and Billy Joel. The Toronto site shows the set list for the performance, with the changes shown in the comment at the bottom. The performers knew that the crowd paid to see them perform their greatest hits, and they did not disappoint.

o At first, I was very distracted and annoyed by the crowd. I had gone to watch the concert, but it became clear that the crowd would not permit anyone to sit and watch the concert. The constant movement of the crowd, and the constant standing of some people, directly in front of those wanting to sit, would not permit simple enjoyment of the performance. After a time, I realized that the situation would not change, so I decided to become an observer of the scene, rather than trying to enjoy the performance. I became a scientist again, an observer. I saw very little of the performance directly, instead contenting myself with watching it on the huge screens. I would have heard better and seen better if I were watching it on TV at home.

o A word about the dress of the crowd. Men wore comfortable slacks and shirts. I saw no more than a handful of men who were "smartly" dressed. Although most women also wore comfortable clothes, many of the women were stylishly dressed. Many women wore "smart casual" clothing -- stylish fashions. Some wore very sexy clothes (like a see-through outfit with lacy underwear), and many wore party dresses or party tops with stylish pants. The women were much better dressed than the men.

I felt that the Washington Post review of the concert did not adequately describe the event. The Baltimore Sun review was a much better description of the concert. In addition, Paul from EltonJohnNews Blog wrote this review of the performance.

My Life So Far, Jane Fonda

My Life So Far, by Jane Fonda

I had not expected to read this book. Not because I have any problem with Jane Fonda’s antiwar activities, but because I have very little interest in celebrities. Usually, I find celebrities to be undereducated and shallow thinkers. However, I was in a situation in which I was away from home, with little to do, and this book was lying there; so I began to read it. After 50 or 100 pages, I found that I was drawn into the book, first by her writing abilities, and also by her thinking. Jane Fonda is a very smart woman, and she is also a very good writer. In addition, she has led an interesting life.

Fonda organized the book around her three marriages and called the parts of her life the acts in a play – Act I (for her first marriage to Roger Vadim), Act II (for her marriage to Tom Hayden), and Act III (for her marriage to Ted Turner). She calls the current part of her life Act IV. I found this organization to be very interesting, although I think of her life prior to her first marriage as Act I (in which her father was the principal male in her life). In her three marriages, she lived very different lives, almost as different people entirely, and yet, one aspect of her life was completely constant – her dependence on a strong dominant male figure. Her dad dominated her life early life, then Roger Vadim, Tom Hayden, and Ted Turner. Now, at last, she has let go of dominant men, and directs her own life.

The characteristic that I found most interesting about this book was her search for a paradigm to guide her thinking. Until her divorce from Ted Turner, her paradigm had been to rely on a strong man to guide her life. All her life, she was controlled by strong-willed men; to one extent or another, she let go of her own identity to accept the identity that each man desired for her. In each instance, she first accepted the identity that each man chose for her, but then eventually she found that identity unacceptable and moved on to another.

In each part of her life, under each dominant male, she found and developed a part of herself, her own identity. Under her father, she grew up, became educated, and began a career in acting in her own way, which was quite different from her father’s way. Under Roger Vadim, she became a star actress. Under Tom Hayden, she flourished as an actor, and also developed as an activist and then as a very successful business woman. Under Ted Turner, she developed as a philanthropist and human rights leader. And yet, under each of these men, she developed her own self-image almost in opposition to the desires of the man. In the end, she had to let go of each of her relationships in order to continue the development of a self that she wanted for herself.

Throughout her life, she lived in the present, working at the tasks that were before her at the time, taking direction from the dominant man in her life. She does not seem to have thought much about spiritual matters. Now, after letting go of the dominant men, she seems to be thinking of spiritual matters. She tried Christianity as espoused by one church, and now feels less comfortable in that paradigm. She does not seem to know where her thinking will go next, but she realizes that she is on a spiritual path. (Is she simply looking for the next dominant male to guide her?)

For me, I enjoyed reading this book. I enjoyed seeing her life as a spiritual journey. I was interested in the way in which she was guided by Spirit. I believe that all relationships are arranged by Spirit, and all relationships are helpful spiritually, which is the purpose of the relationships. With this thought in mind, it was interesting to me to try to find the way in which Spirit guided her, not only toward Spiritual thought, but also to success in life. She was guided to success as an actress under her father and Roger Vadim, and to huge success as a business woman under Tom Hayden. However, it was not clear to me how she was guided to success under Ted Turner; it seemed to me that his desire was for to give up herself completely and live only to give emotional support to him. Now Spirit has set her free from dominating men to complete her final Act.

In addition to finding her relationships and her spiritual journey interesting, I also found her career interesting. She is a very accomplished woman. She has won two academy awards, she established and ran for many years her own production company, developing a long series of very successful movies, and she invented the use of videos for home exercise. She has developed 24 home exercise videos, and her original Jane Fonda’s Workout is still the top grossing video of all time. I found her descriptions of making movies interesting.

Her deep emotional concerns for human issues first burst forth during her anti-war activities, and it has continued to the present. In 1994, she was named Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund. She founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995, and continues to be active in that organization. In 2001, she established the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at Emory University. She is also a member of the Women & Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Council of Foreign Relations.

I recommend this book; it was interesting to me.