Anaïs Nin would be a blogger.

This not particularly startling idea came to me a day or two ago, after I had spent far too much time surfing through some of the millions of blogs out there.

(Easiest way to jump into that ocean is to go to the bar at the top of this blog and click on the box that says "Next Blog." Then be prepared for anything. Some of the blogs from Asia are such beautiful pieces of text that it matters not at all that you will have no idea what they are about.)

Back to Anaïs. If the secret desire of every writer is to have an audience for even those pieces that are supposedly private, she hit the jackpot, publishing six or seven (expurgated) volumes of her diaries in her own lifetime. Of course I owned all the books - I still do, although I haven't opened them in years. Only while looking up references for this post did I learn that unexpurgated versions of some of the diaries are now in print, thanks to the efforts of a widower.

Publication of the diaries coincided with the burgeoning feminist movement and its literature and scholarship. Later came Nin's novels, her childhood diaries, and the erotica she wrote (for $1/page, supposedly for "a collector,") when short of money in the 40's.

I tried a couple of the novels, but they seemed thin, mannered and bloodless after the diaries, which spill over with characters and incidents and fascinating pictures of the vie des artistes in Paris, New York and Los Angeles. Running all through the books is Nin's determination to live life as she chose, and the fierce energy and egotism that made it all possible. If she manipulated the supposed record of her days, does it actually matter?

(I sometimes wonder if Nicole Hollander is thinking of Anaïs when she draws the "Sylvia"panels called "The Woman Who Lies in her Personal Journal.")

If she had lived into the Internet age (Nin died in 1977) I'm sure she would have spun millions of words into a blog - perhaps into mulitiple blogs, reflecting her different preoccupations.