Writing an Icon

Celebrity Culture and the Invention of Anaïs Nin

Anita Jarczok

• Publisher: Swallow Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9780804040754
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Anaïs Nin, the diarist, novelist, and provocateur, occupied a singular space in twentieth-century culture, not only as a literary figure and voice of female sexual liberation but as a celebrity and symbol of shifting social mores in postwar America. Before Madonna and her many imitators, there was Nin; yet, until now, there has been no major study of Nin as a celebrity figure.

In Writing an Icon, Anita Jarczok reveals how Nin carefully crafted her literary and public personae, which she rewrote and restyled to suit her needs and desires. When the first volume of her diary was published in 1966, Nin became a celebrity, notorious beyond the artistic and literary circles in which she previously had operated. Jarczok examines the ways in which the American media appropriated and deconstructed Nin and analyzes the influence of Nin's guiding hand in their construction of her public persona.

The key to understanding Nin's celebrity in its shifting forms, Jarczok contends, is the Diary itself, the principal vehicle through which her image has been mediated. Combining the perspectives of narrative and cultural studies, Jarczok traces the trajectory of Nin's celebrity, the reception of her writings. The result is an innovative investigation of the dynamic relationships of Nin's writing, identity, public image, and consumer culture.

Index

abortion, 129, 147, 183, 185. See also Nin, Anaïs: abortions of

adaptation: film, 141, 156, 170 (see also Henry & June); theater, 149

Allendy, René, 6, 39, 44, 54, 60, 74, 81, 82, 86, 153, 157, 165, 167, 191, 192

American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters: Nin as a member of, 89

American culture: in the 1940s, 19, 37, 41, 208; in the 1960s and 1970s, 4, 46, 57, 65, 73, 79–81, 91, 98, 103, 185

Anaïs: An International Journal, 132, 150, 231n5

Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin, 142, 162–64, 188. See also Fitch, Noël Riley

Anaïs Anaïs (perfume), 172–74, 179

Anaïs Nin: A Biography, 142, 197. See also Bair, Deirdre

Anaïs Nin Trust, 150, 173

Artaud, Antonin, 39, 60, 67–68, 71, 75, 76, 77; popular in the 1960s, 68; Theatre of Cruelty, 68

authorship, 13, 152

autobiography criticism, 4, 23–30, 48, 95–96, 144

Bair, Deirdre, 7, 109, 144, 174, 175; and biography of Nin, 142–43, 197–200, 205, 217n34, 231n4; on Nin’s abortion, 185; on Nin’s earnings, 42, 89, 117; on Nin’s publishing attempts, 7, 33, 37, 42–43; on Nin’s rewriting the diary, 10–11, 38; on Nin’s self-promotion, 41, 110, 115

Balakian, Anna, 93, 104, 110

Balakian, Nona, 45, 110

Barillé, Elizabeth, 143, 161–62, 166

Barthes, Roland, 13

Beach, Sylvia, 69, 142; Shakespeare and Company, 69

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontispiece
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Anaïs Nin and Her Diary
• One. Literary Celebrity, the Modernist Marketplace, and Marketing the Diary
• Two. Public Promotion of the Private Self: Anaïs Nin’s Self-Constructions in the Diary
• Three. Public Relations of the Self: Anaïs Nin, Feminism, and Celebrity Authorship
• Four. Success, Scandal, Sex, and the Search for the “Real” Anaïs Nin
• Conclusion. Anaïs Nin in the Twenty-First Century
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index