Incest (the Diary)

If I could travel in time it would be a difficult choice, but I suppose I’d go back to Paris in the 1920s. The film Henry and June is set in Paris of the 1930s, though there are anachronistic elements that evoke the previous decade. Here, Anäis Nin and June Miller, wife of the writer Henry Miller, flee Henry’s apartment after an argument and end up in a speak-not-so-easily. This is a flawed film, but beautiful and worth seeing.





My first novel also includes Nin and some mentions of Henry Miller, but they’re only side characters in my portrayal of Antonin Artaud and Robert Desnos.

(Desnos was an atheist in a foxhole, by the way, fighting the Nazis in the French Army and in the French Resistance. He died in a concentration camp with a student who had studied Desnos’ poetry at his side. Desnos is my hero, and so is Artaud, though for different reasons.)

Nin’s great autobiography of this time is Incest.

Read a scene from my novel here. Enjoy! (Genet coming up, I promise.)

UPDATED: My, it certainly got quiet around here. ;-) (Although the "You'll Be Sorry" post passed 2300 hits, and this post, 400. Thanks!)