THE NOVEL OF THE FUTURE

by Anais Nin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 25, 1968

Anais Nin is in love with the ""flow"" of the universe, of language, of man. Man ""is a fluid, in a constant state of flux. . . . We as novelists have to make a new synthesis, one which includes fluctuations, oscillations, reactions."" Her ideas (outpourings from the great reservoirs of surrealism and psychoanalysis), are not so much logical structures, capable of verification or exposition, as they are incantatory sound-patterns. The most banal remark rolls across the page with oceanic insistence: ""Relationship is the outcome of growth, expansion, unification; alienation the result of separation."" For her, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, is not merely a novel; rather, it seems to be a fertility machine, ""endlessly fecund and fecundating."" Her thoughts tend to awaken at dawn, reach their zenith at noon (in ""a blaze of noon,"" to quote Milton), and then rearrange themselves prettily at tea time, all the while self-righteously assuming that what she is saying, what she is advocating is new, adventurous, necessary, and profound. However, her essays or lectures are, in general, none too sophisticated rehashings of that textbook battle between the poetic novel and the naturalistic one, a battle more than a century old. Miss Nin is best (and useful) when she speaks of her own fiction, the technical problems surmounted, the aesthetic discoveries made or rejected, or when she presents an interesting insight in passing: ""Someday a study will be made by semanticists of the words which shrink our dimension and the words which expand them.

Pub Date: Nov. 25, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1968

Categories: NONFICTION