Paris, 1931 to 1934. Nin is in her late twenties, married to a banker, in analysis, and just beginning to write, and the diary is her real work. This is the volume where she meets Henry Miller and June Miller and the three of them go off like a fire. Also Otto Rank, Antonin Artaud, and the psychoanalytic scene. She edited it heavily before publication, cutting the husband and the affairs, so read it as a constructed self-portrait rather than a record. What’s unmatched in it is the writing on other people — she gets a person in three sentences.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume 1