Gillian Anderson Reads Anaïs Nin’s Passionate Letter about Sex and Poetry

From Let­ters Live comes a let­ter read by Gillian Ander­son. They pref­ace it with this: “In 1932, Cuban diarist Anaïs Nin and Amer­i­can nov­el­ist Hen­ry Miller began an incred­i­bly intense love affair that would last for many years. In the 1940s, at which point she, Miller, and a col­lec­tive of oth­er writ­ers were earn­ing $1 per page writ­ing erot­ic fic­tion for the pri­vate con­sump­tion of an anony­mous client known only as the “Col­lec­tor,” Nin wrote a pas­sion­ate let­ter to this mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure and made known her frustrations—frustrations caused by his repeat­ed insis­tence that they ‘leave out the poet­ry’ and instead ‘con­cen­trate on sex.’ ”

This let­ter comes from The Diary Of Anais Nin Vol­ume 3.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Noam Chomsky’s Lin­guis­tic The­o­ry, Nar­rat­ed by The X‑Files’ Gillian Ander­son

Hen­ry Miller Makes a List of “The 100 Books That Influ­enced Me Most”

Hear Anaïs Nin Read From Her Cel­e­brat­ed Diary: A 60-Minute Vin­tage Record­ing (1966)

How Did Every­thing Begin?: Ani­ma­tions on the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse Nar­rat­ed by X‑Files Star Gillian Ander­son