Content area
Full Text
Deirdre Bair. Anais Nin: A Biography. New York. Putnam. 1995. xviii + 654 pages, ill. $39.95. ISBN 0-399-13988-5.
There are multiple ways of approaching biography: objectively or subjectively, artistically or prosaically, with or without sensitivity, et cetera. Whatever approach is used, however, the human personality transcends the limitations a biographer may impose upon the individual under consideration. To write an account of another person's life is to pit one's own background, knowledge, and understanding against the figure whose life one seeks to reconstruct. Because the word per se is capable of capturing but an infinitesimal parcel of thoughts and feelings of a living and breathing individual, some biographers approach this genre with humility, accepting their fallibility. Others draw blatant and judgmental conclusions from the facts in their purview rather than attempting to weigh them or assess the motivating circumstances of each particular incident. They evaluate temperament, talent, and...