My best friend Anais Nin says that “truth is coarse and unfructifying.” She says this in Incest, which is one of the unexpurgated volumes of her journal.* Anais Nin lied to all the people in her life because she believed in the necessity of illusion and imagination and beauty and D.H. Lawrence; these beliefs are the source of her woozy, circular prose which Allen found so irritating. She made each man in her life believe that he was the true recipient of all her intimacy, but the only one who truly got to know her was her diary. This is very similar to the way I operate, except that instead of only giving my true self to my private diary, I give it to this public blog and everyone gets to know me.
But that’s not actually true. I hold back some. And after we are all dead, I am going to publish my unexpurgated blog and then the world will know the truth about my life. I am certain that the world will be interested, because I find it so very interesting myself.
*It’s great fun to read on the subway, with the word INCEST written in huge letters on the cover, but it sure isn’t making me any friends. Even I am sort of offended to find myself reading it.
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