Barbara Kraft For anyone one interested in the last days of Nin’s life you might want to read my book Anaïs Nin: The Last Days published by Pegasus Books in paper and as an ebook by Paul Herron’s Sky Blue Press. The book has been very well reviewed and while I was interviewed by Sady Doyle she did not include me or a mention of my book in her article. I was with Anaïs Nin constantly the last two and a half years of her life and one evening, shortly before she died, at her request I got in bed with her and held her in my arms because she was in such terrible pain.From the press release:
“As Noel Riley Fitch, author of Anaïs:The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin, writes of Kraft’s book: “An intimate and beautiful portrayal of the final years and painful death of Anaïs Nin … This compelling memoir is honest, critical, and full of perceptive insights into the relationships between Nin and her men.”Of all the young women I’ve worked with you are the one most like me,” Nin told Kraft as she lay dying.”
Kraft describes her initial meeting with Nin in February 1974, writing that Nin was poetry embodied and seemed to ‘glide’ over the rose-colored carpet of her Silver Lake home ‘like a swan skimming the surface of still waters.’ And in December of that year she begins what was to become a chronicle of Nin’s terrible two-year battle with cancer……As Kraft writes a few days before she died, Anaïs whispered her final dream into my ear… “I dreamed that I had all my dresses and capes laid out on the floor and that we were going to have them copied exactly for you so that when I am well we can go out together as twins…. But someone told me that was foolish because I could not get up and go out and that we could not be twins together.” Barbara Kraft
For those who followed the comments on Sadly Doyle’s article in the Guardian as the patron saint of social media, we thought we’d add Barbara Kraft’s comments here to the Guardian. Author of the riveting, remarkable reminiscence Anaïs Nin: The Last Days we recommend that you buy this book in paperback. Doyle lives up to her name when she chose sadly not to reference this luminous text.
We are sorry we do not have the man or woman power to handle comments on this blog. The site used to have a beautiful guestbook and also a news and event board. Sadly after some years both were over run by spammers, trolls and porno freaks. This despite passwords, registration and secure logins. Our stalwart web maven Cynthia Archer sat over morning coffee for a year wiping out the trash of the night before and saving the lovely or critical but always politic, polite and professional suggestions and comments but her Amazonian heroics over morning coffee began to effect her day. So we were forced to pull the plug. Believing like Nin about joy in the taste of coffee!
“Joy appears now in the little things. The big themes remain tragic but a leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the taste of coffee–Joy accompanied me as I walked to the press. The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.”
—Anaïs Nin
