Volume Five of The Diary of Anais Nin continues the masterwork that critics have ranked among the outstanding literary achievements of this century. During these years, Anais Nin is again on the move although she explains that her roots are portable. She succumbs to the languorous appeal of Acapulco, lives for a short time in San Francisco, and then settles near Los Angeles. She returns at intervals to what she calls the more toxic life of New York. Apprehensively she revisits Paris, warned that it has changed since her departure in 1940, and is relieved to find its soul intact. Wherever she goes she attracts creative people-writers, artists, composers, film makers. Among the many well-known figures who appear in these pages are James Leo Herlihy, Maxwell Geismar, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Christopher Isherwood, Caresse Crosby, Jean Varda, Richard Wright, Dr. Max Jacobson, and Henry Miller. These are years of crisis too. The deaths of Anais Nin's parents induce painful reflections on family history. She undergoes a grave operation. And the continued failure of publishers and critics to understand her work so undermines her that she turns for help to psychoanalysis. The volume concludes with a description of her experiment with LSD, an experience from which she draws a reaffirmation of her own creative vision.
