SOURCE: "A Dialogue with Anaïs Nin," in Chicago Review, Vol. 24, No. 2, 1972, pp. 29-35.

In the following interview, Nin and Freeman discuss the nature of diary writing, in particular the lack of integrity of individual personality over a lifetime and differences between life as lived and as written, as well as criticism of one's own writing and that of others.

Although her works survived in relative isolation for many years. Anais Nin has now become a resonant voice for many readers, especially women, primarily through her published Diaries. The collage of her life in Louvouciennes and Paris (with Henry Miller, Artaud, and Lawrence Durrell among others), of her work as a lay analyst with Otto Rank in New York, and the world of writers and artists in America is the rich substrate for her novels.

The Chicago Review first took notice of Anais Nin in 1949 in Violet Lang's...