SOURCE: "Discourse and Intercourse, Design and Desire in the Erotica of Anaïs Nin," in Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 1984, pp. 143-58.

In the following essay, Kamboureli distinguishes between purveyors of erotica from those of pornography, attempting to establish Nin's Erotica as pornography wherein she focuses as much on poetry as on sexuality.

In the following excerpt from the "Preface" to Little Birds, Anaïs Nin distinguishes between erotica and pornography:

It is one thing to include eroticism in a novel or a story and quite another to focus one's whole attention to it. The first is like life itself. It is, I might say, natural, sincere, as in the sensual pages of Zola or of Lawrence. But focusing wholly on the sexual life is not natural. It becomes something like the life of the prostitute, an abnormal activity that ends up turning the prostitute away...