Little Birds

Little Birds. Erotica by Anais Nin. Reissued, 1990. Borrowed. 159pp.

A rather slim volume made up of 13 works of short erotic fiction by Anais Nin. In her preface, Nin acknowledges the fact that "very few writers have of their own accord sat down to write erotic tales or confessions." Even in countries like France, where everyone is assumed to be devote a huge part of their daily existence to singing the body electric, the only writers who write stories which are erotic in nature usually did it for a single purpose: the need of money.

Thus, erotica was written mostly on empty stomachs. "The more hunger, the greater the desires..wild and haunting." The stories in Nin's collection are peopled by characters who have ravenous cravings. Her characters are usually artists, painters, artists' models living in exotic locations like Paris or dunes and jungles who find themselves in various states of hunger and desire. There's the young debutante who finds herself in reduced circumstances and had to work as an artist's model. Eventually, she learns that the job doesn't just require her to pose, but also to maintain relations with the painters if she wanted to earn a living.

In the title story, there is the painter whose really dank apartment didn't inspire him. He finds another one right across an all girls school and transform the hovel into a bright studio and was able to convince his wife, a circus trapeze artist, to move there. The painter fills the house's balcony with exotiic wild birds to attract the attention of the girls in the playground so as to invite them up to his apartment.

I suppose the story in this collection would be considered tame in other circles. It's not as raunchy as the other one-handed reads, but Little Birds (Book # 16) serves as an approachable introduction to the other works by Anais Nin.