BOOK REVIEW – ANAIS NIN – DELTA OF VENUS. 1940’s / 1978 Star Books
A collection of
erotica written for a private
collector in the 1940’s and released commercially in 1978 just before Nin’s death. Nin was a friend of Henry Miller, Gore Vidal and other male
erotica authors, and took on the men at their own game. Her own work was criticised by the unknown ‘Collector’ for being too intelligent, but she kept writing her own brand of erotica, and he kept buying it. The tales in this collection are still as vibrant, and sometimes shocking, as when they were written. Though she thought she was writing a satire on the genre, her work proved to be more arousing than humorous.
THE HUNGARIAN ADVENTURER tells of the downfall of a notorious womaniser, known only as The Baron, a modern day Casanova. He meets a Brazilian stripper and decides to settle down to married life. They have two daughters and a son. Feeling the urge to commit adultery, the Baron takes his
sexual frustration out by turning into an incestuous paedophile, trying to seduce first the daughters and then the son. When they reject and leave him, he is abandoned to die alone. MATHILDA was an early sexual conquest of the Baron’s but her own story tells of her despair when men find her sexy and an inspiration to lust instead of just falling in romantic love with her. She finds men’s advances more of an insult than a compliment. She finally meets a man she trusts, but he gets her addicted to heroin induced sexual release, and then turns out to be a serial killer. Mathilda is just saved from becoming his last victim by the police.THE BOARDING SCHOOL is a harrowing tale of voyeuristic priests and a young boy being gang-bang sodomised by his classmates.In THE RING an Indian masochist restricts his sexual erections by use of a tight fitting cock ring and gets drive to the brink of killing his latest lover in a fit of pain induced madness, but he comes to his senses, and makes tender love to her instead. A Nin story with a happy ending for once. In MALLORCA a woman invites another girl to a lesbian skinny-dipping swim in the sea, but it is a trick to lure her to the attention of a man who is also naked in the water. The ruse works, and the seduced girl are happy with her male lover. LILITH is in a crumbling relationship with her husband. One night, he tells her that he has slipped a Spanish Fly aphrodisiac into her tea to make her more open to sex, but she is not due to stay in. She is going to a cinema with a girl friend, and once out, she imagines her uncontrollable passion turning her on to any man and even her lady friend, but the drug takes its time. Even back home with her husband, nothing seems out of the ordinary. Finally, he admits to a cruel joke. He gave her no such potion. Lilith now dreams of getting her hand on real sexual stimulants. One of the most influential and signiicant works of pornography written by a woman anywhere in the World.