Collages

Review\n“A handful of perfectly told fables, and prose which is so daringly elaborate, so accurately timed… using words as magnificently colorful, evocative and imagist as any plastic combination or canvas but as mysteriously idiosyncratic as any abstract.”—Times Literary Supplement\n“Although it is called a novel, (Collages) is really a chain, a sequence of storyportraits of people taken from real life, revolving around the central threading character of a young woman painter named Renate. The background is Los Angeles and its environs. Various pieces and shapes of characters are gracefully arranged, almost as if without any conscious sense of shape or pattern…. They are immensely compelling characters.”—New York Times Book Review\n“The book abounds in magical descriptions of a highly original and sensuous nature. The best of collages fall apart with time; these will not.’—Henry Miller\nA transplant from Vienna to Malibu who is driven by her urge to observe and depict those around her, Renate is, as one of her friends describes her, “the freest woman I know.” Living in Malibu, working at the Paradise Inn restaurant, she encounters a series of people whose stories make up a larger collage: Henri the chef; Count Laundromat; Varda the artist and his teenage daughter, Nobuko the actress; the French Consul in the Hollywood Hills; an aged lifeguard with a spiritual longing for the sea; and Bruce, the intimate with an unnerving secret.
First published in 1964 and now reissued with a new introduction by Anita Jarczok, Collages showcases Anaïs Nin’s dreamlike and introspective style and psychological acuity. Seen by some as linked vignettes and by others as a novel, the book is a mood piece that resists categorization. Based on a close friend of Nin’s, Renate is the glue that holds the pieces, by turn fragmentary and full, together. One character absorbs a lesson from the Koran: “Nothing is ever finished.” With each of Renate’s successive encounters, we take that message to be true.