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| Anaïs Nin |
Anaïs Nin
Sex and the open stacks
By Kathy Wilson
Ah, the public library circa 1982. The workhorse institution of the community, a perpetually underfunded repository of stuffy reference books, underpaid librarians, used book sales, tax forms, broken microfiche readers -- and pornography.
Lurking right there in the open stacks of my suburban public library was enough smut to blow my impressionable 13-year-old mind. My life changed the day I spied Anaïs Nin's "Delta of Venus" on a shelf in the fiction section. I quizzically studied the photograph on the cover. It showed a girl in strange clothing contorted on an old armchair, her dress hiked up to her hips, revealing a stocking attached to a lacy undergarment. "Erotica" the cover said. I cracked open the book to see what was inside.
