December, 1940 Summary and Analysis

8. Henry Miller returns from his travels around the United States and tells Anais Nin he is searching for a "deeper America" than the one depicted on picture postcards and travel brochures. Because of the vastness of America, the task of the artist and writer is to "distill" its essence. She faults novelist Thomas Wolfe for describing in a torrent of words the greatness of America by "cataloguing its multitude of rivers, mountains, cities and its billion faces." She says the American writer must make the reader feel the power, energy and magnitude of the country without reverting to lists and catalogues. In America, she writes, "the mass is not yet educated and it is not led by the brains of the country but by the salesmen who are selling, not educating." Nin confesses that she is becoming physically unfit for her...