"Wrote another story, just like that, yesterday before dinner!" Anais Nin wrote in her diary on October 3, 1929. "The Fear of Nice" is drawn from various diary entries in March of 1929 when Anais and her husband were on a business trip in Nice, so like many of her early stories, it is autobiographical.
The story is set in Nice, where a woman listens to some serenaders and compares them to her own life: "out of tune," "so often played on cheap instruments," "funny little note," screechy" and "wobbly" notes. She is out to dinner with her husband and notices a man who had been throwing money to the seranaders at the table next to them.
The men talk; they are both businessmen but have other interests outside of business that inspire them more. The man is not impressed with Nice, saying it's for people who like to do nothing, that it makes him despise the activity it takes to be a successful businessman. The woman and her husband enjoy the life of leisure and the rest it provides. They get their energy renewed then return to real life.
At the end of the story, the man tells the woman: "It isn't Nice I'm afraid of, it's you." Anais Nin is the woman; who is the man? John Erskine?
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