kendini okutmuyor maalesef

I just want to stare mindlessly while sitting at a corner of a sidewalk hearing Sabina talk about everything while she finds comfort in smoking and I'd sit idly by listening to her talk about how amazing and tiresome the world is; her mistakes; and her guilt with everything. I'd think of how vile she is to have constantly hurt other people, but feel envious of her freedom as well. In those vulnerably fleeting moments, I'd ponder why I would have given her a hug still.

I often find parallels between what I'm reading and what I'm watching and with A Spy in the House of Love I find an affinity between the book and a film, Dark City if that film were told from the point of view of John's "wife" and I also see an affinity with the anime series, Serial Experiments Lain. In all three cases they are stories of women struggling to find themselves among the artifice in which they live, whether it is self created or created by others. To put in terms the book uses, Sabina is like Duchamp's painting of Nude Descending a Staircase; she is a series of frames, a moment of action captured on canvas, but not a single distilled representation of that woman. No one will know what that woman looked like but they will know how she walked down the steps. Sabina has memories of past loves, past adventures, past meetings but so current feeling of who she is. She is a name. She has a husband who loves her dearly but she is constantly running from him looking for love among her artist friends. There is also clearly a strong note of autobiography in the last third of the book where Sabina meets up with the artist's enclave in New York and that gives this otherwise sensuous tale a note of sadness.

2.5 stars, was a somewhat enjoyable short read and beautifully descriptive - i am going to read some more of anaïs nins work, hopefully something more engaging/ interesting though

It follows Sabina, an actress, and her romantic escapades while seeking exorcism from the greatness of her guilt and loneliness. She is an oil spillage of desire, staining each encounter with a grease too sebaceous to wash off. It is the fear of surveillance, the knack for concealment — to engage in one’s rebellious cravings without repercussion. She is an actress doing her part, consistently putting on faces and committing to the bit. Nin makes me feel like I’m a detective intruding Sabina’s most intimate moments, feeling her turmoils alongside her. This is my first Anaïs Nin book, and I’m beyond impressed by the motion of her words, the imagery of abstractions we normally find hard to verbalize. Just the book to start off my 2024!

I know no one who evokes the extremes of emotion and physical sensation as convincingly as Anaïs Nin. Exactly that might be the problem. There is no pause in the intensity of her prose. It's arresting, yes, breathless, certainly - restless, desperate, at times despairingly hopeful, and it's all of these things at once. Her sentences never stutter before gaining momentum again. They gallop along, endlessly, with sweat on their tongues, urged on by a writer who doesn't believe in taking a breath when that breath is not one of infinite arousal. Her writing style therefore can be quite baroque at best, flowery at worst. And yet, and YET... Perhaps this is exactly Nin's charm; exactly the thing that makes me return to her. I feel like you cannot read her books without being prepared to succumb to her energetic pace and the density of her writing style. It is exactly that density that reveals a fragile intimacy - a gate if you will - able to reveal parts of life you're only hesitant to admit existed, let alone aspire to.