Eve Babitz is the author of several books of fiction, including Sex and Rage, Eve’s Hollywood, and Slow Days, Fast Company. Her nonfiction works include Fiorucci: The Book and Two by Two. She has written for publications including Ms. and Esquire, and in the late 1960s, she designed album covers for the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and Linda Ronstadt.
"Babitz’s talent for the brilliant line, honed to a point, never
interferes with her feel for languid pleasures." —The New York
Times Book Review
"On the page, Babitz is pure pleasure—a perpetual–motion machine of
no–stakes elation and champagne fizz." —The New Yorker
"She’s a natural. Or gives every appearance of being one, her
writing elevated yet slangy, bright, bouncy, cheerfully
hedonistic—L.A. in it purest, most idealized form." —Vanity
Fair
"[A] true original." —The Boston Globe
"Black Swans, originally out in 1993 and reissued this year, is the
best example of what makes her writing so essential. The discursive
nature of her short stories allows her narratives to move in tandem
with the sociopolitical issues she is constantly and effectively
addressing. It’s a model for writing fiction that addresses
politics that feels neither didactic nor preachy but natural. This
is the product of the autobiographical style of her writing which
often has a texture more similar to personal nonfiction than
fiction, which makes conversations about contemporary events feel
naturally woven into her world . . . When Babitz’s stories engage
with politics, they’re focused on demonstrating how her characters
would engage, and the good and bad that comes with it. It restricts
their polemical efficacy and narrows their scope but takes away the
awkward tinge that other fiction so dedicated to making a point can
have. On top of all this, of course, Babitz is one of the most
wonderful American prose stylists. Every page is littered with
perfectly critical, funny, and illuminating sentences it seems only
she could write . . . Nobody saw — or sees — the world as Babitz
does, its glitz alongside what had to be scraped off to make it
shine. Throughout Black Swans, she writes with ease about how the
social and political impact both the people who are around here and
the people who aren’t. It’d be a boon for fiction writing if more
writers could manifest this, too." —Bradley Babendir, Medium
"[Babitz's] recent renaissance, like her writing, has been both
propulsive and rapturous . . . This April, Counterpoint Press
released Black Swans (1993), a wistful collection of nine
autobiographical tales from the 1980s and ’90s. By then, Babitz’s
tidal pull—sumptuous prose organized into vignettes of hedonism
without the weight of moral consequence—had lassoed the attention
of bookish women, and, seemingly, everyone else too . . . What’s
captivating about Babitz’s particular mode of confession is that
it’s anchored by an intuition that renders her environs both so
enchanted and familiar. And her irreverence in the face of
persistent expectations of feminine decorum—reanimated like a
sociocultural zombie during this administration—can cause a sigh of
relief . . . Babitz is sensitive to [Los Angeles's] fundamental
contradictions. Namely, its preoccupation with contrived beauty and
glitz and its vulnerability to nature’s impositions: the hot gale
winds of the Santa Anas, the earthquakes, and the fires. Her
wholesale embrace of what is lovely and dangerous and absurd about
Los Angeles appeals to contemporary readers. After all, the world
Babitz depicts in her books of women roaming its streets and
weighing their impulses very much remains the same, even if the
landscape of the city itself has changed . . . The limitations of
[Babitz's] work, and of her perceptions, do not negate her literary
importance. The world she renders for us is always worth dwelling
in, even skeptically." —BuzzFeed
"What stands out about Babitz's writing is her voice: smart,
unapologetic and knowing, like Dorothy Parker magically time
traveling to the modern era . . . Rereading Babitz is a delicious,
guilty pleasure." —Alta
"Babitz's writing is also like the jacaranda tree in glorious
bloom—bewitching an entire city, but all too brief." —Los Angeles
Review of Books
"This reissue of one of Eve Babitz’s best collections is a doozy.
If Grace Paley was the voice of the ’60s and ’70s, Babitz manages
to be that voice for the ’80s . . . With a keen eye and a
rambunctious voice, Babitz tells the story of a generation’s
version of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and the recovery from it all.
A fantastic and stirring collection, apt for our time’s
obsessions." —Read It Forward, A Favorite Read for April 2018
"The subject of these nine stories by Babitz (Sex and Rage) is
Hollywood: brilliant and beautiful couples who somehow get along;
charming yet moody men and their odd needs; and "Eve," the
narrator, who cautiously reveals in herself the vices of a naughty
but not really bad girl." —Publishers Weekly
"Babitz is an acquired taste: her slewing style, bad–girl postures,
and sad–funny takes on hedonism can be deliciously shocking...
Here, though, as the narrator of these nine story/essays approaches
middle–age—after all the drugs, booze, groupie sex, and wild
passionate flings—the sense of brakes applied turns Babitz's voice
sage as well as outrageous...as dispensed as Babitz's people try to
be, they never are far from their fears and insecurities—and her
wisecracking, ain't–it–the–truth–honey voice is just about perfect
in illuminating the fact...Babitz's best book yet." —Kirkus Reviews
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |