Black Swans: Stories

Product Information

Babitz is an acquired taste: her slewing style, bad–girl postures, and sad–funny takes on hedonism can be deliciously shocking. Yet in the titular “Black Swans,” Babitz tackles the messy attraction-repulsion tug-of-war women face with insecure men. A. WOMAN (1981) and BLACK SWANS (1992), and I had worried the interim might have diminished Babitz's skills. Babitz's writing is also like the jacaranda tree in glorious bloom—bewitching an entire city, but all too brief.

Babitz’s inimitable voice propels these stories forward, corralling everything that gets in their sex, rage, the Château Marmont, youth, beauty, Jim Morrison, men, women, and black swans. For the contemporary reader, the idea that exploring sexuality is mutually exclusive from succeeding professionally feels stale and restrictive. On the page, Babitz is pure pleasure--a perpetual-motion machine of no-stakes elation and champagne fizz. Eve Babitz is the author of several books of fiction, including Sex and Rage , Eve’s Hollywood , and Slow Days, Fast Company .tangoland was my favourite for sure, the way she talked about my culture was so beautiful and i'm really happy she did this, she captured it so well and i could swear i felt through her words how much she liked it there. eve gave us 9 amazing stories about her life (and others), each one being so exciting and interesting, her being shameless was just everything. I recommend reading the book through this lens, and I often found myself wondering if she wrote it that way - it’s biographical fiction, after all. 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 . Counterpoint Press has issued two others, Sex and Rage, a novel, and Black Swans, a book of stories.

If anything her abilities only sharpened, her ways of linking certain self-obsessions with the wider world growing exponentially. Babitz's inscriptions tend to feign intimacy or perhaps everyone was her best friend at the book signing table, but even by her often exuberant standards, this is a top-notch inscription. 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. She captures not only the way a certain cross section of Angelenos lived — that elusive subset who were “moving into the fast lane of Hollywood society, the Hollywood of those days when we’d so assumed we’d won, it was all anyone could do not to feel bored, we felt so arrogant” — for whom what they wore was as important as how they thought and how they would describe it.Breaking up over the phone after a hot-shot editor chooses her piece over her established boyfriend’s, his parting shot is painfully juvenile: “Why couldn’t you have gotten into Mademoiselle?

Observations never coalescing into an investigation, with each piece skirting any moral footing from first sentence to last. Counterpoint has just republished Sex and Rage, which seems a wise move as the story still feels modern . On the page, Babitz is pure pleasurea perpetualmotion machine of nostakes elation and champagne fizz. Police brutality, tense race relations, and disenchantment with the false veneer of progress are contemporary concerns, though Babitz’s light, palliating tone is not. Babitz takes readers along for the ride: nights on the Sunset Strip with Coco showing up all the other girls by rocking a suede mini dress, her dedication to heavy duty contouring with Max Factor contrary to Babitz’s warning that men didn’t like “pancake makeup,” her cycles through hair colors, jobs, husbands.If you’re still fine with reading a woman berate other women for their appearances, their makeup and perfume, or pit women against each other — overall be evil to women… the casual racism is truly sickening.

Through her honesty, sensitivity and her singular sense of humour, the author wrote about the human condition. So pick this up if you want to feel the same kind of smooth wistfulness you would when flipping through faded vintage black and white photos of strangers at a soirée.wherein the clashes of reality and desire can lead to spectacular and terrifying confrontations with the chasm that divides them. LARB publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. First published in 1979 and now back in print with Counterpoint, California queen Eve Babitz's Sex and Rage is a witty, unconventional coming-of-age story of surprising depth and pleasure . There were some stories I enjoyed more than others but even the ones that weren't my cup of tea were by no means bad. Babitz’s talent for the brilliant line, honed to a point, never interferes with her feel for languid pleasures.