Eve Babitz

Stephanie Danler

A new reissue of Babitz’s collection of nine stories that look back on the 1980s and early 1990s--decades of dreams, drink, and glimpses of a changing world. Black Swans further celebrates the phenomenon of Eve Babitz, cementing her reputation as the voice of a generation. With an introduction by Stephanie Danler, bestselling author of Sweetbitter.

Stories

Black Swans

Rebecca Lum

It's true, isn't it, that most of the decisions we make, how we define our values, needs, aspirations, are mostly a function of place? It's true of my life, the cities I've chased, captured, and had to leave.

mallorie 🦌

The thing about me and my friends, though, is that we are the types who are such gluttons for narcissistic fantasies (being, most of us, born with that kind of charismatic shimmer that attracts a lot of what we used to call "fun.", before fun became in poor taste. In the balm of those sunshine days, in a land where winter never raises ugly questions about survival and canning vegetables, fun was all the truth we needed. 

It was as though summer had ended overnight without so much as a kiss good-bye.

instead of his leaving me, I left him for horrible Peter, who I mistook for normal in one of my more insane judgements of character. 

I couldn't act and wanted to be an artist or a writer like Françoise Sagan. And it seemed to me that all anyone had to do to become Françoise Sagan was to have a miserable love life and be kicked around and bored all the time. I figured I'd have to be an artist because, unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to be bored. With tons of arty friends and lovers for glamour and excitement, I kept forgetting I was supposed to be miserable, kicked around and bored. 

1971- the year I realized that if I kept on being a freelance artist doing album covers, I was going to either starve or, worse yet, have to get married. (Getting a job didn't occur to me.) 

Joan Didion, who knew how to wear clothes, was too brilliant and great for anyone to write like, and too skinny and sultry to look like. 

And I was in love with this book, which I felt I could have written myself. Which is one of the troubles with writing; people who love your writing already think they're you. They think if they sat down and wrote, it would be your book. Exactly what I thought about Walter. By the time poor Walter woke up, I was already so sure I was him and that he would naturally be in love with me. 

This wasn't like being assigned an illustration, and then they never paid you until you threatened fourteen times to kill yourself. 

I couldn't believe he was really going to dump me, me who was so much fun and so tall and blond and wore such short skirts and had loved him so much and didn't look a thing like Virginia Woolf. 

Black Swans quotes

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