Eve Babitz

The World, the Flesh, and L.A. : Tales

Slow Days, Fast Company

No one burned hotter than Eve Babitz. Possessing skin that radiated “its own kind of moral laws,” spectacular teeth, and a figure that was the stuff of legend, she seduced seemingly everyone who was anyone in Los Angeles for a long stretch of the 1960s and ’70s. One man proved elusive, however, and so Babitz did what she did best, she wrote him a book. Slow Days, Fast Company is a full-fledged and full-bodied evocation of a bygone Southern California that far exceeds its mash-note premise. In ten sun-baked, Santa Ana wind–swept sketches, Babitz re-creates a Los Angeles of movie stars distraught over their success, socialites on three-day drug binges holed up in the Chateau Marmont, soap-opera actors worried that tomorrow’s script will kill them off, Italian femmes fatales even more fatal than Babitz. And she even leaves LA now and then, spending an afternoon at the house of flawless Orange County suburbanites, a day among the grape pickers of the Central Valley, a weekend in Palm Springs where her dreams of romance fizzle and her only solace is Virginia Woolf. In the end it doesn’t matter if Babitz ever gets the guy—she seduces us.

The World, The Flesh, and L.A.

 wen

“Just friends," they're called. An American distinction if ever there was one. Only we would say just about a friend. My "just friends" were more reliable than most of my of my just lovers, since “just lovers" were always capable of saying, “Gee, you’re puttin’ on weight’”, or “Are those the shoes you’re wearing?”

Fredo Moreno

He was even too busy for the outcome of the game between men and women. He probably hadn't even noticed. And I understood everything perfectly after that: Men and women are stuck with each other. Men go to parties they don't really like because women want to go, and women in love go to baseball games and are graceful about it, though they never would have thought it up all by themselves. It's very relaxing being stuck.

No one likes to be confronted with a bunch of disparate details that God only knows what they mean. I can't get a thread to go through to the end and make a straightforward novel. I can't keep everything in my lap, or stop rising flurries of sudden blind meaning. But perhaps if the details are all put together, a certain pulse and sense of place will emerge, and the integrity of empty space with occasional figures in the landscape can be understood at leisure and in full, no matter how fast the company.

Amanda Autumn Berrey

smoking, although glamorous, has never been as glamorous as heroin—and dying from cigarettes just doesn’t have the tragic sunset quality that 

 lends to death. Heroin is the celebrated romantic excess of our time.

Smoking has been so glamorous for so long, all those matches, those pauses, the lipstick on the tips—the smoke itself curling its casual way through the most nerve-wracking moments.

Nabokov said in an interview lately that if he moved to America he’d live in L.A. because of the jacarandas. All those lavender flowers, like cotton-candy clouds.

“Doesn’t he know,” I asked Frank, “that peacock feathers are fatal?”

He wore a cowboy hat with the eye of a peacock feather stuck in the band, and he was one of those creatures so young and almost mystically cheerful that he seemed doomed.

They didn’t tend to essentials like growing food, that was for sure. They just breezed along in the supermarkets and went home to watch television, not knowing a thing about vineyards or orchards.

Grapevines, for the first two years, do not produce anything sellable. By the third year they produce well enough for the grapes to be sent to a winery. Only in the fourth year does a vine become commercial.

And he treated me with a chivalrous masculine know-how that I sopped up like a person who’d never heard of how chivalry was just another nefarious masculine scheme to keep women in their place.

“Wine grapes are different,” Frank said. “They’re not like table grapes. Wine grapes are the grapes no one wants, so it doesn’t matter what they look like.”

I was a little amazed that one of my sultry glimpses of this coast could inspire someone (who obviously wasn’t a ne’er-do-well) to write me a fan letter.

IT WAS one of those blazing L.A. days when everything seems about to lose its sense of gravity and just rise from the sidewalks,

Work and love—the two best things—flourish in studios. It’s when you have to go outside and define everything that they often disappear.

I think that the truth was that Stravinsky lived in L.A. because when you’re in your studio, you don’t have to be a finished product all the time or make formal pronouncements.

it’s impossible to tell if one’s been inspired, or if it was the cocaine,

The seduction of a non-reader is how I plan to tie up L.A.

Since it’s impossible to get this one I’m in love with to read anything unless it’s about or to him, I’m going to riddle this book with Easter Egg italics

“You be the man and that way you get to be the shit.” I had a sudden transplant of sense as I imagined myself “the man” and just how creepy I bet I could be: dodging emotional entanglements and lying and otherwise having a lovely time. Forgetting to phone.

Valentina

Since I've started carrying a book everywhere, even to something like the Academy Awards, I've had a much easier time of it, and the bitterness that shortens your life has been headed off at the pass by the wonderful Paperback. Light, fitting easily into most purses, the humble paperback has solved a lot of relationships for me that would have ended in bloodshed.

You know, when you come to think about it, it's a wonder women have anything to do with men at all, and no surprise that men have devised all kinds of schemes to bind women to them, like not giving them any money. If you had your choice of sleeping with a beautiful soft creature or a large hard one, which would you pick? I mean, if they both had the same amount of money?

"It's going to be dreadful so you may as well learn to enjoy it." 

My favorite author as of date must be Eve Babitz. Wow. The way she writes and composes sentences really is in an entire league of its own. Her presence and aura constantly bleeds through the pages of her book. It's the way she writes that's so entrancing and awe-inspiring even if it is mostly just about the little monotonous experiences one encounters in life often. Babitz manages to make it something worthwhile. It's always been a dream of mine to write like that, similar to that of Joan Didion, and other prolific writers. She has reached so many feats in her life, I want nothing more but to become the kind of woman she has made for herself.

oh, this was surely glamorous. babitz was really the it girl back then

sani

a fun poolside read that might as well be a paid promotion for LA

Kat Albanese

Isabella 

wonderful collection. it was fun to read her stories. my favorite chapter is heroine; it was the most memorable to me. i really loved the message of it.

reneé amelia 

(2.5 stars) don’t get me wrong some of the chapters were interesting to me and i agree that babitz is a lustful version of didion (which i love) but many of the chapters bored me and lacked substance…

eileen sheats

after I read eves hollywood I was convinced I could write a memoir just like eve. after reading slow days, fast company, im convinced that i absolutely could never.

There was a time when no one burned hotter than Eve Babitz. Possessing skin that radiated "its own kind of moral laws," spectacular teeth, and a figure that was the stuff of legend, she seduced seemingly everyone who was anyone in Los Angeles for a long stretch of the 1960s and '70s. But there was one man who proved elusive, and so Babitz did what she did best, she wrote him a book. She also pulled off a remarkable sleight of hand- Slow Days, Fast Company far exceeds its mash-note premise. It is a full-fledged and full-bodied evocation of a bygone Southern California. In ten sun-baked, Santa Ana wind-swept sketches, Babitz re-creates a Los Angeles of movie stars distraught over their success; socialites on three-day drug binges, evading their East Coast banking husbands; soap-opera actors worried that tomorrow's script will kill them off; Italian femme fatales even more fatal than she is. And she even leaves L.A. sometimes, spending an afternoon at the house of flawless Orange County suburbanites, a day among the grape pickers of the Central Valley, a weekend in Palm Springs where her dreams of romance fizzle and her only solace is Virginia Woolf. In the end it doesn't matter if Babitz ever gets the guy-she seduces us.

The World, the Flesh, and L.A.

Sarah Pitts

Ann Gabrielle

“Arrogance and conceit and remarks like that one are much more fun than starving all the time. Once it is established that you are you and everyone else is merely perfect, ordinarily factory-like perfect . ...you can wreak all the havoc you want.

There is something fascinating about a person's face when they're not falling apart because of their imperfections and self-loathing. Pleasure is a lure. When you're smiling, the whole world would rather smile with you and have another watercress sandwich than ponder the universe with an ex-Beatle. The first time I began to realize all this was with Shawn the night it finally rained. It became clear to me that beauty has nothing to do with fashion, that love can conquer anything, sex is art, and let's see . . . hope springs eternal. I love the rain.”

Ultimately 3.5 because it wasn’t as good as Black Swans—but still has some good bits because, duh, its Eve Babitz. What a Taurus goddess.

paula

lexie

Katie

4.5 stars - my joie de vivre was really suffering before reading this! Eve Babitz was such a girls girl, reading this feels like hanging out with your friends

iamazoo

eve babitz is like one of those girls who seem way too cool to ever consider me as a friend but i would love to be her friend. good reminder to care more about pleasure and less about what other people think.

Miri

Thinking about when Eve Babitz said there is something fascinating about a person’s face when they’re not falling apart because of their imperfections and self-loathing…
3.5/5

Beatriz Aguiar

The prose is exquisite and incredibly immersive. the way she explains behaviour or characterises a friend or famous acquaintance is *chef's kiss*. she's a "bad girl" and she knows it and makes it look so glamorous and authentic.
this book essentially reads as a feminist badass manifesto where the mc doesn't even adhere to "feminist" rules. she does whatever she wants and (imo) exploits the patriarchy in brilliant ways because of her brilliant insight. she knows what men want and manouvers her life in a way that she only gives them what they want if she wants to whilst having "kill all men" energy at the same time.

"And he trated me with chivalrous masculine know-how that I sopped up like a person who'd never heard of how chivalry was another nefarious masculine scheme to keep women in their place."

"All art fades but sex fades fastest"

i would have liked eve babitz to meet me and write about what she saw, how many things might she've noticed that i have yet to find out?

Antonia Folch

eve babitz has such a presence with her writing and somehow manages to make mundane places like bakersfield seem exciting

ava sadlowski

i am appalled with myself for how long it took me to read such an amazing (and short) book. i will reread someday, but until then i’m going to ready everything eve babitz has ever published bc i am quite literally obsessed. fuck reading slumps though.

bitter delight

Olivera Mitić

Toliko toga je obećao početak, a do kraja se u pozadini samo čula ona pesma od Adel 🎶We could have had it aaaaaaall...🎶

Slow Days, Fast Company The World, the Flesh, and L.A. : Tales

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