Eve Babitz

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.

Jacaranda is a dreamy young woman moving between the planets of Los Angeles and New York City. She’s a beach bum, a part-time painter of surfboards, sun-kissed and beautiful. Jacaranda has an on-again, off-again relationship with a married man and glitters among the city’s pretty creatures, blithely drinking White Ladies with any number of tycoons, unattached and unworried in the pleasurable mania of California. Yet she lacks a purpose―so at twenty-eight, jobless, she moves to New York to start a new life and career, eager to make it big in the world of New York City.Sex and Rage delights in its sensuous, dreamlike narrative and spontaneous embrace of fate, work, and of certain meetings and chances. Jacaranda moves beyond the tango of sex and rage into the open challenge of a defined and more fulfilling expressive life. Sex and Rage further solidifies Eve Babitz's place as a singularly important voice in Los Angeles literature―haunting, alluring, and alive.

Black Swans is a collection of nine stories that look back on the 1980s and early 1990s—decades of dreams, drink, and stoned youth turning Republican. Babitz prowls California, telling tales of a changing world. She writes about the Rodeo Gardens, about AIDS, about learning to tango, about the Hollywood Cemetery, about the self-enchanted city, and, most important, about the envy and jealousy underneath it all.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. This exciting reissue further celebrates the phenomenon of Eve Babitz, cementing her reputation as the voice of a generation.

Journalist, party girl, bookworm, artist, muse: by the time she’d hit thirty, Eve Babitz had played all of these roles. Immortalized as the nude beauty facing down Duchamp and as one of Ed Ruscha’s Five 1965 Girlfriends, Babitz’s first book showed her to be a razor-sharp writer with tales of her own. Eve’s Hollywood is an album of vivid snapshots of Southern California’s haute bohemians, of outrageously beautiful high-school ingenues and enviably tattooed Chicanas, of rock stars sleeping it off at the Chateau Marmont. And though Babitz’s prose might appear careening, she’s in control as she takes us on a ride through an LA of perpetual delight, from a joint serving the perfect taquito, to the corner of La Brea and Sunset where we make eye contact with a roller-skating hooker, to the Watts Towers. This “daughter of the wasteland” is here to show us that her city is no wasteland at all but a glowing landscape of swaying fruit trees and blooming bougainvillea, buffeted by earthquakes and the Santa Ana winds—and every bit as seductive as she is.

Eve Babitz is a writer like no other-she "is to prose what Chet Baker is to jazz" (Vanity Fair) - and she has influenced a generation of writers and readers with her sophisticated, witty, and delightful work. L.A. Woman is quintessential Babitz, the story of Sophie, a twenty-something blonde Jim Morrison groupie gliding through a golden existence in L.A. and Lola, a German immigrant who settles in Hollywood in the twenties to drive Pierce Arrows recklessly down Sunset Boulevard and who knows that Maybelline mascara cakes and Rudolph Valentino are the essence of life.

An NYRB Classics OriginalWith Eve’s Hollywood Eve Babitz lit up the scene in 1974. The books that followed, among them Slow Days, Fast Company and Sex and Rage, have seduced generations of readers with their unfailing wit and impossible glamour. What is less well known is that Babitz was a working journalist for the better part of three decades, writing for the likes of Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Esquire, as well as for off-the-beaten-path periodicals like Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing and Francis Ford Coppola’s short-lived City. Whether profiling Hollywood darlings, getting to the bottom of health crazes like yoga and acupuncture, remembering friends and lovers from her days hobnobbing with rock stars at the Troubadour and art stars at the Ferus Gallery, or writing about her beloved, misunderstood hometown, Los Angeles, Babitz approaches every assignment with an energy and verve that is all her own.I Used to Be Charming gathers nearly fifty pieces written between 1975 and 1997, including the full text of Babitz’s wry book-length investigation into the pioneering lifestyle brand Fiorucci. The title essay, published here for the first time, recounts the accident that came close to killing her in 1996; it reveals an uncharacteristically vulnerable yet never less than utterly charming Babitz.

Provides a glittering odyssey through the glamorous dance scene in fashionable Los Angeles, offering a close-up look at the dancers, music, nightlife, hot dance spots, celebrities, and more.

Eve Babitz, a mulher que viveu e soube narrar como ninguém o glamour da Hollywood dos anos 1970, estreia no Brasil pela Amarcord. Dias lentos, encontros fugazes apresenta a Los Angeles de Eve Babitz. Quente, veloz, efêmera, imperiosa, sensual. Uma cidade que não se desculpa por não ser uma cidade, apesar dos olhares tortos que alguns lançam para sua sujeira, desorganização e cores vibrantes. Na L.A. dos anos sessenta e setenta, você pode encontrar Janis Joplin numa piscina, dar uma volta de carro com um famoso diretor de cinema, ir a festas na companhia de estrelas angustiadas e até visitar amigos escondidos no famoso Chateau Marmont. Mas, para isso, você precisa conhecer a galera certa. E Eve Babitz faz parte dela.Em dez contos, a escritora e artista visual descreve o glamour e a decadência da L.A. que só quem viveu a era do “sexo, drogas e rock and roll” sabe contar. Mas o que à primeira vista pode parecer uma aventura extravagante é, na verdade, uma deliciosa, ácida e inteligente autoficção que expande as fronteiras da imaginação e os limites da própria cidade.Eve Babitz foi por si só um acontecimento. Reconhecida por sua beleza e por experimentar livremente seus desejos, cultivou amigos, amantes e histórias de bastidores daqueles anos boêmios. Sorte a nossa que, além de viver tudo isso, ela soube narrar como ninguém os dias de verão, as festas, a transitoriedade da vida e a vibrante paisagem californiana, que às vezes se arrasta em dias lentos, mas, com certeza, se equilibra com seus encontros fugazes. Esta é a sua estreia na Amarcord. “Eve Babitz não viveu uma vida livre do patriarcado, mas seus leitores atuais podem supor que ela encontrou uma maneira de burlá-lo. Apesar de sua proximidade da máquina capitaneada por homens famosos, uma vez que era parte do seleto círculo de Hollywood, ela raramente sucumbiu ao charme masculino; ao contrário, Eve Babitz sempre fez todo mundo jogar de acordo com suas próprias regras.” – Marie Solis, The Nation“Eve Babitz escreve como Chet Baker toca jazz, algo iluminado, etéreo, lírico, mas também rítmico, despegado e sensual; ou como Larry Bell constrói suas estruturas, vítreas e de linhas tão simples, suaves e leves. Ela tem um talento natural. Ou o faz parecer, com sua escrita elegante, mas ainda assim urbana, colorida, dançante, alegre e hedonista – é Los Angeles na forma mais pura e idealizada.” – Lili Anolik, biógrafa de Eve Babitz, Vanity Fair“Ler Eve Babitz é como estar no frescor do pôr do sol em uma autoestrada, como ela chama no livro, no ar-condicionado 4/90, ou seja, é como ir a noventa quilômetros por hora com as quatro janelas abertas. Você sente o vento no rosto.” – Dwight Garner, New York Times“O estilo de Eve Babitz é cool, comunicativo, livre e mesmo assim carregado de uma poesia que parece surgir sem esforço. Diferente de sua contemporânea Joan Didion, Babitz não olha para o abismo e retorna para nos contar, ela quer nos falar sobre o quão boa é a luz dentro do abismo.

Mental book about the 'Daytime Studio 54'. Filled full of the famous Fiorucci graphics and anecdotes from its heyday. Popular with everybody from Warhol, Farah Fawcett, Marc Jacobs, Madonna, Lauren Bacall, Haring, Maripol, Jackie O, Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein etc. to the Paninaro kids in Milan. "A celebration of Fiorucci fashion and flash. More than a store, more than a line of clothes, Fiorucci is a whole point of view. Fiorucci invented junky chic and the whole world is buying it". A true pop phenomenon. Amazing.

« Une Fitzgerald du smog : avec Eve Babitz, le cool californien a trouvé sa déesse. » Elle En tenue d’Eve est le récit véridique du jour où Marcel Duchamp a inscrit la scène underground de la Côte Ouest sur le planisphère culturel en jouant aux échecs à Pasadena avec l'auteure, à l'époque une jeune femme dénudée ayant encore beaucoup à apprendre. Eve Babitz est née en 1943 et a grandi à Hollywood. Après avoir réalisé des couvertures d’albums pour des musiciens tels que Buffalo Springfield ou The Byrds à la fin des années 1960, elle commence à écrire en 1972. Égérie de la côte Ouest bohème, rock et littéraire, elle est l’auteure de plusieurs recueils de chroniques, d’essais, de nouvelles et de romans. Traduit de l’anglais (États-Unis) par Jakuta Alikavazovic

Un acteur qui fuit les studios le temps d'un match de base-ball et une starlette qui déteste sa célébrité, des plages californiennes et des bars où l'alcool coule à flot, Los Angeles... et Eve.Eve qui promène au cœur de ce monde son insolente sensualité et nous le raconte avec beaucoup d'esprit et une superbe légèreté.Hédoniste et éternelle amoureuse, Eve Babitz possède une voix sans égale et nous entraine à travers une ville frénétique comme un studio de cinéma et pétillante comme une coupe de champagne.« Ses phrases valent un millier de films. » - Joseph Keller« Un sens vif de l'âme féminine » - Larry McMurtry

A generous selection of letters, sent and unsent, by the one and only Eve Babitz, queen of the witty, gossipy, and thoroughly engrossing missive. This is the first collection of its kind and a guaranteed good time.Eve Babitz to a friend in 1979:“I wrote this letter to Leo Lerman, that editor at Vogue who took me out to lunch at the Algonquin when I was in NY.... So I told him how I’d moved to Santa Monica, and what it was like, and the skating and the Rodeo Drive-type stores. And he published the thing as is, or was (it was slightly edited). Now it’s appearing on every newsstand. And since it’s the kind of writing I do best—letters—people are dropping dead all over the place over how wonderful I am.”Letter-writing was the kind of writing Babitz did best. (Her missives—fresh and frank, dashing and droll—are irresistible, as highly spirited as they are acutely perceptive.) And people will be dropping dead all over the place when they get a load of this collection.

It is the 1970s in LA, and Jacaranda Leven - child of sun and surf - is swept into the dazzling cultural milieu of the beautiful people. Floating on a cloud of drink, drugs and men, she finds herself adrift before her talent for writing, and a determined literary agent, set her on a course for New York and a new life.Sex & Rage is a recently rediscovered classic from author Eve Babitz, herself a muse to many an artist, writer and musician in the 1970s. A semiautobiographical novel, it charts the highs and lows of a life lived at the limits and transports the listener to a sunnier, dreamier, more reckless time and place. Coming to audio for the first time in the UK, narrated by Katherine Fenton.