Black Swans: Stories

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Babitz's talent for the brilliant line, honed to a point, never interferes with her feel for languid pleasures. To love Eve Babitz is to mourn the fact that each "new" book that comes out -- in reality, mere re-releases of out-of-print earlier editions -- moves us closer to the day when there will be no more work to publish. Though it's hard to compare anything to the sheer burst of joy and exuberance that was EVE'S HOLLYWOOD, BLACK SWANS is a close second place. Everything is fine and everyone is supposed to be happy if HE cheats, but if SHE does it she is a hoe! 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.

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. She has been compared favorably with Edie Sedgwick, the protegee of Andy Warhol at The Factory in New York City. For Nancy, however, the “worst part was on TV, seeing the man running down the street with this ugly lamp.Observations never coalescing into an investigation, with each piece skirting any moral footing from first sentence to last.

Jacaranda shares some of her biographical markers but not all of them, giving her room to experiment. 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. It was a sea change; though silver boots, feather boas, and four-day trysts at the Chateau Marmont take precedence, Babitz threads this story with references to ’90s racial tensions and weak generational critique.

Black Swans is a collection of nine stories that look back on the 1980s—a decade of dreams, drink, and stoned youth turning Republican.

Her writing was so lush and so arch--so sexy and so smart--that she made you believe lush and arch were not mutually exclusive . 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.

If she wasn’t a jealous, bitter, nasty hypocrite whose entire personality was being from and living in Los Angeles, and who exuded nothing but “pick me” energy, she sure did one hell of a job Wattpad-writing a villain. You know, there were some moments in here that just felt like navel-gazing, pimping-myself-out (which I love), rich-bitch nonsense. One of the strengths of this collection lies in her willingness to catalog her own flaws, even when exposing unflattering facets of her personality . This April, Counterpoint Press released Black Swans (1993), a wistful collection of nine autobiographical tales from the 1980s and '90s. Through her honesty, sensitivity and her singular sense of humour, the author wrote about the human condition .