Black Swans: Stories

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Eve Babitz is the author of several books of fiction, including Sex and Rage , Eve’s Hollywood , and Slow Days, Fast Company . Rather than dissolve her charms, Babitz pumps the brakes on the drugs and alcohol and thus reveals a newfound depth. Babitzs talent for the brilliant line, honed to a point, never interferes with her feel for languid pleasures.

This read like if Kit from Pretty Woman, or ummm Vivian, played by Julia Robert’s character in the film, wrote stories of their lives and their friends before she meets Richard Gere and goes nowhere. The discursive nature of her short stories allows her narratives to move in tandem with the sociopolitical issues she is constantly and effectively addressing. Babitz was born in Hollywood, California, the daughter of Mae, an artist, and Sol, a classical violinist on contract with 20th Century Fox. One of the strengths of this collection lies in her willingness to catalog her own flaws, even when exposing unflattering facets of her personality. In the meantime, celebrate the magnificence of this penultimate collection of "stories" (more like "essays" or "autobiographical sketches with the names changed," not that it matters much).

Babitz delivers the anticipated accounts of faltering love affairs and a who's who rundown of Hollywood's social register, but her trademark style steeped in voyeurism is tempered by middle age.

Babitz was living proof that rock-and-roll decadence also could be elegant and that muses could be the sharpest tacks in the room. Nobody saw — or sees — the world as Babitz does, its glitz alongside what had to be scraped off to make it shine. The photograph is described by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art as being “among the key documentary images of American modern art”. The black swan was a metaphor for all that could not exist, until of course, due to an intrepid sailor, the impossible became possible. Many strange and exotic species were being discovered in these uncharted territories at the time but this sighting was of particular importance, for up to this point in history it was thought that only white swans existed.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. Didion’s Los Angeles is filled with pestilence — freeways that inspire nervous breakdowns, raging fires, the moan of the Santa Anas setting everyone on murderous edge — whereas Babitz presents a lush, playful landscape full of movie stars and intellectual European émigrés, a city where the party never seems to end. Her viewpoints on certain situations re: men and the continuous pursuit of youth and beauty when it comes to women, which we watch these days from famous men like Leo DiCaprio, Kanye West, and trash bag Scott Disick, felt very current and accurate.