Slow Days, Fast Company (New York Review Books Classics): The World, the Flesh, and L.A.

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a b Babitz, Eve (June 14, 2000). "Oral history interview". Archives of American Art (Interview). Interviewed by Paul Karlstrom. Babitz's home, Hollywood, California: Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on March 6, 2014 . Retrieved May 1, 2012. I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz (2019). New York, NY: New York Review of Books ISBN 9781681373799 OCLC 1100441110

She figured that any day now she was going to start feeling the simple composure of normalcy that Jane Austen's heroines always sought to maintain, the state described in those days as "countenance," and later as "being cool.” Babitz died of Huntington's disease at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on December 17, 2021, at age 78. [18] [19] [20] Resurgence [ edit ] a b Green, Penelope (October 3, 2019). "The Eve Babitz Revival". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 21, 2021 . Retrieved April 21, 2021. Green, Penelope (December 19, 2021). "Eve Babitz, a Hedonist With a Notebook, Is Dead at 78". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 20, 2021 . Retrieved December 20, 2021.It’s well known that for something to be fiction it must move right along and not meander among the bushes gazing into the next county. Unfortunately, with L.A. it’s impossible. You can’t write a story about L.A. that doesn’t turn around in the middle or get lost. And since it’s the custom for people who “like” L.A. to embrace everything wholesale and wallow in Forest Lawn, all the stories you read make you wonder why the writer doesn’t just go ahead and jump, get it over with. Her articles and short stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire magazines. She is the author of several books including Eve's Hollywood; Slow Days, Fast Company; Sex and Rage; Two By Two; and L.A. Woman. Transitioning to her particular blend of fiction and memoir beginning with Eve's Hollywood, Babitz’s writing of this period is indelibly marked by the cultural scene of Los Angeles during that time, with numerous references and interactions to the artists, musicians, writers, actors, and sundry other iconic figures that made up the scene in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Well crafted short stories about life in 1960s-70s LaLa Land and the famous, semi-famous and wanna-be famous. This sense of 'place' -- that there was nothing to be wanted from material things, nothing to be saved.”

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.

When I was growing up, civilized friends of my parents’ and even my parents used to complain all the time about how the L.A. County Art Museum was a travesty unparalleled anywhere for dopiness. They’d really get angry each time they recalled how Stravinsky was never so much as nodded to by “the city.” I used to wonder, when I was little, how a city nodded to Stravinsky. City Hall was all the way downtown and Stravinsky lived in West Hollywood. These adults used to sigh and say, “If he lived anywhere else . . . any where else, they would have done something about him. But not Los Angeles.” 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. 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. Eve Babitz captured the voluptuous quality of L.A. in the 1960s in a wildly original, totally unique voice. These stories are time capsule gems, as poignant and startling today as they were when published in the early 1970s. Eve Babitz is not well known today, but she should be. Her first hand experiences in the L.A. cultural scene, translated into haunting fiction, are an unforgettable glimpse at a lost world and a magical time. Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz – eBook Details