Black Swans: Stories

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Babitz's writing is also like the jacaranda tree in glorious bloom—bewitching an entire city, but all too brief.

With a keen eye and a rambunctious voice, Babitz tells the story of a generation’s version of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and the recovery from it all.

Much of the art of storytelling involves making connections between details that don’t seem to have any link. In the late 1960s, she designed album covers for Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield.

Babitz induced a whole spectrum of emotion from the lightheartedness of the main character to the devastating ending. I don’t know why it’s categorised as fictional short stories when they are memoir essays; I’m guessing it’s to avoid legal issues since she references real people. There was this moment, she mentioned that when we admire an author, we think we become that same author; we believe we wrote ourselves those words. 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's writing is also like the jacaranda tree in glorious bloom--bewitching an entire city, but all too brief. 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. In “Coco,” Babitz profiles a friend from her short-lived days at LACC, introduced to her with the aside that “[she’ll] love this girl, she’s so bad. Comforted by the apparent success of the women’s movement, Nixon’s resignation, and the end of Vietnam War, they “got sidetracked […] ‘White backlash’ happened. I mean, she says so much in the book but her central theme was true tho — you shouldn’t be with someone intimidated by your greatness and the fact that you age and are a continuously maturing human being, also you shouldn’t fuck your friends exes or current partners.

The only reason I gave this any stars at all is because I know these stories are based on her real experiences, and it takes guts to detail all the ways you have completely screwed over your friends. 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. and Esquire, and in the late 1960s designed album covers for the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and Linda Ronstadt. I would have loved to elaborate, but this was one of those books that made me genuinely furious: I couldn’t stand Babitz’s disgusting racism and misogyny. She is the author of several books including Eve's Hollywood; Slow Days, Fast Company; Sex and Rage; Two By Two; and L.And though the book is plotless, told in vignettes, and this will bedevil some readers, there is something about its portrait of an It Girl on the verge of a nervous breakdown that softens and opens the type. Police brutality, tense race relations, and disenchantment with the false veneer of progress are contemporary concerns, though Babitz’s light, palliating tone is not . Despite her own levity, even Babitz can’t help but quip that “the thing she fears most is bad taste, in other words. The fictional Eve looks back on her actions, of the drug use, of getting clean, of sexual freedom and past relationships, assessing where she is at certain points in her life.