Black Swans: Stories

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A. WOMAN (1981) and BLACK SWANS (1992), and I had worried the interim might have diminished Babitz's skills. A., but it really takes one to know one, and Babitz, (the wise Hollywood High grad), is sly, wry and sometimes surprisingly vulnerable.

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.I've been wanting to read Babitz, and this collection in particular, for quite some time and I'm so glad I got around to it. Slow Days, Fast Company” consistently reveals Babitz’s fascination with America, which she considered a place apart from Los Angeles. 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.

There are tinges of sadness throughout the stories, of introspection but also hints of realisation, of moments to be proud of and people she is thankful were in her life, however briefly. 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. A. at its best: alluringly sexy but also heartbreakingly unpredictable, beautiful but indifferent to what you want from it.

Police brutality, tense race relations, and disenchantment with the false veneer of progress are contemporary concerns, though Babitz’s light, palliating tone is not. and I can’t remember it too clearly because I was a youngin when that show was on but from what I remember this was giving me heavy Melrose Place vibes. It is the tension created in this process that causes the reader to think “I must know how this is resolved.