Books

178pp. 12mo, Taupe paper over boards backed in Linen cloth with gilt stamped lettering. Some light toningt to head and tail, exceedingly clean and sharp otherwise with still tight hinges; DJ has a miniscule chip to front flap, entirely clean and sharp. SIGNED by the author and incribed to her fellow Hollywood Angelenos, 'For Stathis and Ralph / On Cheremoya -- street of my birth. / Love, Eve Babitz / XOXO.' A uniquely personal inscription distinguished from the canned lines typical of her inscriptions. Ralph and Stathis comprised the L.A. fine-press publishing duo Sylvester and Orphanos. After languishing in obscurity for a few decades, the works of Eve Babitz underwent a renaissance keyed by the NYRB republication of this and other of her works, enjoyed for her thrilling tales of unseen and unappreciated corners of L.A. culture as much as for her lively and unparalleled voice. Here, in her second book, 'In ten sun-baked, Santa Ana wind-swept sketches, Babitz re-creates a Los Angeles of movie stars distraught over their success, socialites on three-day drug binges holed up in the Chateau Marmont, soap-opera actors worried that tomorrow's script will kill them off, Italian femmes fatales even more fatal than Babitz' (Matthew Specktor, from the NYRB intro). As the dust jacket states, 'Eve Babitz *is* L.A.'.

A collection of essays and stories providing an intimate look at California and its inhabitants during the 1970s.