Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
Slow days, fast company : the world, the flesh, and L.A. : tales
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Rare Books
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Image not available
Rare Books
"There was a time when no one burned hotter than Eve Babitz. Possessing skin that radiated "its own kind of moral laws," spectacular teeth, and a figure that was the stuff of legend, she seduced seemingly everyone who was anyone in Los Angeles for a long stretch of the 1960s and '70s. But there was one man who proved elusive, and so Babitz did what she did best, she wrote him a book. She also pulled off a remarkable sleight of hand: Slow Days, Fast Company far exceeds its mash-note premise. It is a full-fledged and full-bodied evocation of a bygone Southern California. 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, evading their East Coast banking husbands; soap-opera actors worried that tomorrow's script will kill them off; Italian femme fatales even more fatal than she is. And she even leaves L.A. sometimes, spending an afternoon at the house of flawless Orange County suburbanites, a day among the grape pickers of the Central Valley, a weekend in Palm Springs where her dreams of romance fizzle and her only solace is Virginia Woolf. In the end it doesn't matter if Babitz ever gets the guy--she seduces us"--
653857
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Manuscripts
Drafts, galley proofs, and a dummy book of Slow Days, Fast Company, with handwritten notes; and a draft of The Garden of Allah story, which appeared in the book.
mssBabitz
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Rare Books
"[T]he story of Sophie, a twenty-something Jim Morrison groupie gliding through a golden existence in L.A., and Lola, a German immigrant who has settled in Hollywood, know that while Los Angeles is constantly changing, it is essentially eternal. The two women dazzle, one with the promises of youth, the other with the fulfilment of nostalgia as they wend their way through the pink sunsets and the palm trees of Los Angeles. Living out their addictively decadent lives, Sophie and Lola are cult writer Babitz's literary embodiment of the iconic L.A. Woman more than in part inspired by her own wild and hedonistic youth.
653835
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Rare Books
The story of Sophie, a twenty-something Jim Morrison groupie gliding through a golden existence in L.A., and Lola, a German immigrant who has settled in Hollywood, know that while Los Angeles is constantly changing, it is essentially eternal. The two women dazzle, one with the promises of youth, the other with the fulfilment of nostalgia as they wend their way through the pink sunsets and the palm trees of Los Angeles. Living out their addictively decadent lives, Sophie and Lola are cult writer Babitz's literary embodiment of the iconic L.A. Woman more than in part inspired by her own wild and hedonistic youth.
653785
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Rare Books
"[T]he story of Sophie, a twenty-something blonde Jim Morrison groupie gliding through a golden existence in L.A. and Lola, a German immigrant who settles in Hollywood in the twenties to drive Pierce Arrows recklessly down Sunset Boulevard and who knows that Maybelline mascara cakes and Rudolph Valentino are the essence of life. Sophie and Lola, like the many other women who move in and out of this electric saga, know that while L.A. is constantly changing it is essentially eternal; through their eyes we see the mixture of high culture and low, the promises of youth and the fulfillment of nostalgia, the pink sunsets and the palm trees that are L.A. And through this fantastic tale, Babitz shares what it is to be a woman in what she convinces us is the capital of civilization"--Back cover.
653792
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Manuscripts
Typescript drafts of L.A. Woman, some with handwritten notes and revisions.
mssBabitz