Manuscripts

Sex and Rage

Description: Typescript drafts and galley proofs of Sex and Rage, some with handwritten notes; and a few related notes from Victoria Wilson, Babitz's editor at Knopf.
Type: Manuscripts(Opens in new tab)
Date: 1979
Call number: mssBabitz
Creator: Babitz, Eve(Opens in new tab)
Provenance: Purchased from Eve Babitz through Glenn Horowitz Bookseller with support from Steve Martin and Anne Stringfield, November 2021.; gift of Mirandi Babitz, December 2024.
Restrictions: Open for use by qualified researchers and by appointment. Please contact Reader Services at the Huntington Library for more information.

Sex and Rage

Manuscripts

Typescript drafts and early versions of Sex and Rage, including some drafts marked "original" and others under the titles "One Too Many" and "If This Diamond Ring Don't Shine." Some drafts include handwritten notes and revisions.

mssBabitz

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Sex & rage : advice to young ladies eager for a good time : a novel

Rare Books

"The popular rediscovery of Eve Babitz continues with this very special reissue of her novel, originally published in 1979, about a dreamy young girl moving between the planets of Los Angeles and New York City. We first meet Jacaranda in Los Angeles, a beach bum, part-time painter of surfboards, sun-kissed and beautiful, semi-involved with a married man, glittering among the pretty creatures, blithely drinking Pink Ladies with any number of tycoons, unattached and unworried in the pleasurable mania of California. We follow her as she rises from the mists to the discovery that she's twenty-eight, jobless, with no sense of purpose; that her wild friendships with Gilbert and Max and Etienne might not be as real as they seem. So she pries herself away from this immensely seductive place and moves to New York, to seriousness and work, to meet the agents of her new world. Sex and Rage delights in its starry, sensuous, dreamlike narrative and its spontaneous embrace of fate, and work, and of certain meetings and chances. We witness Jacaranda moving beyond the tango of sex and rage into the open challenge of a defined and more fulfilling expressive life. Sex and Rage further solidifies Eve Babitz's place as a singularly important voice in Los Angeles literature - haunting, alluring, and alive"--

653789

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Writings

Manuscripts

Drafts and galleys of Babitz's books Slow Days, Fast Company (1977); Sex and Rage: Advice to Young Ladies Eager for a Good Time (1979); L.A. Woman (1982); Black Swans (1993); and Two By Two: Tango, Two-Step, and the L.A. Night (1999); as well as the unpublished manuscripts for Travel Broadens (1963) and drafts of the unrealized Bonnie and Clyde (2001) and Russia (2001). Articles and stories include drafts of early work for publication in Rolling Stone, Coast magazine and others; and stories later published in the collection I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz (2019). Also includes several screenplays, incomplete drafts, and copies of clippings and publications featuring Babitz's published work.

mssBabitz

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Sex & rage : advice to young ladies eager for a good time

Rare Books

A rediscovered classic: Eve Babitz's wry, tender coming-of-age tale of 1970s LA. It is the 1970s in LA, and Jacaranda Leven - child of sun and surf - is swept into the dazzling cultural milieu of the beautiful people. Floating on a cloud of drink, drugs and men, she finds herself adrift, before her talent for writing, and a determined literary agent, set her on a course for New York and a new life. Sex & Rage is a recently rediscovered classic from author Eve Babitz, herself a muse to many an artist, writer and musician in the 1970s. A semi-autobiographical novel, it charts the highs and lows of a life lived at the limits, and transports the reader to a sunnier, dreamier, more reckless time and place.

653786

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Incomplete drafts

Manuscripts

Scattered and incomplete drafts. Pages appear to be parts of Sex and Rage and L.A. Woman, as well as short stories and articles. Materials are not all identified and not further arranged; they were foldered into groups to facilitate use.

mssBabitz

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Correspondence - friends incoming

Manuscripts

Primarily incoming correspondence from Babitz's friends, admirers, and publishing contacts, including Larry Bell, Joseph Cornell (12 items including envelopes and inserts, plus photocopies), Jean Francois Dalle, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, Peter Eden, "F" (unidentified), Paul Glass, Joseph Heller (6 items including envelopes, plus photocopies), Seymour Lawrence, Erica Spellman (ICM), Leah Spinrad, Paul Ruscha, Dan Wakefield, Victoria Wilson (Knopf), and Jann Wenner (Rolling Stone). There is back and forth correspondence in a few instances. Also included is a folder of other publishing-related correspondence, and get-well faxes and letters Babitz received after her 1997 accident.

mssBabitz

Sex and Rage

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Sex and Rage

Sex & rage : advice to young ladies eager for a good time : a novel

Writings

Sex & rage : advice to young ladies eager for a good time

Incomplete drafts

Correspondence - friends incoming