Manuscripts

Slow Days, Fast Company

Description: 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.
Type: Manuscripts(Opens in new tab)
Date: 1976-1977
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.

Slow days, fast company : the world, the flesh, and L.A

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"--

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Photo albums

Manuscripts

Four photo albums, including one documenting the Slow Days Fast Company book release party in 1997, and another with snapshots of Babitz and her friends at an event in 1987. The other two albums include a mixture of childhood, family, and friends photographs, which have been removed and housed separately within the box due to the albums' deterioration.

mssBabitz

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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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Photographs

Manuscripts

Photographs and negatives of Eve Babitz, her family and friends, and the Los Angeles area, including hundreds taken by Babitz of friends and gatherings during the years 1969-1972. Photo subjects from this time include Jackson Browne, the Byrds, Black Oak Arkansas, Glenn Frey, Steve Martin, Linda Ronstadt, Gram Parsons (38 images), and Dan Wakefield; and several Los Angeles locations including Echo Park and the Griffith Observatory. There are also photos from the late 1980s of friends and gatherings and a trip to Miami. Family photographs include Eve Babitz from childhood to the 2000s, her cats, her parents Sol and Mae Babitz, sister Mirandi Babitz, and their family home. Scrapbooks and photo albums feature snapshots of friends and family, with one album dedicated to the Slow Days, Fast Company book release party in 1977. There is also significant material related to dance in Los Angeles, which appears to be related to Babitz's book Two by Two: Tango, Two-Step, and the L.A. Night.

mssBabitz

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Eve Babitz papers

Manuscripts

Materials documenting the life and career of writer and artist Eve Babitz. Writings includes drafts and galleys of her 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 articles and stories; screenplays; unpublished manuscripts; and collected clippings and publications. The Personal series includes incoming and outgoing correspondence with friends, family, and publishing contacts; biographical and family items; and Babitz's notebooks and datebooks. Photographs are of Babitz, her friends and family, and the Los Angeles area, including hundreds she took with a Brownie camera documenting her friends and social sphere from 1968 to 1971. Artwork primarily consists of collages Babitz made between 1967 and1970, some commissioned for publication or album artwork. Collage subjects include musician friends and acquaintances including Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, Stephen Stills, Ginger Baker, and Noel Harrison; commissioned work featuring Marilyn Monroe and Liza Minnelli; and pastoral and abstract scenes. There are also drawings and paintings dating from the early to mid-1960s.

mssBabitz

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Articles and stories A-M

Manuscripts

Primarily typescript drafts and photocopy drafts of articles and stories, many of which appeared in Vogue, Rolling Stone, and other publications. Grouped alphabetically with a few titles housed separately in original folders: Gilded Lily, Hair These Days, Inventories, In Praise of Folly, and Maui Wowie. Some drafts include notes from publishers and revisions.

mssBabitz

Slow Days, Fast Company

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Slow days, fast company : the world, the flesh, and L.A

Photo albums

Writings

Photographs

Eve Babitz papers

Articles and stories A-M