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Sex and Rage
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. She’s a beach bum, a part-time painter of surfboards, sun-kissed and beautiful. Jacaranda has an on-again, off-again relationship with a married man and glitters among the city’s pretty creatures, blithely drinking Pink Ladies with any number of tycoons, unattached and unworried in the pleasurable mania of California. Yet she lacks a purpose—so at twenty-eight, jobless, she moves to New York to start a new life and career, eager to make it big in the world of New York City.
Sex and Rage delights in its sensuous, dreamlike narrative and its spontaneous embrace of fate, and work, and of certain meetings and chances. Jacaranda moves 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.
We first meet Jacaranda in Los Angeles. She’s a beach bum, a part-time painter of surfboards, sun-kissed and beautiful. Jacaranda has an on-again, off-again relationship with a married man and glitters among the city’s pretty creatures, blithely drinking Pink Ladies with any number of tycoons, unattached and unworried in the pleasurable mania of California. Yet she lacks a purpose—so at twenty-eight, jobless, she moves to New York to start a new life and career, eager to make it big in the world of New York City.
Sex and Rage delights in its sensuous, dreamlike narrative and its spontaneous embrace of fate, and work, and of certain meetings and chances. Jacaranda moves 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.
257 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1979
1534 people are currently reading
66877 people want to read
About the author
Eve Babitz
12 books3,528 followersBabitz was born in Hollywood, California, the daughter of Mae, an artist, and Sol, a classical violinist on contract with 20th Century Fox.Her father was of Russian Jewish descent and her mother had Cajun (French) ancestry.Babitz's parents were friends with the composer Igor Stravinsky, who was her godfather.
In 1963, her first brush with notoriety came through Julian Wasser's iconic photograph of a nude, twenty-year-old Babitz playing chess with the artist Marcel Duchamp, on the occasion of his landmark retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum. The show was curated by Walter Hopps, with whom Babitz was having an affair at the time. The photograph is described by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art as being “among the key documentary images of American modern art”.
Because of her ideas about sexuality, both in writing and life, much of the press over the years has emphasized her various romantic associations with famous men, including singer/poet Jim Morrison, artists (and brothers) Ed Ruscha and Paul Ruscha, and Hopps, amongst others. Babitz appears in Ed Ruscha’s artist book Five 1965 Girlfriends. Eve Babitz had affairs with comedian/writer Steve Martin, actor Harrison Ford, and writer Dan Wakefield, among others. She has been compared favorably with Edie Sedgwick, the protegee of Andy Warhol at The Factory in New York City.
Eve Babitz began her independent career as an artist, working in the music industry for Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records, making album covers. In the late 1960s, she designed album covers for Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield. Her most famous cover was a collage for the 1967 album Buffalo Springfield Again.
Her articles and short stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire magazines. She is the author of several books including Eve's Hollywood; Slow Days, Fast Company; Sex and Rage; Two By Two; and L.A. Woman. Transitioning to her particular blend of fiction and memoir beginning with Eve's Hollywood, Babitz’s writing of this period is indelibly marked by the cultural scene of Los Angeles during that time, with numerous references and interactions to the artists, musicians, writers, actors, and sundry other iconic figures that made up the scene in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.
In 1997, Babitz was severely injured when ash from a cigar she was smoking ignited her skirt, causing life-threatening third-degree burns over half her body. Because she had no health insurance, friends and family organized a fund-raising auction to pay her medical bills. Friends and former lovers donated cash and artworks to help pay for her long recovery. Babitz became somewhat more reclusive after this incident, but was still willing to be interviewed on occasion.
Babitz died of Huntington's disease at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on December 17, 2021, at age 78.
In 1963, her first brush with notoriety came through Julian Wasser's iconic photograph of a nude, twenty-year-old Babitz playing chess with the artist Marcel Duchamp, on the occasion of his landmark retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum. The show was curated by Walter Hopps, with whom Babitz was having an affair at the time. The photograph is described by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art as being “among the key documentary images of American modern art”.
Because of her ideas about sexuality, both in writing and life, much of the press over the years has emphasized her various romantic associations with famous men, including singer/poet Jim Morrison, artists (and brothers) Ed Ruscha and Paul Ruscha, and Hopps, amongst others. Babitz appears in Ed Ruscha’s artist book Five 1965 Girlfriends. Eve Babitz had affairs with comedian/writer Steve Martin, actor Harrison Ford, and writer Dan Wakefield, among others. She has been compared favorably with Edie Sedgwick, the protegee of Andy Warhol at The Factory in New York City.
Eve Babitz began her independent career as an artist, working in the music industry for Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records, making album covers. In the late 1960s, she designed album covers for Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield. Her most famous cover was a collage for the 1967 album Buffalo Springfield Again.
Her articles and short stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire magazines. She is the author of several books including Eve's Hollywood; Slow Days, Fast Company; Sex and Rage; Two By Two; and L.A. Woman. Transitioning to her particular blend of fiction and memoir beginning with Eve's Hollywood, Babitz’s writing of this period is indelibly marked by the cultural scene of Los Angeles during that time, with numerous references and interactions to the artists, musicians, writers, actors, and sundry other iconic figures that made up the scene in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.
In 1997, Babitz was severely injured when ash from a cigar she was smoking ignited her skirt, causing life-threatening third-degree burns over half her body. Because she had no health insurance, friends and family organized a fund-raising auction to pay her medical bills. Friends and former lovers donated cash and artworks to help pay for her long recovery. Babitz became somewhat more reclusive after this incident, but was still willing to be interviewed on occasion.
Babitz died of Huntington's disease at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on December 17, 2021, at age 78.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,002 reviews
October 14, 2021
sex & rage r my two favourite emotions so u can imagine my rage when neither of them made an appearance
April 27, 2021
not enough sex and not enough rage!!!!!!
August 29, 2023
Eve is just too good at what she does
November 29, 2022
this book rules because it's about this perfect girl who is extremely beautiful and interesting and smart and hot and universally adored and it's also autobiographical.
goals, really.
this is actually not eve's finest - normally she's funny enough that you can forgive her for knowing how charming and beautiful she is, but the balance is off here - and the writing feels weaker than her usual.
but you've got to hand it to her on the pride front. and the title.
bottom line: even the worst eve is still not that bad. but it's not that good either.
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tbr review
what more could you need
goals, really.
this is actually not eve's finest - normally she's funny enough that you can forgive her for knowing how charming and beautiful she is, but the balance is off here - and the writing feels weaker than her usual.
but you've got to hand it to her on the pride front. and the title.
bottom line: even the worst eve is still not that bad. but it's not that good either.
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tbr review
what more could you need
December 28, 2016
I really, really wanted to like this book. It came so highly recommended. However, by modern standards it reads like some stream of consciousness fever dream, like it's poorly edited. She has a beautiful authorial voice, but my god is it tedious to read.
May 16, 2021
Don’t be fooled by gays & martinis
August 22, 2017
I didn't get it. I'm not even sure if there was something to get. I HATED jacaranda. In my opinion she was so problematic and self absorbed when she was a walking disaster. The self pity was REAL. She blamed everyone for her problems and kept manipulating Shelby for no reason at all. Also, her obsession with Max was pathetic and made zero sense. Also, where was the plot? I was waiting for there to be some sort of climax and it never happened. I read in a review that it was supposed to be about her getting revenge on Max for messing her up, but the revenge never happened? The story was just all over the place as though it wasn't planned, nor executed, very well. I also read somewhere that this was meant to be a loose memoir? If that's true, I would have hated Babitz as a person. Truly.
August 4, 2022
in hindsight, maybe i hated this because unlike jacaranda (aka babitz), i am not a hot nepotism girl who gets employed just for being a hot nepotism girl. but i stand by my opinion—this is what happens when we make the embodiments of watching paint dry into influencers. still not sure if the writing was lovely, or if it just seemed so because it was a stream of consciousness.
March 2, 2024
3.5
“Max’s laugh was like a dragnet; it picked up every living laugh within the vicinity and shined a light on it, intensified it, pitched it higher. It was a dare—he dared you not to laugh with him. He dared you to despair. He dared you to insist that there was no silver lining, that the heart didn’t grow fonder by absence. He dared you to believe you were going to die—when you at that moment knew, just as he did, that you were immortal, you were among the gods.”
“He smelled like a birthday party for small children, like vanilla, crêpe paper, soap, starch, and warm steam and cigarettes.”
“The white flowers threw Max’s elegant silhouette into a sort of bas-relief, like Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, in Florence, golden.”
“She had always presumed that once people got to be twenty-three, they were Too Old, “'…yet she was not old enough to content herself with brooding over the past like Marcel Proust, whose book she was reading on the plane, and who obviously had nothing more pressing to do than to regard the years as a museum filled with beautiful reproductions of lost jealousy and bygone fashion.”
“Did I tell you about this graffiti I saw in the men’s room at the Knife and Fork? Someone printed: ‘I’m ten inches long and three inches wide. Interested?’ and wrote his phone number down. And then, in pencil underneath, someone else said, ‘Fascinated. How big’s your cock?’”
“Max’s laugh was like a dragnet; it picked up every living laugh within the vicinity and shined a light on it, intensified it, pitched it higher. It was a dare—he dared you not to laugh with him. He dared you to despair. He dared you to insist that there was no silver lining, that the heart didn’t grow fonder by absence. He dared you to believe you were going to die—when you at that moment knew, just as he did, that you were immortal, you were among the gods.”
“He smelled like a birthday party for small children, like vanilla, crêpe paper, soap, starch, and warm steam and cigarettes.”
“The white flowers threw Max’s elegant silhouette into a sort of bas-relief, like Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, in Florence, golden.”
“She had always presumed that once people got to be twenty-three, they were Too Old, “'…yet she was not old enough to content herself with brooding over the past like Marcel Proust, whose book she was reading on the plane, and who obviously had nothing more pressing to do than to regard the years as a museum filled with beautiful reproductions of lost jealousy and bygone fashion.”
“Did I tell you about this graffiti I saw in the men’s room at the Knife and Fork? Someone printed: ‘I’m ten inches long and three inches wide. Interested?’ and wrote his phone number down. And then, in pencil underneath, someone else said, ‘Fascinated. How big’s your cock?’”
September 6, 2017
Sparkling decadence. Faux naïf and picaresque are two new words I learned reading reviews of Babitz's work and life during the time this collection of scenes was written. A memoir/essay/fiction with the names only slightly changed to include the participants in this hedonistic romp from L.A. to N.Y. and back again. Paris Review compared Babitz to Lispector, both in the obsession with the space between words and meaning, and then again that both women were badly burned; Babitz from the hot ash of a cigar she was smoking that fell in her lap. The book I read had entertained a previous reader who began with pencil parentheses sparsely; soon crowding the page. Less than a third through, the reader stopped annotating. You've experienced the delight of language in the hands of a master writer, and thought about taking notes, framing the sentence in pretty punctuation. Open this book anywhere, and you'll find one or two or three of the best sentences you've read, nestled in a paragraph you'll read twice. The word choices describe people who are mesmerizing and who you are glad you never met when you were young and indestructible.
July 31, 2017
Deathly dull. Literally nothing happens in this book, and its way too much "telling" with very little "showing." The title of this book is far and away the most interesting part. It was helpful in getting me in the right mood to sleep on a bus though.
January 6, 2019
Babitz has a way with words and a way with character. This--an odd little novel about a California girl's brushes with money, celebrity, and substance abuse--is supremely clever in its subtlety. Each little climax fizzles out in confusion and disappointment, characters persistently misunderstand each other, and the loose ends are, more often than not, left loose. As fiction goes, it's defiantly realistic in that sense, a testament to the fact that real life often refuses to satisfy the way the movies do. But there's something satisfying in that lack of satisfaction, and the story ends on an optimistic note, stubbornly uncinematic but suggestive of second chances, unlikely and maybe undeserved--a fitting conclusion for a colorful fable of 20th-century survival.
February 7, 2024
where was the sex? where was the rage?
February 11, 2024
I was reading this book on the subway and a girl came up to me and said “do you like this book” and i said “not really” and she said “I didn’t like it either” and walked away
August 12, 2017
😍THIS BOOK ❤️ I'm thanking Belletrist from the bottom of my heart for choosing the re-release of this 1979 classic as their July book club pick - I absolutely LOVE THIS BOOK. And I can't write a review of it since it's older than I am (just barely!) and everything I say will be redundant. I will say that there is almost NO SEX (or rage!) though, and it completely defied all of my expectations. This book is whip-smart and lush and I wanted to highlight 90% of it. It's sweet and terse and hopeful and real and most of all, timeless. If I weren't done having kids, my next baby girl would 100% be named Jacaranda. If you haven't read it, add it to your lifetime reading bucket list. And I'm keeping this copy forever because I want to be the kind of person who has a book titled SEX AND RAGE on my living room family bookshelf ~ my kids no longer even think twice when they see this one lying around! Loved it.
February 20, 2025
Not so much ‘sex and rage’ as it is ‘lovers and indignation’ but I guess that doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely.
I didn’t much know the plot of this story before I went in mainly because I avoided this book for a while because “sex” is not something that I care to read about but this book defied expectations. Addiction was a much more present theme than I expected and, well, if you know me at all, you know that I love addiction themes—when done right—in a book. Also present in this book is our main character’s pursuit of a writing career—however terrifying it may be—and I really enjoyed the journey.
The similarities between Eve and Jacaranda (our mc) are uncanny… or are they? As someone who reads lots of Babitz and is familiar with her personal life details, this “fiction” feels like her most obvious form of autofiction; so many pieces of Jacaranda’s character can be traced directly to Eve (the lovers, the parties, the come-up in writing, the agent phone calls, the drugs and alcohol, the family specifics).
For me this novel was a tasty little treat that offered an interesting mc to follow, even if her choices were often destructive; an mc who is spiraling on the inside but managing to appear mostly “with it” on the outside. Sex and Rage also provides an honest, well-written view of bohemian Los Angeles in the 1970’s, a time period and place that nobody else out there could write better than Babitz. Her writing makes me crave the heat and the ocean, the fame and the parties, the mundanity and the chaos, all of it. The story’s pacing struggles some—meandering and then rushing forward at times—but the writing is so obviously Babitz with its sharp tongue, clever wit, and keen observations of character that I didn’t mind for a second.
You don’t have to be Californian to love this book or to love Babitz but it certainly helps. I love that the jacaranda tree made such a main stage appearance in this book (in the name of the main character). This particular tree displays the most vibrant shade of purple when it blooms in Southern California in the spring. Yes, when the flowers drop your entire street will be covered, making the biggest mess, but to see them in all of their purple glory is a stunning spectacle that is impossible to ignore or describe. This isn’t the first time these trees have graced the pages of Babitz’s work, leading me to believe she loved them just as much as I have come to.
Anyway, though I wouldn’t recommend it to just anyone, I loved this book.
She could feel some kind of hazy snap, some uproar, about to happen. In Los Angeles it’s called “earthquake weather,” but Jacaranda knew earthquakes were just a metaphor for any out-of-control slant suddenly tilting beneath your feet.
If the kindle version had been immediately available, I would have so many highlighted passages to share but alas, I will have to re-read at a later time to share the spots that hit me.
I didn’t much know the plot of this story before I went in mainly because I avoided this book for a while because “sex” is not something that I care to read about but this book defied expectations. Addiction was a much more present theme than I expected and, well, if you know me at all, you know that I love addiction themes—when done right—in a book. Also present in this book is our main character’s pursuit of a writing career—however terrifying it may be—and I really enjoyed the journey.
The similarities between Eve and Jacaranda (our mc) are uncanny… or are they? As someone who reads lots of Babitz and is familiar with her personal life details, this “fiction” feels like her most obvious form of autofiction; so many pieces of Jacaranda’s character can be traced directly to Eve (the lovers, the parties, the come-up in writing, the agent phone calls, the drugs and alcohol, the family specifics).
For me this novel was a tasty little treat that offered an interesting mc to follow, even if her choices were often destructive; an mc who is spiraling on the inside but managing to appear mostly “with it” on the outside. Sex and Rage also provides an honest, well-written view of bohemian Los Angeles in the 1970’s, a time period and place that nobody else out there could write better than Babitz. Her writing makes me crave the heat and the ocean, the fame and the parties, the mundanity and the chaos, all of it. The story’s pacing struggles some—meandering and then rushing forward at times—but the writing is so obviously Babitz with its sharp tongue, clever wit, and keen observations of character that I didn’t mind for a second.
You don’t have to be Californian to love this book or to love Babitz but it certainly helps. I love that the jacaranda tree made such a main stage appearance in this book (in the name of the main character). This particular tree displays the most vibrant shade of purple when it blooms in Southern California in the spring. Yes, when the flowers drop your entire street will be covered, making the biggest mess, but to see them in all of their purple glory is a stunning spectacle that is impossible to ignore or describe. This isn’t the first time these trees have graced the pages of Babitz’s work, leading me to believe she loved them just as much as I have come to.
Anyway, though I wouldn’t recommend it to just anyone, I loved this book.
She could feel some kind of hazy snap, some uproar, about to happen. In Los Angeles it’s called “earthquake weather,” but Jacaranda knew earthquakes were just a metaphor for any out-of-control slant suddenly tilting beneath your feet.
If the kindle version had been immediately available, I would have so many highlighted passages to share but alas, I will have to re-read at a later time to share the spots that hit me.
July 12, 2021
Reading Eve Babitz is like being trapped in the instagram stories of a 20 year old vapidly narrating their daily lives and peppering their stories with "cool" references to art/culture/ music they copied from someone else just to seem interesting.
So tedious and boring. I kept waiting for the story to get interesting or for the character to have some kind of breakthrough, but it never came. "Pleasure for pleasure's sake" ?????? This book was flat and miserable.
So tedious and boring. I kept waiting for the story to get interesting or for the character to have some kind of breakthrough, but it never came. "Pleasure for pleasure's sake" ?????? This book was flat and miserable.
July 12, 2022
a fun, short, summery little book about a young woman just living life in 1970s los angeles. it’s quite fun to read if you’re already familiar with eve babitz and her life, because it has a lot of autobiographical moments/details mixed in.
August 12, 2021
This book made me look every thought I was too afraid to admit to myself in the face. It made me want to go outside, meditate, eat healthy and truly live. Live in a way that happens in the natural progression of things when you’re not busy trying to make things exciting.
Easily my fav book ever. Also probably the healthier female equivalent of ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’.
Easily my fav book ever. Also probably the healthier female equivalent of ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’.
January 22, 2023
Either I’m not as cool as I thought I was or I’ve j spent too much time in the real world to be able to extract anything meaningful from this. Sorry Eve
December 13, 2022
A breezy, fun, fast-moving romp through the high life of 1970's Los Angeles by someone who knew it well, this is a reprint of Babitz's 1979 novel--she's very much in on the resurgence these days.
What I like about Babitz is her love of LA, even its squalor. She's not a hater, she's sharp and funny and fully embraces the city's hedonism and surface pleasures, unapologetically sensual, historically savvy, an anthropologist of life in the fast lane at the sea-glittering edge of America. Like all of her books, it's a romp full of dead-accurate insights into a time and a place and a culture which has mostly gone unremarked, exxcept for Joan Didion, who came to it with a critical, rather than an embracing, personality.
I would include Sex and Rage in with such other bounding, keen-eyed novels of the coke-fueled 1970s including Lithium for Medea, Bright Lights, Big City, and Slaves of New York, and maybe Metropolitan Life by Fran Leibowitz as well.
Her speciality is the one sentence portrait, and I especially appreciated her dead-on portraits of her hometown. Here's Jacaranda Leven (a thinly disguised version of Babitz... well known for playing chess, naked, with Marcel Duchamp in the middle of an art gallery) the protagonist, thinking about why she didn't want to go to New York when her book about the decadent crowd she hangs out with, whom she characterizes as being "on the barge," floating from one fashionable spot to the next, is picked up by a New York agent.
"But Jacaranda couldn't face New York. New York had Max in it. She'd be bound to run smack into him just walking down the street. What was so great about L.A. was that you never, ever, ran into anyone by accident..."
What's interesting about the book is her capturing of the pace of that lifestyle, the relentless fun, the drugs and the waves, so much like surfing, a continuous metaphor (when the book opens she's painting surfboards for a living), no time to brood. An uneven book, but the little jewels of the writing and the wit make it a great light read for a dull day.
What I like about Babitz is her love of LA, even its squalor. She's not a hater, she's sharp and funny and fully embraces the city's hedonism and surface pleasures, unapologetically sensual, historically savvy, an anthropologist of life in the fast lane at the sea-glittering edge of America. Like all of her books, it's a romp full of dead-accurate insights into a time and a place and a culture which has mostly gone unremarked, exxcept for Joan Didion, who came to it with a critical, rather than an embracing, personality.
I would include Sex and Rage in with such other bounding, keen-eyed novels of the coke-fueled 1970s including Lithium for Medea, Bright Lights, Big City, and Slaves of New York, and maybe Metropolitan Life by Fran Leibowitz as well.
Her speciality is the one sentence portrait, and I especially appreciated her dead-on portraits of her hometown. Here's Jacaranda Leven (a thinly disguised version of Babitz... well known for playing chess, naked, with Marcel Duchamp in the middle of an art gallery) the protagonist, thinking about why she didn't want to go to New York when her book about the decadent crowd she hangs out with, whom she characterizes as being "on the barge," floating from one fashionable spot to the next, is picked up by a New York agent.
"But Jacaranda couldn't face New York. New York had Max in it. She'd be bound to run smack into him just walking down the street. What was so great about L.A. was that you never, ever, ran into anyone by accident..."
What's interesting about the book is her capturing of the pace of that lifestyle, the relentless fun, the drugs and the waves, so much like surfing, a continuous metaphor (when the book opens she's painting surfboards for a living), no time to brood. An uneven book, but the little jewels of the writing and the wit make it a great light read for a dull day.
October 20, 2017
beautiful white girl with beautiful white girl problems. too much drugs, alcohol, sex, celebrity, etc. Babitz's writing is lovely, and she has crafted some interesting characters, but still, I was bored.
Want to read
June 21, 2022i mean, i AM a young person and i AM eager for a good time
September 12, 2021
not enough sex or rage
July 14, 2024
Los Angeles und New York City spielen die Hauptrolle in dem Roman "Sex & Rage" von Eve Babitz. Der erste Teil in L.A. ist großartig, der zweite Teil in New York zwar immer noch gut, aber im Vergleich doch ein wenig schwächer. Das Buch ist ursprünglich 1979 erschienen. Es wurde erst jetzt zum ersten Mal in deutscher Übersetzung veröffentlicht. Das mag daran liegen, dass es eine sehr amerikanische Erzählung ist. Beschrieben wird das Leben von Menschen, die mit der L.A.-Kunst- und Filmszene verbunden sind.
Es erzählt von Sonne, Meer, Surfen und Partys. Aber auch von Alkohol, Drogen und toxischem Verhalten. Jacaranda wächst als Surferin am Meer in Santa Monica auf. Sie träumt davon, Künstler-Abenteurerin zu werden, die hauptsächlich mit der Farbe Blau malt. Mit achtzehn verliebt sie sich in Colman und zieht zu ihm. Über ihn kommt sie in einen Kreis von Junkies, Schauspielern, Trinkern, Dieben und Jazz-Musikern in West Hollywood. Nach fünf Jahren zieht es Jacaranda zurück zum Meer.
Einer ihrer Freunde wird folgendermaßen charakterisiert: "Sie wusste nur, dass Gilbert Schauspieler war, Marihuana verkaufte und sein Surfboard auf seinem Fernseher lagerte." Das beschreibt Leben und Lebensgefühl dieser Szene kompakt und treffend.
Mit achtundzwanzig schreibt Jacaranda einen Essay übers Surfen, der veröffentlicht wird. Sie wird Schriftstellerin und sieht darin die Legitimation für ihren hohen Alkoholkonsum. Sie kann nicht mehr als drei Stunden am Tag schreiben und irgendwie muss sie ja die restlichen Stunden füllen. Sie bekommt ein Angebot einer Literaturagentin aus New York. Ihr erstes Buch wird verkauft.
Im zweiten Teil reist Jacaranda nach langem Zögern nach New York. Das Treffen mit ihrem Lektor und den anderen im Verlag macht Jacaranda fertig. "Sie fühlte sich, als hätte sie eben noch vor einem Erschießungskommando gestanden, das im letzten Moment seine Meinung geändert hatte."
Anfangs wirkt das Buch beiläufig erzählt. Doch dann merkt man, dass man in ihm wie in einem Strudel gefangen ist. Aber im Gegensatz dazu ist das nicht unangenehm sondern beglückend, manchmal berauschend. Wenn man passend dazu die Musik einer Laurel Canyon Playlist hört, verstärkt sich dieser angenehme Effekt. Der Sog wird im New York-Teil etwas schwächer. Die letzten Sätze, die Jacarandas Gedanken zu Beginn der Reise zurück nach L.A., zurück zum Meer beschreiben, besitzen wieder die Klasse vom Beginn und sorgen für ein versöhnliches Ende.
Es erzählt von Sonne, Meer, Surfen und Partys. Aber auch von Alkohol, Drogen und toxischem Verhalten. Jacaranda wächst als Surferin am Meer in Santa Monica auf. Sie träumt davon, Künstler-Abenteurerin zu werden, die hauptsächlich mit der Farbe Blau malt. Mit achtzehn verliebt sie sich in Colman und zieht zu ihm. Über ihn kommt sie in einen Kreis von Junkies, Schauspielern, Trinkern, Dieben und Jazz-Musikern in West Hollywood. Nach fünf Jahren zieht es Jacaranda zurück zum Meer.
Einer ihrer Freunde wird folgendermaßen charakterisiert: "Sie wusste nur, dass Gilbert Schauspieler war, Marihuana verkaufte und sein Surfboard auf seinem Fernseher lagerte." Das beschreibt Leben und Lebensgefühl dieser Szene kompakt und treffend.
Mit achtundzwanzig schreibt Jacaranda einen Essay übers Surfen, der veröffentlicht wird. Sie wird Schriftstellerin und sieht darin die Legitimation für ihren hohen Alkoholkonsum. Sie kann nicht mehr als drei Stunden am Tag schreiben und irgendwie muss sie ja die restlichen Stunden füllen. Sie bekommt ein Angebot einer Literaturagentin aus New York. Ihr erstes Buch wird verkauft.
Im zweiten Teil reist Jacaranda nach langem Zögern nach New York. Das Treffen mit ihrem Lektor und den anderen im Verlag macht Jacaranda fertig. "Sie fühlte sich, als hätte sie eben noch vor einem Erschießungskommando gestanden, das im letzten Moment seine Meinung geändert hatte."
Anfangs wirkt das Buch beiläufig erzählt. Doch dann merkt man, dass man in ihm wie in einem Strudel gefangen ist. Aber im Gegensatz dazu ist das nicht unangenehm sondern beglückend, manchmal berauschend. Wenn man passend dazu die Musik einer Laurel Canyon Playlist hört, verstärkt sich dieser angenehme Effekt. Der Sog wird im New York-Teil etwas schwächer. Die letzten Sätze, die Jacarandas Gedanken zu Beginn der Reise zurück nach L.A., zurück zum Meer beschreiben, besitzen wieder die Klasse vom Beginn und sorgen für ein versöhnliches Ende.
November 28, 2021
sex & rage is about jacaranda, a young woman drifting through the glamorous, and not so glamorous life of the 70s. she starts out as this free-spirited surfer from LA, one with the waves, can’t start the day without being in the ocean; and slowly turns into someone she herself can’t recognize, can’t define. she has relationships with important men (to society, alas, they are actually pretty unimportant by nature), and she slowly turns to one of the many glittering, sparkling women of the era who are only trying to be for other people. they enjoy her company, when she’s drunk at least, she doesn’t get attached to people (she totally does), she doesn’t care about anything (she totally does), but mainly, she lacks a purpose for all her life. she falls in love with the enigmatic max, who stays a mystery to all of us, and probably to himself as well. sex & rage is the story of a woman who is drifting in life, unable to sit and be by herself for a moment. eve babitz writes with a narrative that can also be described a wave, just as Jacaranda’s life moves as one. unable to control, unable to define, sensual, and spontaneous.
May 31, 2018
I hate writing bad reviews for books. I tried so hard to like this book. You know the feeling when you read something, and as soon as you finish you forget what you have just read, and have to reread it? That was me throughout this whole book. I really wish I liked it but it just wasn’t engaging enough for me.
September 28, 2019
Once you've read any of Eve Babitz's books, everyone else writing about Southern California seems to be completely missing the point. She knows L.A. well and can write about its deceptive surfaces better than anyone else. Sex and Rage.
Babitz's fiction is only slightly more fictional than her non-fiction, probably because her non-fiction also tends toward the fictional.
Unlike most writers who have been sucked into the Hollywood scene, she is at one and the same time observant and literate, which makes her a formidable threat as a California writer. I've read four of her books and continue to enjoy her, especially in her descriptions of the 1960s when she was an internationally known beauty.
Babitz's fiction is only slightly more fictional than her non-fiction, probably because her non-fiction also tends toward the fictional.
Unlike most writers who have been sucked into the Hollywood scene, she is at one and the same time observant and literate, which makes her a formidable threat as a California writer. I've read four of her books and continue to enjoy her, especially in her descriptions of the 1960s when she was an internationally known beauty.
August 3, 2017
I was provided Sex and Rage from Goodreads in exchange for an honest review.
Firstly, I thought this was a new book. It's actually a reprint from the late 70's. Secondly, this was a thinly veiled memoir. I had never heard of Eve Babitz before reading Sex and Rage, and now, having done so, can't really understand why people were so fascinated with her. I get the distinct feeling she was like the Kardashians of her time.
I wanted to read Sex and Rage because the blurb spoke of a strong young woman growing up in LA and taking life head on. Instead, what I got was a strong young woman who makes crappy choices, falls head over heels for a group of too rich, too bored socialites who ended up getting her hooked on drugs and alcohol. This, in itself, is not a disqualifier for a good book, in fact it's actually a very good premise for a potentially outstanding book. This though, was not that book.
The book is essentially 3 acts. Young, glowing, full of life 1st act. Rambling, incoherent, stream-of-consciousness 2cnd act... which goes on for way too long. And the 3rd, fairly short, getting my shit together act.
Without providing spoilers, the second act dominates the book and while the blurb talks about an unrequited love... all I can say is, if that was anyone's idea of what love was like in the 60's/70's, no wonder the boomer generation was jacked up
Sorry, maybe the story is dated, though it didn't really feel like it to me, I just couldn't get past how superficial it all was... including for our main character.
Firstly, I thought this was a new book. It's actually a reprint from the late 70's. Secondly, this was a thinly veiled memoir. I had never heard of Eve Babitz before reading Sex and Rage, and now, having done so, can't really understand why people were so fascinated with her. I get the distinct feeling she was like the Kardashians of her time.
I wanted to read Sex and Rage because the blurb spoke of a strong young woman growing up in LA and taking life head on. Instead, what I got was a strong young woman who makes crappy choices, falls head over heels for a group of too rich, too bored socialites who ended up getting her hooked on drugs and alcohol. This, in itself, is not a disqualifier for a good book, in fact it's actually a very good premise for a potentially outstanding book. This though, was not that book.
The book is essentially 3 acts. Young, glowing, full of life 1st act. Rambling, incoherent, stream-of-consciousness 2cnd act... which goes on for way too long. And the 3rd, fairly short, getting my shit together act.
Without providing spoilers, the second act dominates the book and while the blurb talks about an unrequited love... all I can say is, if that was anyone's idea of what love was like in the 60's/70's, no wonder the boomer generation was jacked up
Sorry, maybe the story is dated, though it didn't really feel like it to me, I just couldn't get past how superficial it all was... including for our main character.
March 6, 2022
i love eve and her writing style but this one just didn’t hit as well for me in the end, but overall it was pretty okay.
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