Babitz became somewhat more reclusive after this incident, but was still willing to be interviewed on occasion. One of the strengths of this collection lies in her willingness to catalog her own flaws, even when exposing unflattering facets of her personality . And if you still think you’d be fine with these issues because Babitz is dead so she can no longer profit off being evil (which I believe is OK, I also read a lot of dead white men who would tie for record-breaking gold if racism and misogyny were Olympic sports) don’t say I didn’t warn you: these stories are choppy, pointless, and artless. On the page, Babitz is pure pleasure--a perpetual-motion machine of no-stakes elation and champagne fizz. Jim Morrison is dead in Paris, Babitz has given up drugs and drinking, and the nine stories collected here are reminiscent.

A new reissue of Babitz's collection of nine stories that look back on the 1980s and early 1990s--decades of dreams, drink, and glimpses of a changing world.

A. Woman, and Sex and Rage, all works characterized by effervescent, baccalian narratives and characters living at breakneck speeds, threatening to spin violently out of control.

Namely, its preoccupation with contrived beauty and glitz and its vulnerability to nature’s impositions: the hot gale winds of the Santa Anas, the earthquakes, and the fires. There was this moment, she mentioned that when we admire an author, we think we become that same author; we believe we wrote ourselves those words. The object should create a strong reaction in the character, strong enough to change the course of their trajectory within the scene you have placed them in and act as a conduit to reveal something meaningful to both the protagonist and the reader. Oh and the author of Sweetbitter wrote an equally racially insensitive introduction to this book, so at least the one thing Black Swans added to my life was providing me with the best reason to take Sweetbitter off my TBR list.She graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University and received her MA in Literature from Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, where she is currently working toward her doctorate. From the relative privilege of retrospection, we can work out the reason why wars start, why empires collapse, why economies crash. Sex and Rage is most interesting for its early and astute portrayal of a horribly familiar, hopefully transformative late-twenties crisis.