Slow Days, Fast Company

by Eve Babitz (1977)

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I am so ecstatic to have finally read my first Eve Babitz! I have long craved another work of literature that could capture Los Angeles as eloquently and expertly as Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and I found that with Babitz. Slow Days, Fast Company is a collection of essays about Babitz's life in Los Angeles; each story is tied to a location and usually whichever lover she had at the time. I found Babitz voice raw and real, her stories relatable, her friends and lovers endearing and strange, and her insights into the Los Angeles experience utterly perfect.

This is the first time I've gone into a book with a highlighter in hand; there were so many stunning sentences and Babitz works with language in a way that puts feelings previously undefined into brief and beautiful words. I don't have much to say about Slow Days, Fast Company besides if you care about Los Angeles at all, I highly recommend you read it. Here are some of my favorite quotes from Babitz's fantastic stories below (no spoilers!).

You can't write a story about L.A. that doesn't turn around in the middle or get lost.

...the world wasn't all power struggles between me and pasta.

I felt luxuriously involved in an insolvable mystery, my favorite way to feel.

There was no extra energy in those women beyond their children or their particular geography. There was no energy for humor or wit, and I wondered at my friends in L.A. who were always brimming over with spare words and bright phrases.

He wore a cowboy hat with the eye of a peacock feather stuck in the band, and he was one of those creatures so young and almost mystically cheerful that he seemed doomed.

A pepper tree is at the end of our court. An old lady who grew up in Hollywood told me that once all the streets here were lined with pepper trees and then the cars came and they died.

I've often noticed that there is a moment when a man develops enough confidence and ease in a relationship to bore you to death.

People take me to screenings of obscure films... they don't take me to baseball games.

I thought people who went to places I never went, like baseball games, were all fat, middle-aged, blue-collar workers holding Pabst Blue Ribbon... All these people looked like they were going to a Dylan concert.

I love hordes. They screen out free choice; you're free at last: stuck.

...dying to cigarettes just doesn't have the tragic sunset quality that O.D.ing lends to death.

"Well, now that you're a star, how does it feel?" Trapped. There was no place to go but up.

... she asked if I ever had any free time to go out for a drink, and I told her my whole life was free time and why didn't we go right then.

"But what I want now is a nice young man with good manners..." she paused to consider, "who gives great head."

"Sometimes if you can't get what you want, you get what the person you want wants."

I believe that most people put ninety-eight percent of all their creative energy into trying to stage marvelous love scenes.

I wondered why I got so angry at men who said dumb things when they saw something they thought was beautiful.

It couldn't hurt to think I was beautiful anyway. After all, I think L.A.'s beautiful and it's not fashionable or right.

She really does hate parties and crowds and she really does love people one by one in such a way that she's bound to always be involved in parties and crowds.

I gave myself up to the situation gradually; we were in Orange County, so of course anything that was fascinating, a new idea, a breakthrough, was kept outside the gates.

Women... want their lover to remember the way they held a glass. They want to haunt.

...once you set sail on [making] a movie, you are out of touch with ordinary land.

I hope you are inspired by Babitz's words to pick up Slow Days, Fast Company for yourself and give it a read. As a resident of Orange County all my life, I especially loved the story where she visits Laguna Beach and finds herself drowning in the utter monotony of the wealthy beach town. I have also spent a lot of time in Echo Park, so I loved the essay about the Dodgers game and how she was surprised that everyone in attendance looked like they could have been at a Bob Dylan concert (any reference to Bob Dylan will guarantee my enjoyment, he is a major contributor to Cheyenne on a plate). I will also fall in love with any discussion of the Santa Ana winds; Didion captures how dreary and sickening they are in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, but I was pleasantly surprised that Babitz adored the winds and claimed they made her "hilarious."

I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on Babitz in the comments, and I am excited to pick up another work of hers very soon! I am so overjoyed to have found another favorite author and I am quite confident I will enjoy every word she writes on every page. Follow me on Goodreads to see what I've read and what I'm reading now. Happy reading!

★★★★★

Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz (1977)

-Cheyenne