I thought I wouldn’t enjoy this book because of the reviews, but I liked Jacaranda a lot, and I was rooting for her at the end.

Here are some quotes from the book that stood out to me while reading.

“The more someone liked her writing, the fewer clothes she felt she had on”

“Sometimes when you have had a little too much to drink, people who don’t know how wonderful you are might get the wrong impression” — “You’re fun when you’re drunk. The life of the party”

“Jacaranda’s face mirrored, over and over in the shop windows, how vulnerable and foreign she was.”

“Those skies had been done as well as they ever could be. All the art she’d ever done was but a thimbleful of color compared to one inch of this Matisse…Picasso had been through the sky, come out the other end, dug to China with a child’s shovel, and sen opposite skies…while Matisse just sat at home. And somehow his skies were bluer.” ( )

2.5 stars ( )

I'd actually barely heard of Eve Babitz before picking this one up, and I've got to admit that the big, bold colors on the cover helped make my decision to buy it easier. In a lot of ways, the story inside, which involves a surfer girl called Jacaranda who takes up with and is later dropped by a crowd of fabulously wealthy pseudo-sophisticates is about as subtle as the cover. But Babitz seems to be writing directly against New York ideas about California and pulls of a gorgeous trick by wholeheartedly embracing its most shallow aspects. Jacaranda herself, and some of her friends, are beautiful and likable, but it's hard to say, at the end of the novel, that we know very much about what goes on inside of them. We know even less about Jacaranda's writing, which is what finally rescues her from a life of alcoholism and shallow cliquishness, but that's less of a bug than a feature here. Babitz herself embraces glossy surfaces here and makes it pretty clear that she's not here to amuse the crowd at the "New Yorker" by finding lots of deep meaning in West Coast locales where it might not exist anyway. Even in its last scenes, "Sex and Rage," she seems to be arguing that the shallow and thrilling also has something to say.

This may or may not sound terrible to you, but "Sex and Rage" succeeds mostly because the author doesn't miss a note. Her writing's vibrant and her observations are sharp; I agree with the reviewer that described Jacaranda not as written but "sculpted." It also helps that the novel has the relentless momentum of an amphetamine binge and that Babitz seems to have a preternatural understanding of the tribal rites that govern the interractions of the pointlessly rich. This isn't to say that "Sex and Rage" is some sort of underhanded criticism or satire -- I honestly don't think that it is. But I think it's possible that a lot of midcentury American life felt easy and fun and a bit superfical to a fair number of lucky people, and the fact that Babitz picked up on this while it was mostly still going on means that she might have possessed insight on the level of such generational prophets as, say, Tom Wolfe. If she did, it's a further credit to her that she seems to have no intention of judging her subjects, fictional though they may be. Anyway, I don't know if I'll read Babitz again, but I've got to admit that "Sex and Rage" is really something special: a novel reads as well on a beach blanket as it does in an artsy café. That's not a trick that just any writer could pull off. ( )

Reminded me very much of Carrie Fishers Postcards from the Edge. Same location, lots of booze, drugs and fabulous people being a bit fucked up.
A very enjoyable read. ( )

Pretentious and beautiful

Babitz can write! And Jacaranda is beautifully sculpted. From being a big-headed surf weed into a callused alcoholic and then back. The ride is like surfing. The beauty is almost always sad and a little high society cliché. The proof is in the pudding: I read this novel compulsively, with the ravenous hunger of my teens and twenties. ( )