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I Used to Be Charming
I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz | Eve Babitz
2 posts | 1 read | 5 to read
Previously uncollected nonfiction pieces by Hollywood's ultimate It Girl about everything from fashion to tango to Jim Morrison and Nicholas Cage. Eve Babitz knew everyone, tried everything (at least once), and was never shy about sharing her thoughts on any subject, be it sex, weight loss, drug use, or her ambivalence toward New York City. From the 1970s through the 1990s, Babitz wrote on a wild variety of topics for some of the biggest publications around, from Esquire to Vogue to The New York Times Book Review. I Used to Be Charming brings together the best of this nonfiction work. All previously uncollected, these pieces range from sharp personal essays on body image and the male gaze to playful meditations on everything from ballroom dancing to kissing to perfume. There are breathtaking celebrity profiles, too. In one, Nicholas Cage takes her for a ride in his '67 Sting Ray and in another she dishes about dragging Jim Morrison to bed before the The Doors had even settled on a band name ("Jim was embarrassing because he wasn't cool, but I still loved him," she writes). In another essay, the author ponders her earliest days in the spotlight, posing nude with Marcel Duchamp in that famous Julian Wasser photo, and in another, the title essay, she writes about the tragic accident that compelled her to leave that spotlight behind forever.
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Booksnchill
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I took advantage of the NYRB January sale and got these beauties! How can you resist these evocative covers? 💖

LeahBergen Nice! 5y
BarbaraBB Gorgeous 😍 5y
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review
Bookalong
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Pickpick

5/5🌟Nobody lives and writes quite like Eve Babitz she is lesser known for her journalistic career than for her L.A. party girl persona but this collection of her professional free lance work is such a treat! Still so Eve, Fresh, Funny and Facinating! Is there anything this woman can't write about?!
Here is almost 50 pieces written between 1975 -1997. The whole collection was really engaging! I will definitely be revisiting this one regularly.

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