I Used to Be Charming

August 1, 2019
Zesty essays by a sly observer. Journalist and novelist Babitz (Two by Two: Tango, Two-Step, and the L.A. Night, 1999, etc.) gathers nearly 40 personal essays, book reviews, travel pieces, and celebrity profiles, published between 1976 and 1997, that give ebullient testimony to her colorful, star-studded past. "I have always loved scenes," she writes, "bars where people come in and out in various degrees of flash, despair, gossip, and brilliance." And she loved parties, too: "Nothing makes me feel worse than knowing I'm missing the right party." She recounts parties galore: in Los Angeles, Hollywood, Miami, and New York; in swanky apartments, mansions, and nightclubs; attended by the rich, famous, and soon-to-be-famous--e.g., pre-Doors Jim Morrison. Babitz met Morrison at a Sunset Strip club when she was 22 and "propositioned him in three minutes, even before he so much as opened his mouth to sing." He was sexy, seductive, and, she soon discovered, self-destructive: "Jim drank, got drunk, and wanted to be shown the way to the Next Whiskey Bar." Sex, drugs, and rock and roll characterized "an entire generation" that became "dazzled by a drug with the density, force, and newness of LSD," recoiled at images of napalm bombings, and surged together "As One waiting for the next Beatles album to come out." But the generation learned a crucial lesson, as well: "that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance." The collection includes a charming recollection of posing nude with Marcel Duchamp; sympathetic portraits of actors James Woods, Nicholas Cage, and Billy Baldwin; and a paean to her friend Linda Ronstadt, whose voice was "opulent with happiness and excellence." Babitz muses on body-building gym culture; her efforts to lose weight with the help of "diet, amphetamines, and the gentle augmentation of cocaine"; the pain of yoga; and, in a particularly endearing piece, the unexpected pleasure of ballroom dancing. The title essay, never before published, recounts a 1997 accident that resulted in devastating third-degree burns. A spirited, entertaining collection.

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August 26, 2019
Novelist and journalist Babitz’s one-of-a-kind voice and sharp, observational eye make for a singular, often exhilarating, ride in this assemblage of her articles from the 1970s through the ’90s. Their through line is provided by Babitz’s clear-eyed but loving evocation of her native city, Los Angeles. It’s filled with a starry cast of characters, including Glenn Frey, Jim Morrison, and Linda Ronstadt, and with alternately glamorous and gritty locales, from the famous Troubadour club to a diner seemingly unchanged since the ’30s, which is “sort of the only place in L.A. you can go without accidentally bumping into an alfalfa sprout.” Else-where, she comically but cannily discusses the “physical insanity” of the exercise craze she partakes in, wryly muses on the relations of men to her large breasts (“no man has ever made a serious pass at me without assuring me he was a leg man”), and analyzes the joys of ballroom dancing. In one particularly memorable essay, she recounts how she ended up in the famous photograph of Marcel Duchamp playing chess with a naked young woman. And despite the title’s implication, Babitz’s writing remains, in fact, charming, as well as funny and insightful, throughout this fabulous collection.