Semi-Memoir, 1979
Meet Jacaranda; she’s tan with choppy bangs, has calcified knees, and you can find her where the surf is the best. She’s the kind of person you always thought you’d meet in your life, at a sophisticated party that only adults in movies and books seem to throw, or by fate, around the corner of the street. She is too dazzling to be real for those around her, but with the inner monologue we’re privy to, she is too perfectly unpolished to be real. Sex & Rage is Eve Babitz’s fictionalised memoir, which is impressive for multiple reasons, but the ones that I keep going back to are: 1) it is entirely out of my bubble of the world to imagine a life like this, and 2) the story feels too well crafted, holding such stylistic grace, for anything from it to have actually happened. This isn’t criticism; it’s awe.
Sex & Rage is not so much of a novel as it is a collection of entries that are too intelligent and witty to be diaristic. We move through Jacaranda’s life as she graduates high school and is faced with the endless void of “what now?”, but she’s a cool girl, so she doesn’t meet it with the existential dread that I would (and do). Her anxiety doesn’t come as a force, but like soft waves she can surf through. She enters the “barge”, a term used to refer to the swell and ebb of the social scene of L.A., in which rich people with undefinable jobs drink wine, stave off boredom, speak in witticisms, and snort cocaine like it’s routine. She meets Max, a man who is as glorious as he is undefinable; they meet, separate, and meet again.
But this isn’t a story about sex, drugs, and a rock-and-roll lifestyle as much as it is a bildungsroman. The actual development I was invested in was Jacaranda’s journey as a writer, from small magazine articles to a book that became “It” in New York. I read for the ambiance, but stayed for sentences that held the same clarity as a cold wave on the beach at dawn.
Song - Rhiannon
Film - Breakfast at Tiffany’s
P.S. Writing for Asian Review of Books continues! One day they will call me out for being a hack, but until that happens, or until I lose imposter syndrome, you can read my take on “Yellowface”—the book of the summer—here!
Two excellent reviews!
I just reviewed this one too 😃 it was so so impressive. Great review I loved reading your perspective