“She figured that any day now she was going to start feeling the simple composure of normalcy that Jane Austen’s heroines always sought to maintain, the state described in those days as “countenance,” and later as “being cool.”
Originally published in 1979 and reissued in 2017, Sex and Rage is an autobiographical novel about Jacaranda Leven, a thinly veiled stand in for Babitz. Jacaranda moves dreamily through the LA social scene, glimmering in the LA sun like the bubbles rising in a glass of champagne. She falls in love with and pursues an affair with a married man, and she with other men she gauges the likelihood of a sexual relationship during introductions. Everything vibrates with possibility and pleasure. But at 28, jobless and feeling purposeless, Jacaranda leaves LA for New York City, in search of something a bit firmer, a bit more real, and a bit more grounding.
Given the autobiographical aspects of the novel, there really isn’t a plot. Rather, it’s a book about restlessness, about the choices we make that determine the trajectory of our lives, our careers, and our heartbreaks. The writing is self-aware, simultaneously judgmental and excusing of Jacaranda’s actions. It’s so self-aware that, at one point, Babitz breaks the fourth wall and refers to the infamous photo of her playing chess nude (a photo taken out of revenge when Babitz’s married boyfriend failed to invite her to a party celebrating the opening of Duchamp’s retrospective, which her boyfriend curated).
Jacaranda is hedonistic, pursuing pleasure in every form with little regard for consequences. Sex and Rage focuses on all the glittery aspects of LA living with an undertone of the inevitable rot that will come. It’s a story of home, of self-identity, of reinvention, and indulgence.
Have you read this one? ✨
SEX AND RAGE by Eve Babitz
Read It Like Rory 