(Patrick Hruby / Los Angeles Times)
Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz, 1977
“You can’t write a story about L.A. that doesn’t turn around in the middle or get lost,” Babitz writes in her second book. The collection is steeped in the understanding of a native daughter, which means she doesn’t need to explain anything. How refreshing that is — and also Babitz’s voice, which is smart and funny, evoking excess as a way of life. Or not excess exactly, but a kind of ease, a lack of pretension and the ability or willingness to embrace Los Angeles for what it is. “Eve’s masterpiece,” says the author’s biographer, Lili Anolik. — DLU
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis, 1985
“People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles,” Ellis declares in the famous opening line of “Less than Zero,” which Stephanie Danler says “belongs on this list forever and ever.” The privileged, sun- and cocaine-soaked teens of Beverly Hills use ennui to mask their fear of connection, but the book is as brave as it is bratty. It peeled back the Republican, Reagan-era sheen of Los Angeles to show beautiful rich kids who were not all right — and who, like the heroes of noir and punk, were more inclined to self-destruct than to ask for help. — CK
Read more at LA Times.