Skylight Books, Los Angeles

MOLLY LAMBERT, GEOFF DYER AND TOSH BERMAN DISCUSS I USED TO BE CHARMING: THE REST OF EVE BABITZ

From the 1970s through the 1990s, Eve 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 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, Nicolas Cage takes her for a ride in his ’67 Stingray and in another she dishes about dragging Jim Morrison to bed before 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, and in another, the never-before-published title essay, she writes about the tragic accident that compelled her to leave that spotlight behind forever.

Molly Lambert is a writer from and in Los Angeles.

Geoff Dyer’s many books include the novel Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, But Beautiful (about jazz), Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It, Zona (about Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker) and Out of Sheer Rage (on D. H. Lawrence). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. His books have won numerous prizes and have been translated into twenty-four languages. He is Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California.

Tosh Berman is a writer and publisher and editor for TamTam Books. His memoir TOSH: Growing Up in Wallace Berman’s World was recently published by City Lights Books.

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