By some, I mean two. If you think the word constitutes more than that, I just wanted the alliteration, okay?
It is cliché but appropriate to end the academic year with some beach reads, though my idea of the genre isn’t modern romance. These two memoirs are genuinely some of my absolute favorites I’ve read in the past year and ever, and they are both super summery: Southern California, parties, road trips and, of course, surfing. I find them highly appropriate alternatives to a book where you know they’ll get together in the end.
Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz
Ignoring her political slide right in her older years, Babitz is one of my favorite authors. Across her work, she captures a period of intrigue — 1960s-70s Los Angeles — from the perspective of both a writer and a socialite, unflinching and with biting wit.
“Virginia Woolf said that people read fiction the same way they listen to gossip, so if you’re reading this at all then you might as well read my private asides written so he’ll read it,” she writes. “I have to be extremely funny and wonderful around him just to get his attention at all and it’s a shame to let it all go for one person.”
“Slow Days, Fast Company” is a collection of autobiographical essays, but it is also a love letter: both to Los Angeles and to an anonymous lover. Babitz describes her attempts to conquer the world, flesh and Los Angeles, growing up attending Hollywood High, attending lavish parties and taking romantic road trips.
Babitz has something for you, whether you’re entranced by her humor or just want to guess which of her pseudonymous lovers are Jim Morrison and Harrison Ford (she is The Doors’ “L.A. Woman”). If you’re a fan of fellow Californian writer Joan Didion but looking for something a little more fun, Babitz is your girl.
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
I love books about surfing. I’ve only been a few times myself and seen a few competitions, though I grew up swimming literally around the corner from the beach allegedly home to the largest wave ever surfed, so maybe it’s just my heritage.
Finnegan (a Pulitzer Prize finalist, mind you) is one of my favorite literary celebrities. He’s a staff writer for the New Yorker whose life is intertwined with surfing. He’s traveled the world to: one, find awesome waves, and two, cover wars and racism. Who said surfers were bums?
Finnegan applies his keen journalist’s eye — which he never formally attended school for — to the unique wave patterns and surfing cultures around the world. His account of shifting society in the late 20th to early 21st centuries is as illustrative as his extraordinary description of the experience of surfing dozens of different waves.
He brings you along to Hawaii, Fiji, San Francisco, Cape Town, Madeira and more, framing his memoir through his quest for the perfect wave. Even if you’ve never been surfing or can only name a few cities in “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” I promise you will enjoy this book.
All this aside, I take great issue with the bright orange spine. Who on earth picked that color? It does not look good on my bookshelf.
