Hollywood's Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.

Hollywood's Eve is not a conventional biography and its subject, Eve Babitz, is not a conventional person. For one, she is a living work of art in a famous photograph, immersed in a game of chess, completely naked, with a non-plussed Marcel Duchamp. As an artist, her collage LP covers grace the

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record albums of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Linda Ronstadt, Leon Russell, et al. And, as an aside, even though she was a mainstay in the LA music scene as it conquered the world, it would be misleading to characterize her as a 'groupie.' You see, if anything, personages like Steve Martin, painter Ed Ruscha, rockers Gram Parsons and other glitterati, were on her radar BEFORE they were household names. If anything, Babitz 'collected' men (and perhaps women) and took from them, not the other way around. She was an artist in need of a muse, and she simply reversed the process. No "male gaze" with Eve! In 1974, however, she found a new pursuit with a literary 'voice' that was romantic yet sardonic. Her prose dripped with irony and heartbreak. For almost two decades, novels, memoir-like vignettes, short fiction, articles, and essays. Her first published book, Eve's Hollywood, exploded into the American literary consciousness; as this narrative makes clear, she was the antithesis of the East Coast literary establishment (listening, Joan Didion?) who despised Southern California with a passion that disguised their envy. Times change, an unfortunate accident took place, in a car no less, and younger generations moved into the scene, and Eve was lost in the times. But not for long. A few articles, this biography, and a host of publisher's reissue programs, brought most of her oeuvre back into print. All of this took place shortly after the publication of Hollywood's Eve, probably the reason for the new impetus; nonetheless, the very best part of this captivating little biography is that Lili Anolik tells her story in Eve's voice. What a bonus! Reading prose dripping with irony over the failures and foibles of the rich and famous is such a treat!

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