Eve Babitz

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Eve Babitz
Born (1943-05-13) May 13, 1943 (age 78)
Los Angeles, California, United States
OccupationNovelist, essayist
NationalityAmerican
Period1970–present
SubjectMemoir
Notable worksEve's Hollywood (1974)
Slow Days, Fast Company (1977)
Fiorucci, The Book (1980)

Eve Babitz (born May 13, 1943) is an American artist and author best known for her semi-fictionalized memoirs and her relationship to the cultural milieu of Los Angeles.

Life and career[]

Babitz was born in Hollywood, California, the daughter of Mae, an artist, and Sol Babitz, a classical violinist on contract with 20th Century Fox.[1] Her father was of Russian Jewish descent and her mother had Cajun (French) ancestry.[2] Babitz's parents were friends with the composer Igor Stravinsky, who was her godfather.[3] She attended Hollywood High School.[4]

In 1963, her first brush with notoriety came through 's iconic photograph of a nude, twenty-year-old Babitz playing chess with the artist Marcel Duchamp, on the occasion of his landmark retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum. The show was curated by Walter Hopps, with whom Babitz was having an affair at the time.[5] The photograph is described by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art as being "among the key documentary images of American modern art".[3]

Babitz began her independent career as an artist, working in the music industry for Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records, making album covers. In the late 1960s, she designed album covers for Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield. Her most famous cover was a collage for the 1967 album Buffalo Springfield Again.

Her articles and short stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire magazines. She is the author of several books including Eve's Hollywood, Slow Days, Fast Company, Sex and Rage, Two By Two, L.A. Woman, and Black Swans. Transitioning to her particular blend of fiction and memoir beginning with Eve's Hollywood, Babitz's writing of this period is indelibly marked by the cultural scene of Los Angeles during that time, with numerous references and interactions to the artists, musicians, writers, actors, and sundry other iconic figures that made up the scene in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. A playful but brutal honesty permeates much of her work. Novelists Joseph Heller and Bret Easton Ellis were fans of her work, with the latter writing, "In every book she writes, Babitz’s enthusiasm for L.A. and its subcultures is fully displayed."[6]

Despite her literary output, which has drawn frequent caparisons to Joan Didion and garnered widespread critical acclaim,[7][8][9][10][11] much of the press about Babitz has emphasized her various romantic associations with famous men. These relationships included singer/poet Jim Morrison, artists (and brothers) Ed Ruscha and Paul Ruscha, and Hopps, as well as the comedian and writer Steve Martin, the actor Harrison Ford, and the writer Dan Wakefield, among others.[5] Ed Ruscha included her in Five 1965 Girlfriends (Walker Arts Center's Design Journal, 1970).[1] Because of this, she has been likened to Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol's 1965 protégée at The Factory in New York City.[5]

In Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A., biographer Lili Anolik observes, “passing herself off as a groupie allowed Eve to infiltrate, edge into territory from which she’d otherwise have been barred."[12] Reviewing this biography for The Nation, journalist Marie Solis noted, "Babitz didn’t live a life free from patriarchy, but modern-day readers might surmise that she found a way to outsmart it. Despite her proximity as a Hollywood insider to the powerhouses of male celebrity, she rarely succumbed to their charms; instead, she made everyone play by her own rules."[13]

In 1997, Babitz was severely injured when she accidentally dropped a lit match onto a gauze skirt, which ignited the garment and melted her pantyhose beneath it; ultimately the accident caused life-threatening third-degree burns over half her body.[14] Because she had no health insurance, friends and family organized a fund-raising auction to pay her medical bills. Friends and former lovers donated cash and artworks to help pay for her long recovery. Babitz became somewhat more reclusive after this incident, but was still willing to be interviewed on occasion.[5] For instance, in a 2000 interview with Ron Hogan of Beatrice magazine, Babitz stated, "I've got other books to do that I'm working on."[15] When asked by Hogan what those books would be about, Babitz replied: "One's fiction and the other's nonfiction. The nonfiction book is about my experiences in the hospital. The other's a fictionalized version of my parents' lives in Los Angeles, my father's Russian Jewish side and my mother's Cajun French side."[15]

As of 2019, these books remain unpublished.

Resurgence[]

Babitz has enjoyed a renaissance over the past decade due, in part, to the reissuing of much of her work by publishers including New York Review Books, Simon & Schuster and Counterpoint Press.[16][17][18] In 2019, New York Review of Books published I Used to Be Charming, a previously uncollected selection of Babitz's essays.[19] In The Paris Review, writer Molly Lambert observed, "Babitz is at home anywhere, and everywhere she goes she finds the most interesting person, the weirdest place, the funniest throwaway detail. She makes writing seem effortless and fun, which any writer can tell you is the hardest trick of all."[10] In a 2009 review of Eve's Hollywood, Deborah Shapiro describes Babitz's voice as "self-assured yet sympathetic, cheeky and voluptuous, but registering just the right amount of irony," and goes on to say, "reading West (and Fante and Chandler and Cain and the like) made me want to go to Los Angeles. Babitz makes me feel like I'm there."[20]

The New York Public Library convened a 2016 panel on "The Eve Effect," that included Girls actress Zosia Mamet and New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino.[21][7] In 2017, Hulu announced it would be developing a comedy series based on Babitz's memoirs, a project led by Liz Tigelaar, Amy Pascal, and Elizabeth Cantillon.[22]

Published Works[]

Fiction[]

Publisher information relates to first publication only. Some of the books have been reissued.

  • Eve's Hollywood (1974) New York, NY: Delacorte Press/S. Lawrence. ISBN 0440023394 OCLC 647012057
  • Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A.: Tales (1977) New York, NY: Knopf/Random House. ISBN 0394409841 LCCN 76-47922 OCLC 2645787
  • Sex and Rage: Advice to Young Ladies Eager for a Good Time; a Novel (1979) New York, NY: Knopf. ISBN 0394425812 OCLC 1001915515
  • L.A. Woman (1982) New York, NY: Linden Press/Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671420860 OCLC 8110896
  • Black Swans: Stories (1993) New York, NY: Knopf/Random House. ISBN 0679405186 OCLC 27067318

Non-fiction[]

  • Fiorucci, The Book (1980) New York, NY: Harlin Quist/Dial/Delacorte. ISBN 0825226082 OCLC 900307237
  • Two by Two: Tango, Two-step, and the L.A. Night (1999). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0684833921 OCLC 41641459
  • I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz (2019). New York, NY: New York Review of Books ISBN 9781681373799 OCLC 1100441110

Selected essays[]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Nelson, Steffie, L.A. Woman The Los Angeles Review of Books, December 18, 2011 "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-01-22. Retrieved 2012-05-01.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. ^ Babitz, Eve. "Eve Babitz". www.beatrice.com (Interview). Interviewed by Ron Hogan.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b Karlstrom, Paul. "Oral history interview with Eve Babitz, 2000 Jun 14". Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
  4. ^ Babitz, Eve (2019). "All This and The Godfather Too". I Used To Be Charming. New York: New York Review of Books. pp. 39–40. ISBN 9781681373799.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Anolik, Lili (March 2014). "All About Eve—and Then Some". Vanity Fair. Conde Nast. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
  6. ^ Babitz, Eve (1999-11-03). Two by Two: Tango, Two-Step, and the L.A. Night (First Printing ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780684833927.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b Green, Penelope (2019-10-03). "The Eve Babitz Revival". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  8. ^ Tolentino, Jia. "The "Sex and Rage" of Eve Babitz". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  9. ^ "Eve Babitz chronicled L.A.'s hedonist heyday and enjoyed the party". Los Angeles Times. 2019-01-18. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  10. ^ Jump up to: a b Lambert, Molly (2019-10-07). "The Perseverance of Eve Babitz's Vision". The Paris Review. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  11. ^ Ciuraru, Carmela (2015-10-28). "Review: New Novels by Paul Murray, César Aira and Others". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  12. ^ Anolik, Lili (2019). Hollywood's Eve : Eve Babitz and the secret history of L.A. New York: Scribner. ISBN 978-1-5011-2579-9. OCLC 1057240688.
  13. ^ Solis, Marie (2019-02-08). "Eve Babitz's Visions of Total Freedom". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  14. ^ Babitz 2019, pp. 357-358, ch. "I Used To Be Charming".
  15. ^ Jump up to: a b "The BEATRICE Interview: 2000". www.beatrice.com. Retrieved 2018-08-30.
  16. ^ "Eve Babitz". New York Review Books. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  17. ^ "Eve Babitz". Simon & Schuster. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  18. ^ "Eve Babitz". Counterpoint Press. 2017-01-25. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  19. ^ "I Used to Be Charming". New York Review Books. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  20. ^ "The Second Pass". Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  21. ^ Cohen, Stefanie (2019-01-05). "How a badass, ex-drug addict groupie became a millennial hero at 75". New York Post. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  22. ^ Andreeva, Nellie (4 October 2017). "Hulu Developing 'LA Woman' Comedy Based On Eve Babitz Memoirs From Liz Tigelaar, Amy Pascal and Elizabeth Cantillon". Retrieved 4 October 2017.

External links[]

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