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

Author (Dark Rooms), ghostwriter, and editor Anolik can be credited for much of the recent Eve Babitz revival. Her 2014 Vanity Fair profile of the party girl, muse, collagist, and chronicler of fast-lane 1960s and 1970s California life, now a recluse, helped put Babitz back in the spotlight. Reprints and reissues of Babitz's seven autobiographical novels-cum-memoirs followed, and recognition of her talent spread beyond a small, devoted following. Opening with nearly the same text as the Vanity Fair piece, Anolik moves in many directions, trying to tell Babitz's story; explain her mystique then and now; critique her body of work; compare it to that of her peers, including Joan Didion; recount the golden days of L.A., and discuss the freak fire that nearly killed Babitz in the late 1990s. The author cobbles together an oral history of the scene and her subject's place in it by interviewing lovers (those still living), family members, and friends, as well as extrapolating from Babitz's books. After a brief discussion of the "New Journalism," Anolik puts herself in the narrative, describing awkward meetings and obsession with Babitz and contrasting their lives and lifestyle choices.