I practically snorted this book, stayed up all night with it. Anolik decodes, ruptures, and ultimately intensifies Eves singular irresistible glitz. Jia Tolentino, *The New Yorker*
The Eve Babitz book Ive been waiting for. What emerges isnt just a portrait of a writer, but also of Los Angeles: sprawling, melancholic, and glamorous. Stephanie Danler, author of *Sweetbitter*
Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s was the pop culture capital of the worlda movie factory, a music factory, a dream factory. Eve Babitz was the ultimate factory girl, a pure product of LA.
The goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High, Babitz posed in 1963, at age twenty, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was naked; he was not. The photograph, cheesecake with a Dadaist twist, made her an instant icon of art and sex. Babitz spent the rest of the decade rocking and rolling on the Sunset Strip, honing her notoriety. There were the album covers she designed: for Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds, to name but a few. There were the men she seduced: Jim Morrison, Ed Ruscha, Harrison Ford, to name but a very few.
Then, at nearly thirty, her It girl days numbered, Babitz was discoveredas a writerby Joan Didion. She would go on to produce seven books, usually billed as novels or short story collections, always autobiographies and confessionals. Under-known and under-read during her career, shes since experienced a breakthrough. Now in her mid-seventies, shes on the cusp of literary stardom and recognition as an essentialas the essentialLA writer. Her prose achieves that American ideal: art that stays loose, maintains its cool, and is so sheerly enjoyable as to be mistaken for simple entertainment.
For Babitz, life was slow days, fast company until a freak fire in the 90s turned her into a recluse, living in a condo in West Hollywood, where Lili Anolik tracked her down in 2012. Anoliks elegant and provocative new book is equal parts biography and detective story. It is also on dangerously intimate terms with its subject: artist, writer, muse, and one-woman zeitgeist, Eve Babitz.
**
Review
Thefirst injectable biography. James Wolcott,Vanity Faircolumnist and author of*Lucking Out*
Lili Anolik has hunted and captured her favorite forgotten author and helped to save Babitzs long out-of-print books from the dustbin of cultural history. Now, like Babitz before her, she has created her own genre: fan nonfiction. In fevered, up-all-night-chain-smoking-at-the-Chateau prose perfectly suited to her subject, she excavates the lost world that Babitz so deftly wove into her autofiction.Karina Longworth, creator and host of*You Must Remember This*
Read Lili Anoliks book in the same spirit youd read a new Eve Babitz, if there was one: for the gossip and for the writing. Both are extraordinary. Jonathan Lethem, author of*Motherless Brooklyn*
If there is a fresher, more vibrant voice than Lili Anolik's out there, I don't know of it.She is atrue original.Graydon Carter
Just as Babitz introduced her slender 1977 masterpiece Slow Days, Fast Company as an effort to seduce not the reader but a disinterested boyfriend, so Anolik announces this book as her own wayward, digressive romance. The breeziness is a feint: Anolik spent years on research, working meticulously to fill in the blanks where Babitz or her compadres had been too drunk to rememberAnoliks fantasy Eve reflects Babitzs brilliance at self-presentation.*Harpers *
There's no better way to look at Hollywood in that magic decade, the 1970s, than through Eve Babitz's eyes. Eve knew everyone, slept witheveryone, used, amused, and abused everyone. And then there's Eve herself: a cult figure turned into a legend in Anolik's electrifying book. This is a portrait as mysterious, maddening-and seductive-as its subject. Peter Biskind, author of *Easy Riders, Raging Bulls*
Lili Anolik's love letter to Eve Babitz is as probing and intelligent as it is outrageously fun, swirling with secrets and gossip, celebrity and art, feminism and literature and tragedy and sex and sex and sex. Aglorious tripthrough the looking glass of a golden-age L.A., Hollywoods Eve makes the case for Babitz as chronicler and muse of an era even as it paints an unsparing picture of its lost illusions.Joe Hagan, author of Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone* Magazine*
Let other writers worship at the banal altar of L.A. Thanatos; Anoliks Eve isthefearless beating heart ofL.A. Eros, and her inimitable voice comes alive in Anoliks own lovingly warmand penetrating celebration of Babitzs magnificent beauty, wildness and art. Elizabeth Frank, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of *Cheat and Charmer*
Anolik shares deep cuts from Babitz's writing and influence over the major players of the era Come for the LA intrigue; stay for the surprising moral of the story. *Kirkus Reviews*
Perfect for fans of Hollywood in its glory years, this is a biography energetically told. Publishers Weekly
[A] smart, fast-paced meditation on Babitz Anolik sees her as ruthless, unencumbered, unapologetic. In other words, an artist. BookPage
Anolik now presents the full jaw-dropping drama of Babitzs on-the-edge life and complicated personality, paired with an account of Anolik's pursuit of her wily subject. With the recent reissue of Babitz's books, this radical American writer of stunning verve, candor, and insight is truly a phoenix rising. *Booklist*
The Eve Babitz story you've been looking fora true page-turner about an icon of Los Angeles' 1960s art scene that'll satisfy your thirst for glitz, glam, and drama.Womens Day
[A] loving and perceptive new book on Babitz [Babitzs]unique and entertaining body of work is now crowned by Lili Anoliks Hollywoods Eve.Los Angeles Review of Books
About the Author
Lili Anolik's work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Harper's, and Believer, among other publications. Dark Rooms is her first novel.
Number of Words in Auth: 2
Formats : EPUB
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All Identifiers : amazon:B07CMXZM8Q
Single Author : Lili Anolik
Original Source : New_Files_From_Horla_2019.01.25
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