Eve Babitz is a Hollywood icon, best known for her sharply written autobiographical novels and her string of very famous boyfriends. Now from Lili Anolik, the writer who first reignited interest in Babitz with a 2014 profile for Vanity Fair, comes HOLLYWOOD’S EVE: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A. ( Scribner, January 2019).
In HOLLYWOOD’S EVE, Anolik examines Eve, her novels, and her uneasy legacy as a woman navigating Hollywood on her own distinct and unconventional terms. Babitz is a cipher, a riddle that Anolik tries to unravel: Eve Babitz, feminist icon? Eve Babitz, the groupie’s groupie? Eve Babitz, Hollywood casualty? Eve Babitz, the anti-Didion? But Eve, as Anolik beautifully demonstrates, defies easy explanation and justification.
Anolik shares incredible interviews with pivotal figures from Eve’s life and telling anecdotes from Eve’s friends, enemies, admirers, rivals, and family members. She talked to Paul Ruscha, brother of Ed and lover of Eve (Ed was also Eve’s lover, and Anolik talks to him, as well). She talked to Steve Martin, Julian Wasser, and Dan Wakefield—all Eve paramours. She talked to Mirandi, Eve’s devoted sister who followed Eve’s path until she no longer could. And Bret Easton Ellis, whose debut novel Eve loved (and endorsed!) And, of course, she talked – extensively, endlessly, semi-daily for six years – to Eve herself, now a recluse who talks to almost no one.
Part love letter, part cultural history, part missing-persons investigation; HOLLYWOOD’S EVE is tremendous fun and as breezy and juicy as its subject.