Eve's Hollywood

Starred review from November 16, 2015
In this reissued collection of autobiographical essays, first published in 1972, Babitz (L.A. Woman) describes coming of age amid the glamour of 1950s and '60s Hollywood. Her chronicle is laced with acerbic wit and sparkling charm. Babitz peppers her writing with cultural references that include Marlon Brando, Janis Joplin, and Igor Stravinsky. The essays cover Babitz's family history, the halls of Hollywood High (where the school mascot is the Sheik, after Rudolph Valentino's character in the silent film of the same name), and her early adulthood. Babitz is a keen observer of her social milieu and the effects of beauty on power, and comes across as both a savvy cosmopolite and an ingénue in the same breath. "I got deflowered on two cans of Rainier Ale when I was 17," she begins her essay "Sins of the Green Death," an unflinching look at her sexual awakening and disillusionment with education and the values of her parents. Babitz takes the reader on travels to New York and Rome, but California provides her main canvas: a place where movie stars are discovered, earthquakes reverberate, and beautiful women overdose on drugs. Hollywood is, she says, quoting Jim Morrison, "trapped in a prison of her own devise," but it is a prison she seems glad to be trapped in.