Eve Babitz

Eve Babitz
Born (1943-05-13) May 13, 1943
Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation Novelist, essayist
Nationality American
Period 1970–present
Subject Memoir
Notable works Eve'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 fictive 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, 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]

In 1963, her first brush with notoriety came through Julian Wasser'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.[4] The photograph is described by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art as being “among the key documentary images of American modern art”.[3]

Because of her ideas about sexuality, both in writing and life, much of the press over the years has emphasized her various romantic associations with famous men, including singer/poet Jim Morrison, artists (and brothers) Ed Ruscha and Paul Ruscha, and Hopps, amongst others. Babitz appears in Ed Ruscha’s artist book Five 1965 Girlfriends.[1] Eve Babitz had affairs with comedian/writer Steve Martin, actor Harrison Ford, and writer Dan Wakefield, among others.[4] She has been compared favorably with Edie Sedgwick, the protegee of Andy Warhol at The Factory in New York City.[4]

Eve 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, "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; and L.A. Woman. 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.

In 1997, Babitz was severely injured when ash from a cigar she was smoking ignited her skirt, causing life-threatening third-degree burns over half her body. 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.[4] For instance, in interview with Ron Hogan of Beatrice, in 2000, Babitz stated, "I've got other books to do that I'm working on." 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."[5] Unfortunately, as of 2018 these books are as yet unpublished, despite the reissuing of Babitz's memoirs, novels and short story collections, by publishers the New York Review of Books, Simon & Schuster and Counterpoint Press in recent years.

Published works

Eve Babitz’s picaresque stories and essays explore a lifelong love affair with the city of Los Angeles, with her work embodying the permeability between fiction and reality characteristic of the LA imaginary. A playful but brutal honesty permeates much of her work. Writer Deborah Schapiro in a recent essay on Babitz’s first book writes, “That worldliness is also in her voice, which is self-assured yet sympathetic, cheeky and voluptuous, but registering just the right amount of irony.” Novelists Joseph Heller and Bret Easton Ellis were both fans of her work, the latter writing, “In every book she writes, Eve Babitz’s enthusiasm for L.A. and its subcultures is fully displayed.”[6]

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 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

Selected essays

References

  1. 1 2 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.
  2. ↑ Babitz, Eve. "Eve Babitz". www.beatrice.com (Interview). Interviewed by Ron Hogan.
  3. 1 2 Karlstrom, Paul. "Oral history interview with Eve Babitz, 2000 Jun 14". Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Anolik, Lili (March 2014). "All About Eve—and Then Some". Vanity Fair. Conde Nast. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
  5. ↑ "The BEATRICE Interview: 2000". www.beatrice.com. Retrieved 2018-08-30.
  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.
  • Anolik, Lili (March 2014). "All About Eve—and Then Some". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
  • Anolik, Lili (March 2014). "Eve Babitz on Being Photographed Nude with Marcel Duchamp". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
  • Brubach, Holly. "L.A. Confidential" T: The New York Times Style Magazine. August 19, 2009.
  • Gregory, Mollie, "A Slice of Hollywood : BLACK SWANS, By Eve Babitz" Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1993
  • Johnson, Reed, "Eve Babitz Kicks Off LA '60s Art World Tribute" Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2011
  • Li, Lucy, "Beyond Nude Chess: Eve Babitz Embodied Bygone L.A." toutfait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal July 7, 2011
  • Shapiro, Deborah. "Freeways, Taquitos, Stravinsky, and Speed: On Eve's Hollywood" The Second Pass. March 12, 2009.
  • Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Oral history interview with Eve Babitz, 2000 Jun 14
  • Kakutani, Michiko, "Books of The Times; Los Angeles Middle Agers Fighting the Old Ennui," New York Times, October 1, 1993
  • Eve Babitz: return of the LA woman The Guardian, November 8, 2016
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