Eve's Hollywood (New York Review Books Classics)

Product Information

After most of her work went out of print, she was praised in a 2014 Vanity Fair article by Anolik as an overlooked and unbowed genius. Eve’s Hollywood, Slow Days, Fast Company and other books were reissued, a well-regarded biography by Anolik was published in 2019 and Babitz was discovered by a generation of younger women, leading her to joke: “It used to be only men who liked me, now it’s only girls.” And to Annie Leibovitz and her trusty companion, Citizen Wenner, gathering moss to the North. And to Grover Lewis who dispels gloom with blue eyes in a blue town with blue rugs, Texanly. And Sara and Charlie and the girl with the coke. Have you ever had an appetizer and asked why don't they turn that into an entree? That's what this novella is. Towles took one image from Rules of Civility and turned it into six interwoven stories about Evelyn Ross in old Hollywood. Just as Rules of Civility left you wanting more, which presumably resulted in this book, Eve in Hollywood leaves you wanting more of whatever Towles is cooking up next. Simply put, the book is great -- there is just not enough of it. And to the Tartuffo con panna on the via Buffalo or the Piazza Navona where you think at last you're getting enough chocolate. And you might be.

You can tell that Towles wrote it, his voice shines through, but it’s pretentious, incredibly unorganized, and just a pain to read. I thought that maybe this was scrapped material from Rules, but all of the prose is B-grade when placed against the other novel.

And to the future good will of Consumer's Liquor, the best liquor store in America and aptly named. And to the Sandabs at Musso's, the Eggplant Florentine, the guy who makes the pancakes and my friend in the parking lot (not the one on the ground, the one who parks your car, the young one). And to the crabpuffs at Don the Beachcomber's. She wrote of being driven home in her teens and kissed by an older man, Johnny Stompanato, who, in one of Hollywood’s most sensational scandals, was later murdered by the daughter of Lana Turner in what was ruled a justifiable homicide.

On the phone, she talked like she looked. On the phone, she talked like she wrote. On the phone, she was what Laurie said she no longer could be: She was Eve Babitz.

And a minute after that, Mirandi was at the table too, and an energetic discussion ensued about the best route to take from the Eastside to Hollywood at midday. I really loved the debut novel Rules of Civility, so I was delighted to find this book of six linked stories, which looks at what happened to character Evelyn Ross after she left New York. "Rules of Civility" was based around three friends - working girls Katey Kontent and Evelyn Ross, plus the wealthy and handsome Tinker Grey. Set in Jazz Age New York, the novel centres on Katey but, at the end of the novel, Eve leaves for home and somehow ends up in LA. These stories tell you how she made her way to Hollywood and what happens to her while she is there. However, it is not necessary to have read "Rules of Civility" to read these stories, which do stand alone. surfeit of style. In “ Sex and Rage,” Babitz’s novel from 1979, reissued this month by Counterpoint, the protagonist is a Babitz double named A frozen moment. And then the moment passed when Laurie collapsed theatrically in the seat beside me. “The drive here was craaaazy,” she said.