I've been reading continuously like maybe for fifty years.  Many of my students have parents that haven't been around that long.   But, if you were going to ask me what I like to read, I would have trouble telling you.  I'm all over the place.  There isn't really any pattern or logic to my reading choices.  Highbrow.  Lowbrow. Old white-guy authors.  New women-of-color writers.  History books.  Noir fiction.  Baseball.  I used to read in French; now, I read in Spanish.   My journey started with the books my teachers shoved down my throat in high school and college and continues up until today, because I do pretty much the same to my own students what my teachers did to me.  Some of the reading assignments that appear in my syllabi look eerily similar to what I read when I myself was in college.  I've managed to sneak in a few stories that are fairly distant from any department reading list. When my students complain about why are we reading "this?"  I want to tell them I've been reading for over one half of a century.  Trust me.  In this class,  I try to take out the boring stuff.  Let's keep it fun.    

Lili Anolik may have discovered Eve Babitz in the same way I did.  Lili was a young editor for Vanity Fair in 2010 and came across an Eve Babitz quote in a novel or memoir she was reading.   This was on the New York City subway on her way home from work. The book was titled The Hollywood Animal, and the quote – somthing about Sex and L.A. inspired Lili's imagination.  Lili was a writer in search of an idea for her own book.  When she got home, she googled Eve Babitz, and got everything and more than she wanted.  This was it.  She had never heard of Eve Babitz, but everything she read about her in her google search inspired her to read more.  It didn't take her long after reading her first Eve Babitz book to decide she was going to hunt down Eve Babitz and write a book about her amazing life.

I have never worked as an editor of a magazine, but I have googled "Eve Babitz."  I may have experienced something very similar to Lili Anolik.  I began seeing  reference to Eve's name in a lot of places.  Eve is considered an iconic L.A. writer.  She not only is credited with capturing the 1960's L.A. scene, but she was right in the middle of it. By this, I mean she was part of this new wave of writing in the sixties – like Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson – where she inserted herself as a character in everything she wrote. Eve has led a very interesting life. Her mother was an aspiring artist who sketched historical Hollywood houses and buildings.  Her father was a concert violinist.   Her parents were friends with the legendary Igor Stravinski who would become Eve's godfather. Eve's life was full of art, music.  Wait!  A lot of sex and romance.  Many of her stories and essays reflect upon her affairs with the rich and famous from the decade of the sixties: Jim Morrison, Harrison Ford, Steve Martin.   

  Lili Anolik had me hooked when she shared her love for Eve's story "The Sheik" from the book Eve's Hollywood.     This may have been Eve's first published collection of stories and essays.  I love "The Shiek."  I enjoyed Eve's prose, but I also have developed an admiration for the Sheik – Rudolph Valentino – ever since I saw a photo of him posed on the steps of a university building very close to my house on Mexicali.  In 1921 Rodolfo drove six hours from Palm Springs south to Mexicali  to marry his bride-to-be Natasha Rambova.  The story goes that according to California law, the couple would have to wait a week to receive their wedding license. In Mexicali, they would be allowed to marry in five minutes. They were so deeply in love, they just couldn't wait.  Eve went to Hollywood High School – Home of the Shieks.  I want to believe that they named their football and basket ball teams after Rodolfo Valentino. Rudolph Valentino was known to his fans worldwide as “The Latin Lover.” Women loved him for his dark, lusty, sultry look.  In   “The Sheik,” he plays the role of an rich Arab chieftain who steals away with an English gentlewoman.   Why do I care about Rudolph Valentino?  The same reason Lili Anolik sought out Eve Batitz.  THEY ARE SO MUCH BOTH LARGER THAN LIFE.

  When Eve was just twenty years old, she became famous for her participation in what would become an iconic photograph taken by Julian Wasser. This is such a cool story that Lily couldn't wait to expose it in her very first chapter of Hollywood's Eve.  At the time, Eve's boyfriend Walter Hopps, the curator the Pasedena Art Museum, had planned a special exhibit and cocktail party to celebrate the work of the great dadaist surrealist Marcel Duchamp — and somehow he had forgotten include Eve on the guestlist. Of course, this could have happened to anyone.  Walter was an obsessive workaholic, and beyond that, he was known to be horribly absent-minded.  Anyone could make a mistake in preparing for a grand event like this one.  But, Walter was also married.  When it came time to make his list, he included his own wife, and left out his girlfriend.  Poor  Evie, right?  Not so fast, Walter.   I told you, in sixties L.A. scene, Eve seemed to show up everywhere. Famous L.A. art word and music executive Earl McGrath once said, "In every young man's life there is an Eve Babitz, It's usually Eve Babitz."  The photo shoot would be Eve's chance to be Marilyn Monroe.  Behind the scenes, she agreed  to Julian Wasser's offer to pose nude playing chess with the famous painter. Of course, she didn't tell Walter about it.   This photo became the talk of the party.  Lili quotes Eve in her book: "Walter thought he was running the show."  But he was wrong.

I don't have space here to share all my favorite Eve Babitz stories, so I want to finish with a Lili Anolik one.  Lili decided to write about Eve, because few had done so previously.  When she made her trip out to L.A. to meet Eve, she found out why.  Eve wasn't talking.  She wasn't on Facebook, Myspace or Twitter.  Lili did find her in the phone book, but each time  she called she never answered.  Lili called her for years!  When Lili  discovered her own brother, a student at U.S.C., lived in the same neighborhood as Eve, she moved her operations out West.  Lili stalked Eve.  Took walks around her block.  Slipped notes underneath her apartment door. When nothing seemed to work, Lili began talking with everyone remotely connected to Eve's life.  Maybe she could piece together her story that way. Lily keep working it.  She interviewed Eve's family members, classmates, and lovers.  Eve had become a recluse.  It was when Lily had developed a respectful relationship with Eve's sister that she would find her subject warm up to her.  To make a long story short, by the time Lily was able to make contact,  Eve bore little resemblance to the charming and/or bewitching young woman of her stories. I mean, Eve was then in her fifties.  Thirty years of steady drinking and drug use had wore down her spirit and soul. When Lily met her for the first time in a coffee house, she could barely recognize her.  Eve looked ragged.  Unwashed. She smelled.  I once read one of Eve's anthologies, I Used to Be Charming.  In 1997, she was driving her Volkswagen bug when she dropped her cherry-flavored cigar into her lap.  Her skirt lit up like newspaper.  Her pantyhose melted into her skin.  More than 90 percent of her body was covered by third-degree burns. She spent six weeks in the ICU.  "I used to be charming," is what she told one of her nurses during her six-month stay in the hospital.  The accident would forever change her looks.  It may have killed her spirit. 

This is the cool part of Lily's book:  From reading everything about Eve she could get her hands on, Lily readily admits her love for her subject. I mean, Lily begins her book with a love letter to Eve.   She was awed by Eve.  She was intimidated by Eve.  As a writer, Lili clearly idolizes Eve.  But, these admissions do not diminish her objectivity in her writing.  Lily paints a multi-dimensional portrait of her subject.  I love the balance of LOVE and BITTERNESS I see in Lily's book.  She covers all sides.  We often see Eve at her worst.  Rude.  Jealous.  Incredibly selfish.  Throughout Hollywood's Eve,  we see Eve as both an artist and a flawed human being.  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.   In 2021 Eve died at age 78 from complications of Hunnington's disease.   She resided in an assisted living facility.  I'm happy to see Lily's Hollywood's Eve created a resurgence in the reading of Eve Babitz.  I now purchase Eve's books off the internet through NYRB Classics (New York Book Review).   Soon, I will tell my students that they can lean more about Eve in an upcoming mini-series to be presented on Hulu.  It's title will be L.A. Woman, of course. 

I'm not writing a book report here, but I am planning to read "The Sheik" with my students in the coming semester.  "The Sheik" is all about the beautiful young women at Hollywood High.  Eve describes in exquisite detail the power and seduction of high school cheerleaders and sorority sisters.  She talks more about them than she talks about herself.  According to Eve, they ran the school. Just to be close to them, well, it may have been the greatest time of her life.  Although "The Sheik" describes a world of the sixties far removed from anything my students will recognize, we will all identify with Eve's place in her own stories. In "The Sheik," Eve writes, ""They come dancing in like a well-rehearsed chorus line, and, unlike most people my age who claim to recall Elvis when they think of high school or think of high school when they hear Elvis, I only see faces, clothes, and hear the laughter of the girls who went to my school, and the feelings— the aches and pirouettes and joys come not from music, books, fear of finals, hatred of teachers— but from the people who sat next to me or who I saw in the halls during the years I spent in Hollywood High.”  In casual class conversation, we discuss Taylor Swift, Lana del Rey.  I encourage students to share their movies, their fashion choices, their  interests, experiences and passions.  At the end of the semester we write personal essays. "The Sheik" will inspire us all. Reading for enjoyment will be the key to our success.