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I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz
Previously uncollected nonfiction pieces by Hollywood's ultimate It Girl about everything from fashion to tango to Jim Morrison and Nicholas Cage.
Eve Babitz knew everyone, tried everything (at least once), and was never shy about sharing her thoughts on any subject, be it sex, weight loss, drug use, or her ambivalence toward New York City. From the 1970s through the 1990s, Babitz wrote on a wild variety of topics for some of the biggest publications around, from Esquire to Vogue to The New York Times Book Review. I Used to Be Charming brings together this nonfiction work. All previously uncollected, these pieces range from sharp personal essays on body image and the male gaze to playful meditations on everything from ballroom dancing to kissing to perfume. There are breathtaking celebrity profiles, too. In one, Nicholas Cage takes her for a ride in his ’67 Stingray and in another she dishes about dragging Jim Morrison to bed before the Doors had even settled on a band name (“Jim was embarrassing because he wasn’t cool, but I still loved him,” she writes). In another essay, the author ponders her earliest days in the spotlight, posing nude with Marcel Duchamp, and in another, the never-before-published title essay, she writes about the tragic accident that compelled her to leave that spotlight behind forever.
Eve Babitz knew everyone, tried everything (at least once), and was never shy about sharing her thoughts on any subject, be it sex, weight loss, drug use, or her ambivalence toward New York City. From the 1970s through the 1990s, Babitz wrote on a wild variety of topics for some of the biggest publications around, from Esquire to Vogue to The New York Times Book Review. I Used to Be Charming brings together this nonfiction work. All previously uncollected, these pieces range from sharp personal essays on body image and the male gaze to playful meditations on everything from ballroom dancing to kissing to perfume. There are breathtaking celebrity profiles, too. In one, Nicholas Cage takes her for a ride in his ’67 Stingray and in another she dishes about dragging Jim Morrison to bed before the Doors had even settled on a band name (“Jim was embarrassing because he wasn’t cool, but I still loved him,” she writes). In another essay, the author ponders her earliest days in the spotlight, posing nude with Marcel Duchamp, and in another, the never-before-published title essay, she writes about the tragic accident that compelled her to leave that spotlight behind forever.
Audio CD
First published October 1, 2019
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About the author
Eve Babitz
20 books3,487 followersBabitz was born in Hollywood, California, the daughter of Mae, an artist, and Sol, a classical violinist on contract with 20th Century Fox.Her father was of Russian Jewish descent and her mother had Cajun (French) ancestry.Babitz's parents were friends with the composer Igor Stravinsky, who was her godfather.
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. The photograph is described by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art as being “among the key documentary images of American modern art”.
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. Eve Babitz had affairs with comedian/writer Steve Martin, actor Harrison Ford, and writer Dan Wakefield, among others. She has been compared favorably with Edie Sedgwick, the protegee of Andy Warhol at The Factory in New York City.
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, 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.
Babitz died of Huntington's disease at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on December 17, 2021, at age 78.
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. The photograph is described by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art as being “among the key documentary images of American modern art”.
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. Eve Babitz had affairs with comedian/writer Steve Martin, actor Harrison Ford, and writer Dan Wakefield, among others. She has been compared favorably with Edie Sedgwick, the protegee of Andy Warhol at The Factory in New York City.
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, 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.
Babitz died of Huntington's disease at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on December 17, 2021, at age 78.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 233 reviews
December 12, 2025
pretty high up in my Best Title rankings.
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
i've always known i would read this book, because it's eve babitz and it's new york review of books and as mentioned, that title — any of which is enough to get me to read anything in and of itself. but i put it off for a while because, in spite of the great marketing, "these are the leftover scraps of a writing career"-type anthologies usually don't work well for me.
and truth be told, for every excellent forgotten column in here there is an effortful 90 pages on a department store.
but with eve i'll take that deal.
all of the joan didion backlash media of late (didion and babitz, la women, even notes to john in a way) has made me feel a defensive anticipatory lack of appreciation for eve that, along with the cover being a foot, made me nervous to read this.
but there is no writing like her writing. slow days, fast company is far and away the best of it, but this still has plenty of wondrous bits, including but not limited to the insane defunct magazine names they were originally published in (LA Style. Smart. City. Coast. Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing).
incredible stuff.
bottom line: i enjoyed myself, which is the point.
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
i've always known i would read this book, because it's eve babitz and it's new york review of books and as mentioned, that title — any of which is enough to get me to read anything in and of itself. but i put it off for a while because, in spite of the great marketing, "these are the leftover scraps of a writing career"-type anthologies usually don't work well for me.
and truth be told, for every excellent forgotten column in here there is an effortful 90 pages on a department store.
but with eve i'll take that deal.
all of the joan didion backlash media of late (didion and babitz, la women, even notes to john in a way) has made me feel a defensive anticipatory lack of appreciation for eve that, along with the cover being a foot, made me nervous to read this.
but there is no writing like her writing. slow days, fast company is far and away the best of it, but this still has plenty of wondrous bits, including but not limited to the insane defunct magazine names they were originally published in (LA Style. Smart. City. Coast. Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing).
incredible stuff.
bottom line: i enjoyed myself, which is the point.
August 19, 2022
Eve Babitz was the sum of alluring combinations: an intellectual and a girl about town, shiny yet deep, a tough nut but also a sucker for all that she held dear. Add to that a generous doze of a good old sense of humor (the pre-politically correct kind) and you have the potent mix of an opinionated and hugely entertaining writer.
An L.A. native who in her day hung out with everyone who was anyone in the art, film and music world, she interwove her personal mythology with that of the West Coast from the 60s to the 90s. Fifty essays that originally appeared in publications such as Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Playboy and Condé Nast Traveller among others, are gathered in this essay collection. In her seemingly effortless style (the hardest of them all) Babitz observes and offers her strong point of view on people, places and cultural phenomena she experienced firsthand. Magazine pieces are ephemeral by nature but the writing here is so good that they deserve the timelessness of a proper book.
Some of the people that make an appearance: Francis Ford Coppola in All This and The Godfather Too, Jim Morrison in Jim Morrison Is Dead and Living in Hollywood, Andy Warhol in The Soup Can as Big as the Ritz, Marcel Duchamp in I Was a Naked Pawn for Art – aah those titles!
Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz at the Pasadena Art Museum, 1963
Some of the places: Miami in Party at the Beach, Santa Fe in Angels We Have Heard on High, Ojai and its music festival in Keeping Time in Ojai.
L.A. - of course; Venice, Pasadena, Beverly Hills and legendary locales such as Chateau Marmont, the Trobadour club, Helena’s (exclusive club for the rich and famous) included.
Line in front of the Whisky A Go-Go, 1964
Sometimes it all got to be too much for me – all that beauty showing all that promise – and I’d grow morbidly paranoid and filled with grave doubts, comparing us there – that all-one-night at the Troubadour – with the hero in Henry James’s story “The Beast in the Jungle,” who starts his life knowing that something so great and special is going to happen to him that he never attaches himself to anything real, and finally, just before he is about to become old, he realizes that the special thing – that beast in the jungle waiting to jump out at him – is indeed unique, because it’s nothing – nothing will ever happen to him. Sometimes I’d think that nothing would ever happen to us either, or at least that it would be all downhill from then on. The latter isn’t far from wrong, I think sometimes.
Honky-Tonk Nights, Rolling Stone, 1979
Some of the themes: The Tyranny of Fashion, Tiffany’s Before Breakfast, The Manson Murders.
Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate’s wedding-day photo on their nightstand, 1969
-Life in the West Coast, as opposed to life… anywhere else, in My God, Eve, How Can You Live Here?, A Californian Looks at New York, Girl’s Town.
Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston photographed at Nicholson’s house on Mulholland Drive, 1971
-The Sixties and their hippie culture: We used to think that if only we hung on with enough of a vengeance, things would have to get better – kinder and gentler and certainly more colorful. Every time we saw the remotest evidence of this, we’d sigh, “It’s happening, it’s happening.” By which we meant “they” were getting it, that pretty soon the war would end, police would blend into the scenery, and Latin American dictators would divest themselves of their worldly goods and even Richard Nixon would show up wearing flowers. We thought beauty was power. Of course, we were wrong.
Hippie Heaven, Vogue, 1992
Joan Didion in front of her yellow Stingray, 1968
-Americana in relation to…onions, according to Babitz, in No Onions (don’t ask…)
-80’s neo-conservatism in Sober Virgins of the Eighties and Blame It on the VCRs, Smart, 1990:
When I was a madwoman in the 1960s, everyone I knew was getting laid like crazy. Everyone was wild for sex: they heard the phrase “free love” and ran amok across the land. Married men, married women, squares, hippies – everyone was on the prowl, cruising for the Answer in the form of sex. Of course, if you found the Answer, you were stuck with it for all eternity, like being married, so the Answer would often change.
-What it’s like to have big tits in My Life in a 36DD Bra: When I was fifteen years old, I bought and filled my first 36DD bra. Since then, no man has ever made a serious pass at me without assuring me in the first hour that he was a leg man. Tits! Why, he hadn’t even noticed!
The last story, I Used to Be Charming, is the author’s own detailed account of the terrible accident that transformed her body and her life in 1997 when she lit herself on fire while in her car, trying to light up one of her beloved cigars. It may not be the swan song she had had in mind throughout her dazzling and prolific writing career but it’s bold, inspiring and idiosyncratically entertaining – same as all her work.
Here I was, I thought, over fifty years old, still so stupid that I was risking my life for a smoke. Was this the brick wall that Mrs Hurly, my fifth-grade teacher, so confidently warned me that one day I’d end up crashing into “if I didn’t pay attention”? Had I managed to avoid all the damage I had done up to this point, breaking hearts, being unreliable, only to hit that brick wall because of a match? I imagined how pissed off my friends would be if they heard I actually died from trying to light a cigar.
It was a perfect read for this time of the year. My copy has been soaked by seawater, stained by salt and sun lotion, crumbled from drying up in the hot July winds. That, I think, is the most appropriate state a book by Eve Babitz should find itself in. In her universe it was always summer.
Wilshire Boulevard, 1964
All photographs from: The Way We Were: The Photography of Julian Wasser: Limited Edition
An L.A. native who in her day hung out with everyone who was anyone in the art, film and music world, she interwove her personal mythology with that of the West Coast from the 60s to the 90s. Fifty essays that originally appeared in publications such as Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Playboy and Condé Nast Traveller among others, are gathered in this essay collection. In her seemingly effortless style (the hardest of them all) Babitz observes and offers her strong point of view on people, places and cultural phenomena she experienced firsthand. Magazine pieces are ephemeral by nature but the writing here is so good that they deserve the timelessness of a proper book.
Some of the people that make an appearance: Francis Ford Coppola in All This and The Godfather Too, Jim Morrison in Jim Morrison Is Dead and Living in Hollywood, Andy Warhol in The Soup Can as Big as the Ritz, Marcel Duchamp in I Was a Naked Pawn for Art – aah those titles!
Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz at the Pasadena Art Museum, 1963
Some of the places: Miami in Party at the Beach, Santa Fe in Angels We Have Heard on High, Ojai and its music festival in Keeping Time in Ojai.
L.A. - of course; Venice, Pasadena, Beverly Hills and legendary locales such as Chateau Marmont, the Trobadour club, Helena’s (exclusive club for the rich and famous) included.
Line in front of the Whisky A Go-Go, 1964
Sometimes it all got to be too much for me – all that beauty showing all that promise – and I’d grow morbidly paranoid and filled with grave doubts, comparing us there – that all-one-night at the Troubadour – with the hero in Henry James’s story “The Beast in the Jungle,” who starts his life knowing that something so great and special is going to happen to him that he never attaches himself to anything real, and finally, just before he is about to become old, he realizes that the special thing – that beast in the jungle waiting to jump out at him – is indeed unique, because it’s nothing – nothing will ever happen to him. Sometimes I’d think that nothing would ever happen to us either, or at least that it would be all downhill from then on. The latter isn’t far from wrong, I think sometimes.
Honky-Tonk Nights, Rolling Stone, 1979
Some of the themes: The Tyranny of Fashion, Tiffany’s Before Breakfast, The Manson Murders.
Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate’s wedding-day photo on their nightstand, 1969-Life in the West Coast, as opposed to life… anywhere else, in My God, Eve, How Can You Live Here?, A Californian Looks at New York, Girl’s Town.
Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston photographed at Nicholson’s house on Mulholland Drive, 1971
-The Sixties and their hippie culture: We used to think that if only we hung on with enough of a vengeance, things would have to get better – kinder and gentler and certainly more colorful. Every time we saw the remotest evidence of this, we’d sigh, “It’s happening, it’s happening.” By which we meant “they” were getting it, that pretty soon the war would end, police would blend into the scenery, and Latin American dictators would divest themselves of their worldly goods and even Richard Nixon would show up wearing flowers. We thought beauty was power. Of course, we were wrong.
Hippie Heaven, Vogue, 1992
Joan Didion in front of her yellow Stingray, 1968
-Americana in relation to…onions, according to Babitz, in No Onions (don’t ask…)
-80’s neo-conservatism in Sober Virgins of the Eighties and Blame It on the VCRs, Smart, 1990:
When I was a madwoman in the 1960s, everyone I knew was getting laid like crazy. Everyone was wild for sex: they heard the phrase “free love” and ran amok across the land. Married men, married women, squares, hippies – everyone was on the prowl, cruising for the Answer in the form of sex. Of course, if you found the Answer, you were stuck with it for all eternity, like being married, so the Answer would often change.
-What it’s like to have big tits in My Life in a 36DD Bra: When I was fifteen years old, I bought and filled my first 36DD bra. Since then, no man has ever made a serious pass at me without assuring me in the first hour that he was a leg man. Tits! Why, he hadn’t even noticed!
The last story, I Used to Be Charming, is the author’s own detailed account of the terrible accident that transformed her body and her life in 1997 when she lit herself on fire while in her car, trying to light up one of her beloved cigars. It may not be the swan song she had had in mind throughout her dazzling and prolific writing career but it’s bold, inspiring and idiosyncratically entertaining – same as all her work.
Here I was, I thought, over fifty years old, still so stupid that I was risking my life for a smoke. Was this the brick wall that Mrs Hurly, my fifth-grade teacher, so confidently warned me that one day I’d end up crashing into “if I didn’t pay attention”? Had I managed to avoid all the damage I had done up to this point, breaking hearts, being unreliable, only to hit that brick wall because of a match? I imagined how pissed off my friends would be if they heard I actually died from trying to light a cigar.
It was a perfect read for this time of the year. My copy has been soaked by seawater, stained by salt and sun lotion, crumbled from drying up in the hot July winds. That, I think, is the most appropriate state a book by Eve Babitz should find itself in. In her universe it was always summer.
Wilshire Boulevard, 1964
All photographs from: The Way We Were: The Photography of Julian Wasser: Limited Edition
December 8, 2019
I met Eve Babitz once in the early ‘90s, very, very briefly, after a reading at a Hollywood playhouse, when I caught her in the lobby afterward and gushed about how I’d read Fast Days, Slow Company four times. She looked at me like I was daft, but luckily there were other people waiting to speak with her, which gave me an excuse to exit the convo quickly, if not gracefully. (Was that the wrong thing to say?) Fast Days remains my favorite of hers, but this collection of her magazine articles might be an easy intro to Eve with low-commitment 5-minutes reads, although they don’t have the coherence and mood-building capacity (light-hearted as it is) of her other books.
One blurb on the back of I Used to Be Charming is from Tosh Berman: “There’s Adam, and then there is of course Eve Babitz. There are those who call her a party girl, but in truth she documented her times and social world in Southern California as if she was Charles Dickens. Or perhaps Marcel Proust.” Well, Proust might be pushing it, but Dickens perhaps. If Charles Dickens had dealt in glamour instead of orphans.
With the exception of the last selection, a 60-page exploration of the Italian lifestyle brand Fiorucci, I enjoyed most of the pieces in I Used to Be Charming . Before, during, and after writing her one novel, Sex and Rage, and several semi-fictional/semi-autobiographical/ memoir-ish books (Slow Days, Fast Company; Eve’s Hollywood; L.A. Woman), she was also a prolific magazine contributor, publishing in Playgirl, Esquire, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Rolling Stone, and in lesser known or now defunct periodicals such as Smart, LA Style, American Film, womenSports, and Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing. The Fiorucci piece was too long and somewhat repetitive, but the rest of the 49 articles, written between 1975 and 1997, and presented in chronological order, are short, snappy, and fun. Well, perhaps the last entry, the title essay, wasn’t exactly fun, but she manages to make the subject entertaining, long after the fact: an account of an accident that left her with 3rd degree burns requiring months of treatment, which ultimately resulted in her retirement and withdrawal from most social life.
If you think Eve Babitz is shallow, as could be deduced from her breezy style and free-wheeling reputation, you’re missing the point. As she says in “Hippie Heaven,” “Fun is not to be sneezed at.” A great believer in fun, she is also devoted to beauty for its own sake as well as dedicated to enjoying life and defending Los Angeles and Hollywood against clueless detractors from elsewhere.
There is some serious name-dropping going on in most of these pieces. Plugged into the burgeoning Los Angeles art scene of the day, rock and roll, and the movie industry, Eve knew, interviewed or slept with heavy hitters in those fields: Frances Ford Coppola, Linda Ronstadt, Jim Morrison, and artist Ed Rushca, and she famously played chess naked with Marcel Duchamp (her, not him). There are interviews with James Wood, Nicholas Cage, Billy Baldwin and Jackie Collins. She designed album covers for the likes of Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds.
Many of the pieces are place-based, weighted heavily in favor of L.A. or Hollywood, of course, such as “My God, Eve, How Can You Live Here,” in which she extols the virtues of Southern California and includes praise for the Chateau Marmont and Pasadena’s Gamble House, with which I heartily concur. She reminisces about childhood trips to Ojai in the 1950s, a magical valley in the mountains of Ventura County, where she attended its annual music festival in its early days. Her father, a studio musician, was one of the original organizers and her godfather, Igor Stravinsky, an early participant. She also writes about New York, Santa Fe, Miami, and San Francisco.
Pull up a front-row seat as Eve people-watches in “Venice, California”, “Honky Tonk Nights” (at the Troubadour night club), and “The Girl from Gold’s Gym,” all from 1979. Other topics covered include movie-making, body image, men and women and romance, ballroom dancing, men’s legs, Ashtanga yoga, Andy Warhol, Patrick Swayze movies, kissing, and perfume.
Eve’s casual, gossipy tone belies the fact there’s some great prose here if you listen for the rhythms in her language, whether she’s talking about the ambiance of all-night supermarkets at 3 a.m., swimming naked in a friend’s bougainvillea-shaded pool overlooking the city, or why she loves Santa Fe in winter.
Most of these articles are in the neighborhood of 3 to 8 pages. Some are a little dated because of the specificity she brings to her observations and stories, but that’s totally fine and only serves to add to the historical record of what a certain portion of Southern California was like in the last quarter of the 20th century.
While I’m thrilled Eve is getting her due, finally, after decades of obscurity, thanks to a 2014 piece in Vanity Fair and the NYRB re-issuing several of her books in the past four years, I feel like I’m giving up a certain exclusivity as an Eve Babitz fan. When I joined Goodreads 9 and ½ years ago, I could only find two other people who were fans (both of whom I’m still in touch with). Our well-kept secret is getting out and I don’t feel nearly as cool as I once did, now that I have to share her. But still, I’m glad she is getting the exposure, recognition, and appreciation she so richly deserves. I used to think one had to love Los Angeles, as Eve does, to appreciate her take on it, but if you don’t love it, it’s possible she could teach you how. As long as you remember, “Fun is not to be sneezed at.”
BTW, NYRB is having a sale for a couple of days on Fast Days, Slow Company, which Larry McMurtry called “Undeniably the work of a native, in love with her place.��� www.nyrb.com
Just saying . . .
One blurb on the back of I Used to Be Charming is from Tosh Berman: “There’s Adam, and then there is of course Eve Babitz. There are those who call her a party girl, but in truth she documented her times and social world in Southern California as if she was Charles Dickens. Or perhaps Marcel Proust.” Well, Proust might be pushing it, but Dickens perhaps. If Charles Dickens had dealt in glamour instead of orphans.
With the exception of the last selection, a 60-page exploration of the Italian lifestyle brand Fiorucci, I enjoyed most of the pieces in I Used to Be Charming . Before, during, and after writing her one novel, Sex and Rage, and several semi-fictional/semi-autobiographical/ memoir-ish books (Slow Days, Fast Company; Eve’s Hollywood; L.A. Woman), she was also a prolific magazine contributor, publishing in Playgirl, Esquire, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Rolling Stone, and in lesser known or now defunct periodicals such as Smart, LA Style, American Film, womenSports, and Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing. The Fiorucci piece was too long and somewhat repetitive, but the rest of the 49 articles, written between 1975 and 1997, and presented in chronological order, are short, snappy, and fun. Well, perhaps the last entry, the title essay, wasn’t exactly fun, but she manages to make the subject entertaining, long after the fact: an account of an accident that left her with 3rd degree burns requiring months of treatment, which ultimately resulted in her retirement and withdrawal from most social life.
If you think Eve Babitz is shallow, as could be deduced from her breezy style and free-wheeling reputation, you’re missing the point. As she says in “Hippie Heaven,” “Fun is not to be sneezed at.” A great believer in fun, she is also devoted to beauty for its own sake as well as dedicated to enjoying life and defending Los Angeles and Hollywood against clueless detractors from elsewhere.
There is some serious name-dropping going on in most of these pieces. Plugged into the burgeoning Los Angeles art scene of the day, rock and roll, and the movie industry, Eve knew, interviewed or slept with heavy hitters in those fields: Frances Ford Coppola, Linda Ronstadt, Jim Morrison, and artist Ed Rushca, and she famously played chess naked with Marcel Duchamp (her, not him). There are interviews with James Wood, Nicholas Cage, Billy Baldwin and Jackie Collins. She designed album covers for the likes of Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds.
Many of the pieces are place-based, weighted heavily in favor of L.A. or Hollywood, of course, such as “My God, Eve, How Can You Live Here,” in which she extols the virtues of Southern California and includes praise for the Chateau Marmont and Pasadena’s Gamble House, with which I heartily concur. She reminisces about childhood trips to Ojai in the 1950s, a magical valley in the mountains of Ventura County, where she attended its annual music festival in its early days. Her father, a studio musician, was one of the original organizers and her godfather, Igor Stravinsky, an early participant. She also writes about New York, Santa Fe, Miami, and San Francisco.
Pull up a front-row seat as Eve people-watches in “Venice, California”, “Honky Tonk Nights” (at the Troubadour night club), and “The Girl from Gold’s Gym,” all from 1979. Other topics covered include movie-making, body image, men and women and romance, ballroom dancing, men’s legs, Ashtanga yoga, Andy Warhol, Patrick Swayze movies, kissing, and perfume.
Eve’s casual, gossipy tone belies the fact there’s some great prose here if you listen for the rhythms in her language, whether she’s talking about the ambiance of all-night supermarkets at 3 a.m., swimming naked in a friend’s bougainvillea-shaded pool overlooking the city, or why she loves Santa Fe in winter.
Most of these articles are in the neighborhood of 3 to 8 pages. Some are a little dated because of the specificity she brings to her observations and stories, but that’s totally fine and only serves to add to the historical record of what a certain portion of Southern California was like in the last quarter of the 20th century.
While I’m thrilled Eve is getting her due, finally, after decades of obscurity, thanks to a 2014 piece in Vanity Fair and the NYRB re-issuing several of her books in the past four years, I feel like I’m giving up a certain exclusivity as an Eve Babitz fan. When I joined Goodreads 9 and ½ years ago, I could only find two other people who were fans (both of whom I’m still in touch with). Our well-kept secret is getting out and I don’t feel nearly as cool as I once did, now that I have to share her. But still, I’m glad she is getting the exposure, recognition, and appreciation she so richly deserves. I used to think one had to love Los Angeles, as Eve does, to appreciate her take on it, but if you don’t love it, it’s possible she could teach you how. As long as you remember, “Fun is not to be sneezed at.”
BTW, NYRB is having a sale for a couple of days on Fast Days, Slow Company, which Larry McMurtry called “Undeniably the work of a native, in love with her place.��� www.nyrb.com
Just saying . . .
December 19, 2019
Nothing, in my opinion, is better than incisive commentary and virtuosic prose masquerading as juicy gossip and frothy fun. Thank the maker for Eve Babitz.
May 20, 2024
Eve, you will always be charming to me. What a woman, what a life lived, and what a legacy she has left behind. I want to be her when I grow up.
September 27, 2022
Audiobook….read by Eve Babitz, Sara Kramer, Editor, Molly Lambert -introduction
….14 hours and 41 minutes
The blurb perfectly describes
“I Used To Be Charming”….
The Rest of Eve Babitz
…Hollywood It Girl
…Eve Babitz knew everyone: Jim Morrison, Nicolas Cage, many other celebrities—
…She knew men!
…She knew what men!
…She had something to say about fashions, drugs, sex, music, rock n’ roll, movies, books, photography, weight loss, ballroom dancing
…And unfortunately she knew about a tragic accident that compelled her to leave the spotlight forever.
I’m losing track of how many books I’ve read now by the late — wonderful Eve Babitz —
I enjoy her sharp, sassy, and entertaining storytelling.
Terrific collection of essays by an author who died to young — but lived like her life mattered!
I love her!!!
….14 hours and 41 minutes
The blurb perfectly describes
“I Used To Be Charming”….
The Rest of Eve Babitz
…Hollywood It Girl
…Eve Babitz knew everyone: Jim Morrison, Nicolas Cage, many other celebrities—
…She knew men!
…She knew what men!
…She had something to say about fashions, drugs, sex, music, rock n’ roll, movies, books, photography, weight loss, ballroom dancing
…And unfortunately she knew about a tragic accident that compelled her to leave the spotlight forever.
I’m losing track of how many books I’ve read now by the late — wonderful Eve Babitz —
I enjoy her sharp, sassy, and entertaining storytelling.
Terrific collection of essays by an author who died to young — but lived like her life mattered!
I love her!!!
October 14, 2021
She probably would have kept silent forever except that she took an overdose of drugs recently and was in the hospital for a month or so and when she was all better, she knew the world need no longer go on in ignorance. She decided to tell all.
I love Eve Babitz and loved this book. That being said, this book has a different feel to it from the other two published by NYRB. Unlike the other two books, this is an editor compiled collection of Babitz's uncollected works. Several of the stories are short magazine articles (especially fashion and travel related) and I feel that a lot of those lacked the Babitz style that I love. That being said, there are still plenty of great pieces in here (including those fashion and travel related articles), many that are incredibly charming and autobiographical. I especially loved the flashbacks to the Ferus Gallery and the L.A art scene.
Or my navy wide-leg sailor pants with the thirteen-button front (giving sailors thirteen chances to change their minds, was the idea-- not that I ever did)
I love Eve Babitz and loved this book. That being said, this book has a different feel to it from the other two published by NYRB. Unlike the other two books, this is an editor compiled collection of Babitz's uncollected works. Several of the stories are short magazine articles (especially fashion and travel related) and I feel that a lot of those lacked the Babitz style that I love. That being said, there are still plenty of great pieces in here (including those fashion and travel related articles), many that are incredibly charming and autobiographical. I especially loved the flashbacks to the Ferus Gallery and the L.A art scene.
Or my navy wide-leg sailor pants with the thirteen-button front (giving sailors thirteen chances to change their minds, was the idea-- not that I ever did)
June 13, 2022
Oh Eve, you‘ll forever be my role model
January 22, 2023
effortlessly charming and witty as always, thank god for eve babitz!!
November 24, 2019
it's insane that this was her professional work. people would just throw her dollars to say shit and they were RIGHT to do so; absolutely nobody else has this voice and there's an eve for every mood.
February 2, 2021
I’m drawn to Eve like Adam, and such as that character I feel an equal mix of temptation and unease. She is an entertaining writer and a hoot to share the page with, yet often I find her interests as shallow as a puddle that I’ve annoyingly stepped in. But that’s me. She’s not here for my approval and I appreciate her strength and vulnerability. It’s weird, this is the second book of hers I’ve read with a similar response from me. I might be a stick in the mud, but I’ll likely be reading another one of her tomes in time.
August 18, 2025
Could have definitely done without the intense fashion chapters, but that’s just my personal opinion lol. Babitz continues to make me nostalgic for a life I’ve never lived and she’s so talented for that. We would get boozy brunch together in another life
November 10, 2025
Eve, you are forever charming. Some true delights in here and some that did nothing for me, but when Eve is on she is ON. No one writes about L.A. like she does. She also really knows how to tie up a story so well.
My Life in a 36DD Bra is one of my favourite Eve essays I’ve read. And the essay I Used To Be Charming was a beautiful, honest, funny and tragic final piece from Eve.
My Life in a 36DD Bra is one of my favourite Eve essays I’ve read. And the essay I Used To Be Charming was a beautiful, honest, funny and tragic final piece from Eve.
June 17, 2025
you were charming until the end Eve
July 25, 2024
I didn't technically finish this, because I didn't read 'Fiorucci', Eve Babitz's last and longest essay in this book clocking in at 60 pages. This book's strength is also it's biggest weakness. The essays, when about something you're interested in, are amazing. When about something that you have little to no interest in, they're a slog. There's several different types of essays within the book, and can loosely be grouped into 6 categories.
1.) Essays about love
One of the best categories. Babitz has such a way with words, imagery and displaying feeling.
2.) Essays about famous people
If I'm interested in the person, like Jim Morrison or Nick Cage - it's great. If I'm not - a whole essay about novelist Jackie Collins?? - it's no fun.
3.) Essays about famous places
My least favorite category. I don't need to know where the coolest shops are in L.A. I live in Massachusetts. These are the best when she paints a picture of the place, and populates it with category 2 - famous people.
4.) Essays about things (i.e. Yoga, Tango, perfume)
I found these to be hit or miss. If you're interested in a topic, it'll be a hit, and the best ones are the ones that are funny. Her essay about how men treat women with great legs? Written hilariously. Her essay about tango? Also great. I didn't think I'd necessarily enjoy either, but I did.
5.) Essays about events (i.e. the Manson Murders, the AIDS epidemic)
Great, not much to say.
6.) Essays that tell a story from Eve's life
Her best category. She's at her best when she's telling a story.
Anyway, I won't be reading 'Fiorucci' because I don't care about reading about a fashion line for 60 pages as I sit here in sweatpants and a flannel, but I enjoyed a lot of this. Had some of my favorite Eve Babitz writing, but is nowhere near as consistent as 'Slow Days, Fast Company', which makes sense as these essays were written over the course of something like 40 years.
1.) Essays about love
One of the best categories. Babitz has such a way with words, imagery and displaying feeling.
2.) Essays about famous people
If I'm interested in the person, like Jim Morrison or Nick Cage - it's great. If I'm not - a whole essay about novelist Jackie Collins?? - it's no fun.
3.) Essays about famous places
My least favorite category. I don't need to know where the coolest shops are in L.A. I live in Massachusetts. These are the best when she paints a picture of the place, and populates it with category 2 - famous people.
4.) Essays about things (i.e. Yoga, Tango, perfume)
I found these to be hit or miss. If you're interested in a topic, it'll be a hit, and the best ones are the ones that are funny. Her essay about how men treat women with great legs? Written hilariously. Her essay about tango? Also great. I didn't think I'd necessarily enjoy either, but I did.
5.) Essays about events (i.e. the Manson Murders, the AIDS epidemic)
Great, not much to say.
6.) Essays that tell a story from Eve's life
Her best category. She's at her best when she's telling a story.
Anyway, I won't be reading 'Fiorucci' because I don't care about reading about a fashion line for 60 pages as I sit here in sweatpants and a flannel, but I enjoyed a lot of this. Had some of my favorite Eve Babitz writing, but is nowhere near as consistent as 'Slow Days, Fast Company', which makes sense as these essays were written over the course of something like 40 years.
Read
March 17, 2022highlights include a behind-the-scenes piece on the godfather part 2 , a brief but savage portrait of steve martin being a normie at the Troubadour (where the Eagles played backup for Linda Ronstadt), and the titular essay, in which, after surviving a near-fatal accident where her nylons caught fire while trying to light a cigar, she tells the nurse "you know, i used to be charming"
March 18, 2022
Finished this on my first day in Palm Springs!! There is no greater combo than Eve and California :’)
March 22, 2025
Not my new favorite Babitz, but it was fine.
November 16, 2021
I've tried my best, but it's just impossible to not rave about this book.
My first Eve is Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.: Tales, ostentatiously a collection of short stories (if not Eve's own life stories). I find her immensely funny, witty, and undoubtedly charming. She is that popular blond girl, but definitely not dumb. I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz is a testament of her wide knowledge and deep views of art, society, and Los Angeles, her hometown.
It's a compilation of Eve's published columns in numerous prestigious magazines (Vogue, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker), lesser-known publications (Francis Ford Coppola's short-lived City), and two unpublished (long) pieces about her recovery days and Fiorucci the brand. Eve is that "no bullshit" writer, she puts her unfiltered thoughts into sentences. Like this one time when she encountered Coppola's Chinese business manager, which according to Fred Roos, often threw everyone off in meetings.
Obviously, this book is peppered with writings about Hollywood along with everyone and everything in it. But instead of boring ass travel pieces, Eve extrapolates LA to different social topics. That one time when she filled her 36DD bra and men started paying attention to her. Or when she tried acupuncture. There was also that moment when she lost weight and people gushed about her "good look". Talking about looks could be tricky, considering the preconception of Hollywood girls being superficial and self-obsessed. But not Eve, not my Eve.
She never considered herself fat. Just wasn't perfect. And that's not a problem.
Then her wits. Oh my god, her dry sense of humour, like when she called her therapist "mental cleaning lady."
Ah, going back to travel waiting. It's quite rare to see her write about cities that are not LA. A dutiful observant, Eve surely took mental notes of the people and culture she encountered there.
And this review would be incomplete without mentioning her recovery reflection. Eve suffered third-degree burns over half her body, which turned her increasingly reclusive. What happened to her after that? After years of silence, we got to hear about the enigmatic period, in Eve's words.
Reading this book is such a delight, like reading your cool aunt's diary. I wish she would write more, as, unlike the book's title , Eve Babitz is still as charming as ever.
My first Eve is Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.: Tales, ostentatiously a collection of short stories (if not Eve's own life stories). I find her immensely funny, witty, and undoubtedly charming. She is that popular blond girl, but definitely not dumb. I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz is a testament of her wide knowledge and deep views of art, society, and Los Angeles, her hometown.
It's a compilation of Eve's published columns in numerous prestigious magazines (Vogue, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker), lesser-known publications (Francis Ford Coppola's short-lived City), and two unpublished (long) pieces about her recovery days and Fiorucci the brand. Eve is that "no bullshit" writer, she puts her unfiltered thoughts into sentences. Like this one time when she encountered Coppola's Chinese business manager, which according to Fred Roos, often threw everyone off in meetings.
Amateur theatricals, I thought to myself, even in business.
Obviously, this book is peppered with writings about Hollywood along with everyone and everything in it. But instead of boring ass travel pieces, Eve extrapolates LA to different social topics. That one time when she filled her 36DD bra and men started paying attention to her. Or when she tried acupuncture. There was also that moment when she lost weight and people gushed about her "good look". Talking about looks could be tricky, considering the preconception of Hollywood girls being superficial and self-obsessed. But not Eve, not my Eve.
She never considered herself fat. Just wasn't perfect. And that's not a problem.
But I was never dumb enough to think I was Fat; because I wasn't, I just wasn't perfect. And I have never liked perfect things, they give me the creeps.
Then her wits. Oh my god, her dry sense of humour, like when she called her therapist "mental cleaning lady."
Ah, going back to travel waiting. It's quite rare to see her write about cities that are not LA. A dutiful observant, Eve surely took mental notes of the people and culture she encountered there.
And this review would be incomplete without mentioning her recovery reflection. Eve suffered third-degree burns over half her body, which turned her increasingly reclusive. What happened to her after that? After years of silence, we got to hear about the enigmatic period, in Eve's words.
Reading this book is such a delight, like reading your cool aunt's diary. I wish she would write more, as, unlike the book's title , Eve Babitz is still as charming as ever.
March 11, 2024
Choosing to exclude from my 5-star rating the book-length ad for Fiorruci that's tacked onto the end of this for the sake of completionism-- it's written in the same charming way she always writes but it's literally a sixty-page commissioned write-up of a fashion store, so inherently a slog to get through.
That said, everything else? Perfect, hilarious, wonderful, reading it is the most fun you can have with your hands without going blind, etc. This is basically an uncurated collection of every single article Eve Babitz wrote outside of her books, and because of that there's no running thread between these essays and the whole thing feels like one of those big chocolate boxes with a dozen different kinds of chocolate and every single one is delicious and surprising and indulgent in its own way. I enjoyed literally everything but the Fiorucci one but my favorites are the one about living with big boobs, the one about kissing, the one about learning to dance (made me want to learn to dance!! she is the only person who could talk me into that), and the title story about her career-ending accident when she caught on fire after dropping a lit match in her car. I also enjoyed the Jim Morrison essay and the Nic Cage essay and oh my god the Ojai essay.... I need to end this review I love Eve so so much, light of my life.
That said, everything else? Perfect, hilarious, wonderful, reading it is the most fun you can have with your hands without going blind, etc. This is basically an uncurated collection of every single article Eve Babitz wrote outside of her books, and because of that there's no running thread between these essays and the whole thing feels like one of those big chocolate boxes with a dozen different kinds of chocolate and every single one is delicious and surprising and indulgent in its own way. I enjoyed literally everything but the Fiorucci one but my favorites are the one about living with big boobs, the one about kissing, the one about learning to dance (made me want to learn to dance!! she is the only person who could talk me into that), and the title story about her career-ending accident when she caught on fire after dropping a lit match in her car. I also enjoyed the Jim Morrison essay and the Nic Cage essay and oh my god the Ojai essay.... I need to end this review I love Eve so so much, light of my life.
May 6, 2022
I've searched for years to find the essay Eve wrote about the Troubadour that was published in RS. It's here--though somewhat bowdlerized (probably by Eve as she finalized the book). Never met her but love the IDEA of Eve Babitz. So many fine pieces here by a true renegade who experienced a tragic fall in the autumn of life when she was gruesomely burned by a flammable dress. As a burn victim myself, I read that penultimate essay with heavy heart.
The final piece in the book is a 60-page novella gushing about Fiorucci in 1980. On the one hand--do we need that? On the other hand, yes. This is vintage Babitz and underscores so much of what she did well and her indulgences. I even recognized somebody I knew.
She wrote fiction too, and has a story about everybody. More than a name-dropper, Babitz looked at everything with an electron microscope while at the same time wisecracking in the shallowest and clever of ways. There was simply nobody like her. Everything she wrote was sexy and seductive in some way. Eve knew who she was and what she wanted and that's enviable. If you had to own one book by Eve, it's this one. Sail on, you tastemaker/critic/genius. Eve Babitz is the best evidence that the pure products of America do indeed go crazy.
The final piece in the book is a 60-page novella gushing about Fiorucci in 1980. On the one hand--do we need that? On the other hand, yes. This is vintage Babitz and underscores so much of what she did well and her indulgences. I even recognized somebody I knew.
She wrote fiction too, and has a story about everybody. More than a name-dropper, Babitz looked at everything with an electron microscope while at the same time wisecracking in the shallowest and clever of ways. There was simply nobody like her. Everything she wrote was sexy and seductive in some way. Eve knew who she was and what she wanted and that's enviable. If you had to own one book by Eve, it's this one. Sail on, you tastemaker/critic/genius. Eve Babitz is the best evidence that the pure products of America do indeed go crazy.
June 28, 2021
Babitz is a conscientious objector to the cult of seriousness. Freed from the vulgar compulsion to grasp for gravitas, she traipses through her essays (even when she's writing about getting burned half-to-death!) with an appealing lightness. Make no mistake, though, she's a magnificent prose stylist and - with the exception of her celebrity profiles - can't go more than a few pages without sharing some brilliant aperçu. Most of her essays are perfectly pithy, but (be forewarned!) the final piece on the avant garde/populist fashion label Fiorucci is 60 pages long and should've been half that. All the same I read every word because even at her worst, Babitz is pretty delightful.
August 17, 2021
Loved this collection. These essays are primarily about LA in the 70s and 80s when Eve was an "it girl." There are stories about her years hanging out at the Troubadour, essays about her love of Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing, essays about boobs. Babitz even finds wonderment in hanging out with a friend at Gold Gym's. The voice I would most compare her to is our national treasure E Jean Carroll, but less effusive. Looking forward to reading her short fiction.
March 24, 2025
It was hard to put this one down. Babitz's elegancy of writing is really captivating, no wonder that the word "effortless" is mentioned so many times in her reviews, even though I’m sure this effortlessness came with a lot of work.
Her type of writing just inspires you to remember to write yourself, and to be honest, under this book’s influence even the way of thinking and watching things got to my bloodstream. Naturally, reading this also makes one think about your own personal adventures, and perhaps how you ever let their life get so boring lately, which is all quite funny because it’s not about just her adventures. She could write a symphony about paint drying on a wall, and to think of it, this is a person who barely ever left her city, which was the main subject of her writings. So obviously, it’s mostly her writing, maybe even better than the events she describes.
And if you’re going to compare Didion with Babitz, my take is — while both were great writers, babitz is the CURE of Didion’s cruel pessimism. Babitz makes it much more beautiful, witty, and loving. Why the hell not say YES to life after all? While both write brilliantly, In that feud, I’m on Babitz's side.
She's such a ’70s icon, yet this book goes chronologically, and so you get to read what she wrote in the ’80s and 90’s, saying goodbye to the naive dream of the ’60s, the peak of fun and dread of the ’70s, and she does it all admitting that yes, times were better back then, but even if she keeps going back there, it’s not a full-on nostalgic obsession. Her wit and observation power go with her beyond that 60’s dream, but I did notice one thing: while catching up with the times, even being a little cynic, she never embraced post-modernism. In that sense, almost 90% of her adventures couldn’t possibly happen by today’s woke standards.
Her piece about Fiorucci should be studied in every fashion and window display design school. Too bad I’m not THAT deep into fashion at such a deep level, but thinking about today’s fashion industry and the big networks, I do appreciate the prophetic qualities of this piece, and the culture around it to come. Yet, I also totally get why this long piece can frustrate other readers. Another "down" side I can get, is that at times it can feel a little too gossipy around film starts, etc, but that’s L.A. and those are her friends, and most of the stories here were written for magazines, so it’s all easily forgivable because of her style, wit and over all great writing.
Her type of writing just inspires you to remember to write yourself, and to be honest, under this book’s influence even the way of thinking and watching things got to my bloodstream. Naturally, reading this also makes one think about your own personal adventures, and perhaps how you ever let their life get so boring lately, which is all quite funny because it’s not about just her adventures. She could write a symphony about paint drying on a wall, and to think of it, this is a person who barely ever left her city, which was the main subject of her writings. So obviously, it’s mostly her writing, maybe even better than the events she describes.
And if you’re going to compare Didion with Babitz, my take is — while both were great writers, babitz is the CURE of Didion’s cruel pessimism. Babitz makes it much more beautiful, witty, and loving. Why the hell not say YES to life after all? While both write brilliantly, In that feud, I’m on Babitz's side.
She's such a ’70s icon, yet this book goes chronologically, and so you get to read what she wrote in the ’80s and 90’s, saying goodbye to the naive dream of the ’60s, the peak of fun and dread of the ’70s, and she does it all admitting that yes, times were better back then, but even if she keeps going back there, it’s not a full-on nostalgic obsession. Her wit and observation power go with her beyond that 60’s dream, but I did notice one thing: while catching up with the times, even being a little cynic, she never embraced post-modernism. In that sense, almost 90% of her adventures couldn’t possibly happen by today’s woke standards.
Her piece about Fiorucci should be studied in every fashion and window display design school. Too bad I’m not THAT deep into fashion at such a deep level, but thinking about today’s fashion industry and the big networks, I do appreciate the prophetic qualities of this piece, and the culture around it to come. Yet, I also totally get why this long piece can frustrate other readers. Another "down" side I can get, is that at times it can feel a little too gossipy around film starts, etc, but that’s L.A. and those are her friends, and most of the stories here were written for magazines, so it’s all easily forgivable because of her style, wit and over all great writing.
August 20, 2022
Oh Eve, irrepressible even when relating her near death caused by trying to light a cigar in her car! It's a collection of mostly magazine articles and the rating reflects that rather than her writing which is amusing and giveth rather than taketh. Indeed as many have said she manages to describe the "real" LA, the city and it's people and environs, a place so much more than it's "driving to stay still" freeways. I've only visited LA, Eve lived it and wrote about it with a judiciously loving yet critical eye.
Goodness know what Eve must have been like in real life, one can only get a taste from a distance by reading about her life in these articles but one can hope that meeting Eve would have been as charming as this collection of articles was.
Goodness know what Eve must have been like in real life, one can only get a taste from a distance by reading about her life in these articles but one can hope that meeting Eve would have been as charming as this collection of articles was.
December 8, 2024
3.5 stars.
(average rating from 51 short pieces)
(average rating from 51 short pieces)
January 25, 2024
she’s still charming
October 10, 2022
As with any book of essays it’s impossible to love them all, but you’ll definitely learn a thing or two. Eve’s voice is bold, witty and dare I say it, FUN (a word she loves). Hate to make this comment but it’s hard for me not to compare her with Joan Didion though. They’re completely different in terms of style but the subject matter and the insider’s perspective on a complicated era - LA in the 60s - is the same. It’s no competition but I couldn’t help thinking that I prefer Joan’s distant insightfulness, which is a balm against the supposed “glam” of Hollywood. This kind of veers in the opposite direction and I always felt very aware that I was reading a magazine article.
Maybe that was part of the reason I didn’t totally love Eve’s work AS much as I wanted to? Some essays were phenomenal, essential reads in my opinion - Hippie Haven, Honky Tonk Nights, Skin Deep, Jim Morrison is Dead and Living in Hollywood (which does an amazing job of humanizing him), I Was a Naked Pawn for Art - and enjoyable too of course. But there’s a shallowness there in her work sometimes too that I didn’t enjoy. The Fiorucci piece was a total slog, had to push myself to finish that one.
Maybe I am “too New York” for this…that being said I want to read more of her writing, particularly her novels.
Maybe that was part of the reason I didn’t totally love Eve’s work AS much as I wanted to? Some essays were phenomenal, essential reads in my opinion - Hippie Haven, Honky Tonk Nights, Skin Deep, Jim Morrison is Dead and Living in Hollywood (which does an amazing job of humanizing him), I Was a Naked Pawn for Art - and enjoyable too of course. But there’s a shallowness there in her work sometimes too that I didn’t enjoy. The Fiorucci piece was a total slog, had to push myself to finish that one.
Maybe I am “too New York” for this…that being said I want to read more of her writing, particularly her novels.
January 3, 2021
Wildly uneven! Some of these pieces it seemed like Babitz just did for the money and read as tossed-off and silly. But others are mini-masterpieces: her essay about Jim Morrison is just perfection. I really like when Evie writes about clothes (her pieces for Vogue are scrumptious little bon bons) and especially art (she has such a wonderful eye and such a direct honest fresh approach - she should be an art critic).
July 20, 2023
This chick's the baddest to EVER do it.... she is my life inspiration and when im feeling delusional i think how we would be best friends. if only i could grow up in LA in the sixties
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