L.A. Woman. Eve Babitz
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Eve Babitz was born and grew up in Hollywood. She began to write in 1972 after designing album covers for such artists as Linda Ronstadt, Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds and Lord Buckley. Her articles and short stories have appeared in Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire and The New York Times Book Review.
Also by Eve Babitz:
EVE’S HOLLYWOOD
SLOW DAYS, FAST COMPANY
SEX AND RAGE
First published in Great Britain in 2019
by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2019 by Canongate Books
First published in the USA in 1982 by The Linden Press/Simon & Schuster,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
Copyright © Eve Babitz, 1982
Introduction copyright © Eve Babitz, 2015
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real
people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places,
and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to
actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 786 89 276 8
eISBN 978 1 786 89 277 5
CONTENTS
For us all
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
At the time I wrote L.A. Woman, I thought that it was going to be the book that took over the world. Ya know, that got me everything. That everything in my life would finally go my way. It came out in 1982 – the exact same time John Belushi was killing himself at the Chateau Marmont. I had been trying to get along with John Belushi for a long time. My agent sent me to New York to write about Belushi and get an in at Saturday Night Live, but I didn’t know that at the time. He lived in a cement bunker and, you know, was famous for not being very much fun, except for his skits and everything. I tried to but could never get around him, because he was surrounded by guns and cement bunkers.
The person I ended up influencing instead was Steve Martin – who is also from the West Coast – so maybe I had more of a chance with him. I was the one who suggested that he wear that white suit. I got the idea from a 1906 Jacques-Henri Lartigue photo of a man in a white suit on the beach in Cannes titled “Cousin Caro.” Lartigue took these photos when he was ten years old. He started when he was seven and continued taking them throughout his life till he accrued 250,000 of them. The day after his wedding he took a photo of his wife on the toilet. It’s titled “Bibi,” which was his nickname for the high-society Madeleine Messager, mother of his only child. She’s smiling, because she knows it’s for fun. So the guy’s funny and that’s what inspired Steve Martin, because he “got” Lartigue and became an immediate fan. Lartigue kept taking pictures of his family and they are now on sale at the Museum of Modern Art.
I told Steve Martin that everyone else was going for darkness, but darkness doesn’t pay off. I was the one who convinced Steve with that picture. I tried to convince the Eagles to wear white suits, too, but their reaction was, “No way!” They would have looked good! Don Henley eventually wound up wearing white suits in the ’80s. So did the guy who was married to Melanie Griffith. Don Johnson. Remember that Miami Vice thing? I mean everybody wore white suits. I finally got my way. Or they wore pale, incredible pastel colors. I totally got my way!
Let me tell you: when L.A. Woman came out, it had the perfect title. Then Jim Morrison stole the title for his album. But I am the “L.A.” woman! I had some help from my friend Diane Gardiner, who was a publicist. She publicized me nonstop. She just quoted all my funny remarks and they wound up in Rolling Stone and that’s why people wanted to meet me. So Diane kind of made me famous. Her own remarks were even funnier, but she kept a lid on it. That’s how all that happened. So, when L.A. Woman came out, I was just positive that I was going to take over the world.
I got reviewed in the New York Times. I thought they would “get” me, even if I’m from Los Angeles. So with L.A. Woman I thought they were going to get me that time and just publish everything in the book, stick excerpts in the paper and it was going to be just great! But the critique of my book was titled “A Dull Girl.”