14-year-old Eve Babitz – in 1957 – reading the autobiography of Elinor Glyn, she who coined the term “It” in the 1920s, i.e. “he/she has IT”, meaning sex appeal, charisma. The book was a sensation and a Clara Bow vehicle – of the same name – was soon to follow. “It” swept the nation, with all its images of freedom and sexual liberation for women (and, by association, men). The picture was taken by Eve’s mother Mae. Glyn’s autobiography was called Romantic Adventure, and when Babitz was 14 she had already started a memoir – or at least had the idea for one – called I Wouldn’t Raise My Kid in Hollywood (ha!). Also, around the same time, a concerned guidance counselor asked the teenage Babitz, who spent her summers hanging out at the “rough beach” with basically criminal boys on motorcycles and their tough-chick girlfriends, “What are your plans? What are you going to do when you graduate?” Babitz said, “Be an adventuress.”
And she was. Until the adventures ran out, but not before she wrote it all down (Eve’s Hollywood, Slow Days Fast Company, Sex & Rage, L.A. Woman, Two by Two, and literally hundreds of essays for magazines ranging from Rolling Stone to Esquire to ‘zines that ran for only two issues).
Look at Eve’s face. She’s young but she already KNOWS.
I recommend the new collection “Too L.A.: Letters Never Sent (But Some Were)”. How fast and greedily I turned the pages.