The Pleasure of Her Company
Eve Babitz was a legendary ’70s “it” girl and a dishy chronicler of Los Angeles until the party stopped in the ’90s. She may not be writing anymore, but she still has plenty to say.
When Eve Babitz was a young Los Angeles socialite, dropping LSD with Yoko Ono at a party thrown by Andy Warhol, draining cocktails at the Chateau Marmont, writing for Rolling Stone, sleeping with Jim Morrison and, once, playing chess in the nude across from Marcel Duchamp, she didn’t so much feel that she was invincible or immortal—she was sure she would die before 30. For Babitz, the point of life was to fill it with as much pleasure as possible. “Death, to me, has always been the last word in people having fun without you,” she wrote in her first book, Eve’s Hollywood, published in 1974. Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh and L.A. (1977) and e (1979) followed.