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Eve’s Hollywood wasn’t born from a dazzling socialite’s gossip about Los Angeles. It sprang from a clash of styles. By the early ’70s, Eve Babitz had all the props for becoming one of those secondary legends in other people’s lives: artists, rock stars, museums, beaches, cars, famous lovers, parties, pools, scorched afternoons. A perfect set for ending up a muse. But Babitz wanted to write. Joan Didion first helped her move from social circuit to literature—she circulated Babitz’s “The Sheik,” published in Rolling Stone in 1972. That was Eve’s serious beginning as a writer. Then things got interesting. Didion and John Gregory Dunne edited the manuscript of Eve’s Hollywood, and two Californias collided. On one side: Didion, the scalpel, the cold sentence, catastrophe composed with surgical restraint. On the other: Babitz—sunlight, glorious mess, bodies, hotels, cars, parties, digressions, memories arriving late to dinner. Didion tightened. Babitz wanted to let things breathe. That’s the point. Eve’s Hollywood could have been a neater, more controlled, more “respectable” piece of literature. Babitz made something else: a messy love letter to Los Angeles, full of names, heat, ego, memory, sex, grace and a superb streak of bad faith. She doesn’t describe Hollywood from the outside. She writes it from inside the party—and refuses to have anyone tidy up that party for her. The muse picks up the pen, keeps the disorder. Very bad student. Very great writer. Quick facts: Work: Eve’s Hollywood Author: Eve Babitz Country / year: United States, 1974 Read the book via the link in bio. Credits: Text: Eve Babitz, Eve’s Hollywood Images: Eve Babitz archives / Los Angeles / D.R. Duchamp / Babitz photo: Julian Wasser, 1963.