Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Poached bit from a friend here, and a whole ton of Eve Babitz

Recently got an email from a friend whom I believe would like to remain anonymous:

"Yesterday I fell in love with an alcoholic, (he smelled like booze and was verbally slurry) and is schizophrenic, (he told me he'd been diagnosed) He was incredibly bright and engaging as well as easy on the eyes. He made me think of a first born son of a wealthy noble family who have fallen on hard times but still need to keep up the impression of their social status. I was oddly entranced. He was looking for a b'day present for his Grandma whose roots are deeply southern and religious. I ended up suggesting Ann Morrow Lindbergh's Gifts From the Sea. His taste in fiction was skewed toward outsiders like Vollman, DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. Couldn't go there with him since I've only read one Delillo and none of the other two; I hope he comes back. What is it about always feeling drawn to the wounded ones?
To be continued.....'

This reminded me so of Eve Babitz, whose book Eve's Hollywood I just finished (the cover a most appropriate and flattering pic of the author -- whose father was good friends with the Stravinskys, a musician who worked for the studios and an excellent liver of the Bohemian life) -- now you tell me if the woman above does not sound like the woman below:

Re a musician she adored when young in the late 60s:
'And there was James, salty and famished-looking from the summer, standing like a raped angel with these dark blue eyes throwing southern aristocratic landscapes all across dark smelly nightclubs where we sat in front of the impossible.'

(And no -- while the woman above let me have <u>Eve's Hollywood</u> first, she hasn't ever read her before).

In highschool she runs off with a different crowd (ie, one uncompromising iconoclast of a rebel boy, Aces) and the next Mr. Popular asks if she's going to the dance:
"No, I said, my eyes narrowing.  So it turned out that power was the quality of knowing what you liked.  What an odd thing for power to be.

Re her crush on Brando rendering her unable to follow the crowd to UCLA, and her parents' reaction ('they both thought universities were where people went who didn't know what they were doing').
'Sometimes she [her mother] would look at me happily, so I suppose she did not regard with alarm the fact that I was so [Brando'd] out that I was the verge of doubling up on everything to stop it from seeming like half.'

'Andy Warhol's having a party, I'd turn over delicately. The evening lay naked before us.  We could go anywhere or do anything; it was New York City.'

Well hell I'd never in a thousand years think Eve Babitz wouldn't understand that town's essence! Regardless her single year NYC, she remains a staunchly in love with L.A. and always makes it sound like so much more fun that I ever had there...maybe if I'd met her!

Here is Ms. B speaking of taking LSD at a party:

'The dawn came up, the sun rose in unendurable horizons of peach from which I could not take my eyes. All lay in beauty beneath the round orange sun and sweetness filled the air like a lake feels to a fish.

By then, even my English friend was sleeping. And so I watched alone. Two plus two equals pink.
For me, sometimes.'

Oh my goddess, for me, too, Eve -- as much as possible!

'All at once I was home writing. I stopped going out and met no one; my only friends were my perpetual girl friends and I didn't fuck anyone new.

Eve, welcome to my world.

Just don't leave it. Ever.

Okay?