21 Questions With It Girl Eve Babitz
Before Instagram, before Erewhon, before Keeping Up With the Kardashians—Hollywood belonged to Eve Babitz. A perennial muse and proto–It Girl, Eve documented her hometown of Los Angeles and all its notable inhabitants, long before the internet offered a perpetual who-what-where. Her ease with entering any scene—even playing chess naked opposite Marcel DuChamp—felt supernatural. Nearly 50 years later, Eve’s Hollywood is hard to imagine, but achingly authentic. A bohemian scribe for counterculture and subversive celebrity, her work laid a foundation. Here, we ask Eve to play 21 questions, with an introduction by Natasha Stagg.
The details of Eve Babitz’s life always get in the way of the real story, which is the writing itself. Babitz’s work got a real second wind at the end of the 2010s, amid debates over the merits of autofiction. Eve’s Hollywood (1974) and Slow Days, Fast Company (1977) certainly might count, although their pseudonyms and obscured details are more often attributed to the trust the discreet author inspired. It would also make sense, I think, if her work had seen a resurgence during the 2000s, when bloggers became the new It Girls, way after Babitz had mastered being the life of a party and its best documenter, kind of like her peers in the New Journalism and Gonzo movements, only more charming.
