For a While Everything Was Golden

December 30, 2022 4:58 AM

Yet something did survive. In the deepest reaches of a closet was a stack of boxes packed by Eve’s mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside: journals, photos, scrapbooks, manuscripts, and letters. No, inside a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and was centered in a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of L.A. The Franklin Avenue scene, I call it for reasons that will become apparent. And it had all the explosive vitality that the scene at Les Deux Magots on the Left Bank had for Ernest Hemingway and his fellow Lost boys. It was the making of one great American writer, the breaking and then the remaking—and thus the true making—of another. These two writers were friends. Enemies as well. They were also women, a fact fundamental rather than incidental... from Joan Didion and Eve Babitz Shared an Unlikely, Uneasy Friendship—One That Shaped Their Worlds and Work Forever by Lili Anolik [ungated]

Previously

posted by chavenet (14 comments total)

I had no earthly idea who either Joan Didion or Eve Babitz were until I read this, but now I think I'd like to read things they've both written. Thanks for posting this, it was a good read.
posted by signsofrain at 7:20 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Harrison Ford? Steve Martin? Wow.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:31 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Thank you for this link.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 8:07 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

I checked out Eve’s Hollywood from my library after reading this article. It wasn’t my cup of tea, I thought it was boring! She sounds like such an interesting person , though, and having just been to Hollywood and Santa Monica I was intrigued by her. I’ll try Joan Dideon next.
posted by waving at 8:44 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

I haven't read this article yet but can't imagine there's much to surprise me in there (will get to it later), as I've read all of Didion and Babitz.

For those checking out Didion for the first time, my favorites are The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Or Play It Where It Lays, for fiction.

For Babitz it's Slow Days, Fast Company, and Eve's Hollywood.

Those just learning about the connection to Ford — he famously was a carpenter before becoming an actor. He built the book cases in Didion's Franklin house, and I believe the front door as well.

There's also a half-decent documentary on Didion on Netflix: The Center Will Not Hold, which is a line often attributed to her, but is originally from Yeats.
posted by dobbs at 9:30 AM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

In re Harrison Ford: McGrath also had an inner circle. In it: Joan and Dunne; Michelle Phillips, a Mama in the Mamas & the Papas; Peter Pilafian; and Harrison Ford, before he was Han Solo (said Phillips, “I didn’t even know Harrison was an actor. I remember getting dragged to Star Wars at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. I was sitting there, watching the screen, and all of a sudden Harrison comes on and I gasped and said, ‘That’s my pot dealer!’ ”).

posted by chavenet at 10:06 AM on December 30, 2022 [6 favorites]

I have big time deadlines this afternoon but I am saving this to read tomorrow. Thank you.
posted by virago at 10:12 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

No wonder Ford played a smuggler with such ease.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 10:37 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

He did the Kessel Blaze in less than twelve parsecs, man!
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:55 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Did you ever really look at your Han?
posted by chavenet at 11:32 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

I blame Jim Morrison.
posted by clavdivs at 2:08 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

...and I gasped and said, “It’s that stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder!”
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:24 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

I find Lili Anolik's writing style here too fizzy, mostly because it helps her gloss over her overreach on several key points (I claim). This is not to say that I didn't love every word, because I did!

For a wonderfully evocative recreation of that time and place, I recommend the 2020 documentary Laurel Canyon (trailer here). It focuses on musicians, many of whom are mentioned in the VF article, from Jim Morrison to Michelle Phillips to Jackson Browne and on and on. The apartments at 7406 Franklin Avenue were only a couple of miles from the canyon.

Incidentally, both Babitz and Anolik, as her biographer, are mentioned in the NYT's 2016 obit of Earl McGrath. (I recommend the comments.)

I've never read Eve Babitz but will be rectifying that toot sweet.
posted by Short Attention Sp at 4:10 PM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

This is glorious. Thank you chavenet
posted by mmrtnt at 1:11 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]