Lili Anolik admits her first book on Eve Babitz, Hollywood’s Eve, was a way of “driving a stake” through her subject’s heart, hoping to end her self-confessed “unbalanced, fetishistic” obsession with the bohemian LA writer.
Anolik had been in Babitz’s “thrall” for nine years, since she fell hard for her 1974 book Slow Days, Fast Company. Hollywood’s Eve, along with Anolik’s Vanity Fair articles, have been the impetus driving Babitz’s work back to centre stage, resurrecting Babitz as a cultural icon.
Anolik’s obsession did not end with her book, nor with Babitz’s slow passing in December 2021, after living with Huntington’s disease. In January of that year, she received a call from Babitz’s sister Mirandi, saying she had found sealed boxes of photographs and letters buried in the “full-scale filth” of Babitz’s apartment.
