LITERATURE 30 “L.A. Has Always Been A Humid Jungle Alive With Seething L.A. Projects That I Guess People From Other Places Just Can’t See” First edition of this confessional novel about Los Angeles in the 1970s, with 23 pages of photographic illustrations, inscribed to fine press publishers Stathis Orpanos and Ralph Sylvester, “Dearest Stathis & Ralph, I’m so happy someone wants my books who lives on Cheremoya, my first Hollywood street. from Eve Babitz XOXO [drawing of a heart].” “Sharp and funny throughout, Babitz offers an almost cinematic portrait of Los Angeles: gritty, glamorous, toxic and intoxicatin” (New York Times). “Babitz’s style is cool, conversational, loose, yet weighted with a seemingly effortless poetry. Unlike her contemporary, Joan Didion, Babitz isn’t staring into the abyss and reporting back; but she does want to tell you how good the light is out by the abyss” (Guardian). “Eve Babitz is a little like Madame de Sévigné, that inveterate letterwriter of Louis XIV’s time, transposed to the Chateau Marmont in the late 20th-Century—lunching, chatting, dressing, loving and crying in Hollywood, that latter-day Versailles” (Los Angeles Times). The recipients of this copy, Stathis Orphanos and Ralph Sylvester, were life partners who founded the publishing house Orphanos and Sylvester in Los Angeles in the seventies, beginning with a deluxe edition of Isherwood’s Christopher and his Kind. Orphanos was also a noted photographer, with his works displayed in numerous exhibitions. Book fine, dust jacket with light rubbing, more so to spine. An exceptional copy with a very nice association. 36BABITZ, Eve. Eve’s Hollywood. New York, 1974. Octavo, original black cloth, dust jacket. $5800
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