Quote of the Day (Eve Babitz, on Two Sisters and a Friend)

“Just then, Haily arrived, Kate's best friend who nobody but Kate could stand. Haily was the kind of woman who took people's boyfriends when they weren't looking and then wanted you to feel sorry for her because she had no friends. Except for Kate. Haily was even more in love with Kate than everyone else, and attempted to look just like her, dying her own dishwater brown hair dark red like Kate's was naturally, even though Kate was so nonchalant about her beautiful hair that that day she just wore it in a long braid down her slender back. Kate was so otherworldly in her beauty that it was hard for me to believe her sister Vicky looked just like her except that the things Kate did to accentuate her beauty, Vicky refused to even consider. Kate, for example, used silvery eye shadow to bring out the silvery lime of her eyes; she often let her hair cascade down her back in a darkened red cloud, whereas Vicky chopped hers off at chin length and shoved it off her face in a bandanna…. [W]hile Vicky always wore either loafers or tennis shoes or else terrible low-heeled black scuffed pumps if she was really backed into a corner and had to go to a dinner party, Kate's shoes were all silver, including the boots she wore that day with her Moroccan pants. Haily looked like a smudged charcoal drawing of Kate done by someone with no talent.”— American artist, author and muse Eve Babitz (1943-2021), “Expensive Regrets,” in Black Swans: Stories (1993)

Quote of the Day (Eve Babitz, on Gossip and Why ‘You Have to Care in New York’)

“[Y]ou have to care in New York or you’ll die. It's not like L.A., where you can go around with your purse unsnapped or lost in thought even on the freeway. In New York, the gossip will get you if crossing the street doesn't: for the gossip is so dense and thick that it hovers over the entire city like an enraged bear, ready to snap its teeth on anyone who isn’t fast enough to cover herself with alibis, low profiles, or return red herrings aimed strategically somewhere else. The gossip is like a lightning game of backgammon with rolls of dice leaving behind broken hearts, the dissolution of entrenched power, and awkward guest lists. Everyone (who's left) waits for the next roll, eyes glued to the die. You cannot not care in New York. Even I know that. You’ll die just crossing the street. It’s exciting.” —American artist, author and muse Eve Babitz, “A Californian Looks at New York,” in I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz, edited by Sara J. Kramer (2019)

This paragraph gives a pretty good idea of the sit-up-and-take-notice quality of Eve Babitz’s prose. For anyone who hopes to get a sense of California from the 1950s to the 1990s (when a freak accident left her with third-degree burns and effectively ended her writing career), I can hardly imagine a more compelling guide.

But, reading this now, in a time of isolation (even as so many hope that era is coming to an end), the quote above feels disconnected from our time. Gossip thrives on society: not merely secrets shared between two people at minimum, but entire occasions that bring people together, encouraging loosened inhibitions and unexpected shared confidences. We have had little to none of that in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maybe New York will be returning to a recognized form of normality when gossip (as delicious as it is, in Babitz’s words, “dense and thick”) comes back, in the way we once remembered.

Quote of the Day (Eve Babitz, on Teen Daughters of the Hollywood Elite)

“When they reach the age of 15 and their beauty arrives, it's very exciting—like coming into an inheritance. And, as with inheritances, it's fun to be around when they first come into the money and watch how they spend it and on what.” —Memoirist-artist Eve Babitz, on daughters of the Hollywood elite, in Eve’s Hollywood (1974)