The book – a biography of Peter Coyote, actor, writer, and proponent of Zen Buddhism. California Zen: Peter Coyote Becomes a Human Being by Wilson Isaacsen-Gaunt By being, for decades on end, in the right place at the right time,…
Victoria Phillips BAM 70100 Professor Jason Tougaw 10 September 2022 Footnote Assignment I am working on two projects: a memoir (my thesis, I think) and a “traditional” diplomatic biography of Eleanor Lansing Dulles. Memoir The memoir uses disease as…
Lili’s Glue
I loved Lili’s book. She is sacrosanct in all the best ways – eager to demystify the facts of her subject while sustaining the mystification that seduced her to it from the start. I use “it” here intentionally, wanting to…
When Passion and Place Collide; Bring back the Phone Book
LA the endless party, New York the sleepless night, Lili Anolik’s Northern Star: Place and Passion Collide in Hollywood’s Eve “I loved her so much and I wanted to meet her,” or so said Lili Anolik of her subject Eve…
largely an issue of structure — on Hollywood’s Eve
It’s a good thing that Anolik disclaims her book as not being a traditional biography, because she is not a compelling biographer. Nor does she exhibit as a skilled literary critic. She does show herself, throughout Hollywood’s Eve, to be…
The Details in Hollywood’s Eve
Lili Annolik knows the truth. Eve was serious about her art. (p. 39). The author drives this point nicely throughout Hollywood’s Eve, infusing her writing with details and footnotes that give Eve’s work and character dimension beyond the surface. Beauty…
Reactions to Hollywood’s Eve
When reading Eve’s Hollywood, I kept marveling at how little Eve talked about her parents, her siblings. There are the two chapters up front about her grandparents but she does not dissect her family of origin in the way most…
Reading Response of Hollywood’s Eve
In her note to the reader, Lili Anolik mentioned that this book, Hollywood’s Eve, is a biography in the non-traditional sense —a case history as well as a cultural; a critical appreciation; a sociological study; … a memoir in disguise;…
Eve’s Hollywood/Hollywood’s Eve: The Beauties of Johnson/The Life of Johnson?
Despite the pretence of being a chatty, non-academic biography, Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A. demonstrates the best of historical analysis. Hat’s off to the author for great research and insightful writing combined with a…
Eve’s Hollywood – Reflections
It is no doubt the Eve Babitz is a gifted and, dare I say, “sensual” writer. Almost every chapter oozes with seduction and provocation. I was immediately drawn in – wanting to know more about her. But then I got…
