El otro Hollywood

Photographer and writer, Babitz embodied in her youth a unique blend of California's most liberated spirit and the cultural elite of the time. Jim Morrison dedicated a song to her, she posed nude playing chess with Marcel Duchamp, introduced Dalí and Frank Zappa, and counted Harrison Ford, Ed Ruscha, and Steve Martin among her lovers. Babitz defines her memoirs as a "confessional novel," but what she offers us here is more like strolling with her as the city surrenders to her provocative pedigree. With sharp wit, she recounts her life like a friend who's had a few too many drinks. We see the young people of L.A. through the eyes of a teenage Eve lounging on Venice Beach, we share champagne-fueled LSD trips at the Chateau Marmont in the company of future rock stars, and we fall in love with this bon vivant capable of dedicating a chapter to the best tacos in the city. The other Hollywood is the universe of a girl who adored parties as much as the books of Henry James, Colette, or Virginia Woolf. It is the paradise of a young woman who surrendered to the provocation and the dreamlike allure of a city that became her reason for being. It is, above all, the story of a woman who, in that hypnotic and volatile society, understood the advantages of staying true to herself.