Too L.A.

Letter-writing was the kind of writing Babitz did best. Her missives—fresh and frank, dashing and droll—are irresistible, as highly spirited as they are acutely perceptive. Take, for example, this letter to a friend in 1979:

“I wrote this letter to Leo Lerman, that editor at Vogue who took me out to lunch at the Algonquin when I was in NY.... So I told him how I’d moved to Santa Monica, and what it was like, and the skating and the Rodeo Drive-type stores. And he published the thing as is, or was (it was slightly edited). Now it’s appearing on every newsstand. And since it’s the kind of writing I do best—letters—people are dropping dead all over the place over how wonderful I am.”

People will drop dead all over the place when they get a load of this collection featuring letters to or from some of Babitz' most famous friends, lovers, artistic idols and rivals, like Joan Didion, Joseph Heller, Annie Leibovitz, Paul Ruscha, and Ann Rice.