100 books like Eve's Hollywood

It wouldn’t be an LA book list without Raymond Chandler, but I’m perhaps getting a little controversial by opting for one of his lesser-known titles (and one that’s half set in a fictionalized version of Big Bear, to boot). Let me defend myself. This book deserves a place in the annals of Hollywood noir because it is simply irresistible, as nauseatingly unsettling as the undertow in a quick flowing Angeles National Forest stream. As for the setting, it’s half in LA, and what would this city be without our day trips? Los Angeles is a place that’s so much defined by what’s around it that Chandler’s depictions of endless driving, the longing to find an aperture, a way of life that seems impossible to escape, are timeless. 

It’s a little bit of a cliche to list St. Joan as your favorite LA writer, but believe me when I tell you she has more than earned her reputation. While she’s better known for her essays, this novel might be my favorite thing she wrote. I think of this book every time I have to make the terrible multi-lane change entering downtown on the 101 freeway, every time I meet an aspiring actor with something seedy in his past, or drink Coca-Cola from a glass bottle. It’s such a dark, twisted space for exploration, and Didion isn’t afraid to get weird. The best book for SoCal cynics, disillusioned dreamers who haven’t made it big, and anyone else who is falling for this city’s seductive charm.

This sumptuous, inclusive, achingly loving, and lovable novel is the first book I remember reading and thinking…this makes me want to be a writer.

Weetzie and her offbeat group of loved ones live in an LA painted five shades more magical by Block’s descriptions of it. As sweetly as she captures the diverse set of characters, the gift I treasure most in this story is how Block also captures the atmosphere of places: it’s like she’s dug underneath the surface to what makes them matter. 

Evelyn Waugh’s 1947 visit to Hollywood to negotiate a movie deal for Brideshead Revisited was a failure. But a trip to Forest Lawn Cemetery provided the gist for The Loved One, his last great satire. Waugh transforms Forest Lawn into Whispering Glades, a grandiose Disneyland of Death where cosmetician Aimée Thanatogenos puts the finishing touches on elite Los Angelenos under the lustful eye of mortician Mr. Joyboy. The naïve Aimée meets Dennis Barlow, a British expat and failed writer who passes off the works of Tennyson and Keats as his own. When she discovers Barlow works at the Happy Hunting Ground Pet Cemetery, even advice columnist Guru Brahmin can’t console her. Waugh’s piercing prose exposes the pretense and hypocrisy of the American Way of Life (and Death). 

A roman-à-clef which is not a novel and 80% of whose keys I have unlocked. She was “Evie” and she died in Hollywood this year of complications of Huntington’s disease and probably smoking, at age 78. Our families were close and in fact the second “L.A. woman,” second that is to Eve herself, narrating and thinly disguised as Sophie Lubin, was my aunt, Marie (née) Gattman, called “Lola,” married first to photographer Hy Hirsh (“Sam Glanzrock” in the book) and second to Elwood Scott Chapman (whom Marie “named” Aaron and who is called “Luther” in the book). Eve’s writing style is contagious and its logic so twisted that it makes you say “What?” and re-read many passages. As in my book, the battle between Stalin and Trotsky hovers constantly in the background. I think Trotsky wins.

Born in Los Angeles and with profound connection to this city’s psyche, Wendy Ortiz delivers a map of Los Angeles transformed into words, a fragmented memoir of hurt, love, loss, and reinvention. What does a young writer (one of thousands) living in this city and trying to make it worry about? Joblessness. Rent. Bills. Riding the metro. Alcohol. And yes, sex and publishing too, of course. This book proves that it’s not always 72 and sunny in Los Angeles.

This is the third book in the Trip Callaway Gig mystery series written by Phil Swann. While I’ve enjoyed all the Trip Callaway books, I especially like this one because it takes place in 1966 Hollywood. In this story, musician and undercover agent Trip Callaway takes us into the world of Los Angeles studio musicians, who played on all those memorable recordings and variety shows of the time. On top of spending some quality time in great, but sadly long gone, Hollywood hotspots like Shelly’s Manne Hole, The Palomino, and Martoni’s – places I went growing up in Los Angeles – Tinseltown Tango is also a ripping good yarn. If you enjoy a good murder mystery with a dash of music and no shortage of laughs, check out this book. You won’t be disappointed. 

Ted Sennett is one of the most prolific and widely-read writers about Hollywood and this book on 1939 is one of his very best works. It is filled (one might even say, stuffed) with behind-the-scenes stories. The writing is sometimes critical and analytical rather than gushing as in some of Sennett's many coffee table books. He concentrates on only seventeen 1939 movies so one doesn't get a full picture of that amazing year of movies. It's good to see some lesser-known classics like Midnight and Angels Have Wings included in the seventeen.

Elmore Leonard knew the vagaries of the movie business back to front, and he serves them up on a platter of delicious satire in this story about an East Coast loan shark, Chili Palmer, who comes to Los Angeles chasing a deadbeat debtor and winds up in his own fractured fairy tale version of the Hollywood dream.

Chili’s an endearing character, street smart with a unique blend of humility and self-confidence. When his collection job throws him into company with a group of movie people, he sees them and their milieu with clear-eyed objectivity.

Talking to an underworld associate, he says, “The movie business, you can do anything you want because there’s nobody in charge.” Leonard’s mastery of dialogue and character, along with his wit and sly affection for the industry he’s skewering combine to make this book a complete delight. 

This is a memoir about being a writer—and failing. With scholarly rigor and tenderhearted sympathy, Specktor excavates the lives of artists forgotten (Carol Eastman, Eleanor Perry), underappreciated (Thomas McGuane, Hal Ashby), and notorious (Warren Zevon, Michael Cimino), while always circling back to his own benighted Hollywood upbringing, complete with a lovely tribute to his mother, a failed screenwriter. This is an angry, sad, but always somehow joyful book about not hitting it big, and I've never read anything quite like it.