West Coast Hedonists
By Caleb Morrow
March 31, 2026
Graphic by Dominic Dayton
The word that author Eve Babitz is most commonly referred to as is “hedonist”. The word has wriggled its way into nearly every credible article about Sunset Boulevard’s wittiest darling, and for good reason. None of Babitz’s contemporaries evoked a sense of pleasure like she did. While reading her novel “Slow Days, Fast Company”, I caught myself grinning as she recounted with ease benders spent inside the Chateau Marmont, tormenting winds that drove California’s residents to their breaking points, and escapades with men who Babitz had come to understand before they’d even known themselves. The novel was an exhilarating ride from start to finish, all thanks to Babitz’s determination to put pleasure at the forefront of her life and literature.
One might wonder why power suits and strong shoulders are resurging, why quiet luxury has become a dominant aesthetic, or why bold, vibrant colors have given way to a sea of beiges and browns. These shifts reflect the health of the economy. Take the year 2000, when the dot-com bubble fueled rapid growth and heavy investment. The economy was liquid and optimistic, and people had money to spend and wanted to flaunt it, “Great Gatsby” style. Fashion followed suit with heavy makeup, cropped silhouettes, and bejeweled everything.
Babitz wielded glamour and vanity like a weapon, but she didn’t let her stylish approach to prose undermine her reputation as a genius who just happened to fly too close to Hollywood’s sun. Her flirtations with A-listers such as Harrison Ford and Jim Morrison and her mentions of cocaine and Quaaludes — the hallmarks of her time — may mislead people into dismissing her as a privileged party girl, but Babitz’ self-awareness confirms she’s a necessary insider on Hollywood’s most romanticized era. She brushes off encounters with desirable men and illicit drugs with an admirable shrug, as if readers shouldn’t be too impressed by her fashionable life.
By the time I’d finished Slow Days, Fast Company, I was craving a similar rush. Where could I find a sun-baked joyride like that? A swirl of cocktail parties that stretched till dawn, candlelit dinners stacked with big names in the entertainment industry. Babitz had crafted a star-studded dreamscape oozing with so much charisma that it seemed like no other ode to California could do the state justice.
I searched listlessly for anything that could depict the same mood Babitz so delicately crafted. I watched The Long Goodbye, a film by Robert Altman following a private investigator against a vibrant Southern California backdrop. I read Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion, who served as the serious, journalistic foil to Eve’s more light-hearted approach to storytelling. But no matter where I searched, California simply didn’t shimmer quite like it did in Babitz’ love-letter to the landscape.
It wasn’t until I considered that I didn’t have to rummage through media from fifty years ago to capture what Babitz had. California still remains an object of fascination for most who aren’t native to the state — including me. I’ve only visited the state in flashes, on summers where my extended family would pop fireworks for the Fourth of July and show me around picturesque beaches. I’ve felt its cold wind blow sand in my eye and threaten to whisk me away. I’ve navigated its treacherous running trails so steep that one wrong move would mean trampling into a cocktail of dirt and dust. I’ve visited the planetarium where a statue of James Dean sits just outside the renowned Hollywood sign. Even years later, California’s essence lingers on in my imagination.
As my family drove up the winding road that eventually leads to the planetarium, I found myself playing no other album than “Norman F*cking Rockwell” by Lana Del Rey in the backseat. It didn’t seem like I had any other option; the album is so inextricably tied to the state that it felt like a serious wrongdoing to not listen given the occasion.
NFR is an album perhaps best encompassed by its beginning line. When Lana croons “Goddamn man child” after some gorgeous piano chords, it sets the tone for the rest of her magnum opus. Babitz and Lana possessed the same sensibilities about men; though men would always remain a valuable, if not crucial, aspect of both of their lives, they resisted the idea of being smothered by their romantic partners. They certainly encouraged pleasure when it came, but both were quick to put men in their place when they felt too disrespected or misunderstood.
Both women even considered taking on the role of the man in a relationship, with Lana’s assertive lyricism coming to its climax during the chorus of “Mariners Apartment Complex". “I’m your man”, she echoes coolly to a partner who had her pegged as weak and effeminate. Meanwhile, Babitz fantasizes about “dodging emotional entanglements and lying” in the first two pages of her novel.
Babitz and Del Rey understood the difference between pleasure with bounds and without. In their respective bodies of work, the writers came to terms with their exotic Californian lifestyles. Though certainly thrilling, both women understood that they and those around them erred opposite the side of caution on too many occasions. In “Slow Days, Fast Company”s fifth chapter, “Heroine”, Babitz recounts once seeing Janis Joplin lying still in her backyard pool, seemingly dead. The anecdote strengthens her overarching message of the chapter, which relays the insidious nature of stardom, and how “making it” simply isn’t enough for most women at the top. Whether it was through drug or alcohol abuse, or mental health issues gone unnoticed, to be a starlet on Sunset Boulevard meant a higher likelihood to succumb to a grim fate. It’s a sentiment similarly expressed in Lana’s “Fuck it I love you”, where the artist mentions that the way she’s been living is slowly killing her.
Even while recognizing the downside of their hedonistic lives, both women discuss such grave fates in glamorous and glittering detail that listeners and readers can’t help but still romanticize the lifestyle. Culture has tricked many into thinking there’s something chic about having everything and still feeling as though something’s missing. Despite their milieu of bad habits and influences, however, both women lived to tell the tale of surviving both the very top and rock bottom.
Babitz makes it known from the very beginning of her novel that its main intent is a love letter to a guy she so hopelessly desires. “The seduction of a non reader is how I plan to tie up L.A.”, she reports gleefully. Though it’s not made clear exactly who Babitz is writing the novel to, what is clear is that she’s simultaneously writing a love letter to California. With each chapter set in a different part of the state, Babitz’s playfully wise anecdotes are equipped with so much detail and fluency it seems she has fallen more in love with California than she has any man.
Similarly, NFR’s track “California” also appears to dually serve as an ode to her love interest and her beloved state. She lets the non-Californian she’s singing about know that if he ever wants to return, he should “just hit her up”. Romance twirls and blossoms as Lana brings up the plethora of options the lovers can embark on throughout the Golden State.
It seems as though the land itself has a magnetism unrivaled by any other state. What else could explain such intense feelings of sensuality and passion that have plagued California’s natives for decades? It doesn’t matter if it's the late 20th century or the early 21st – California will always maintain an undeniable hedonistic quality. From the outside looking in, its intrigue knows no bounds – so imagine what could happen, and of course what’s already happened, on the inside? ■
Other Stories in Culture
© 2025 SPARK. All Rights Reserved.