‘70s L.A. Literary Ladies

“This business of… being a writer is ultimately about asking yourself, ‘How alive am I willing to be?’ ”

Anne Lamott

Friday, August 15, 2025

Joe’s Cafe & Art Gallery

Featuring Saint Louis artists from Circus Kaput and Angie Boger Music.

Video by Jeremy Casper.

Images by Shane Parker.

a word from Barry Taylor

Welcome to our Summer of 70s L.A. Literary Ladies

We invite you into these cultural forces that coalesced to create the atmosphere in which these 2 authors became the twin poles of literary genius; Didion with her crystalline precision, and Babitz with her intoxicating immediacy:

The feminine soul on a cultural level rising out of the women's liberation movement
The creation of New Journalism, a literary movement that applied novelistic techniques to reporting, emphasizing immersive personal narrative and subjective truth
The glamour and emptiness of L.A., the emptiness behind material abundance
With Watergate and Vietnam, the disillusionment with traditional narratives created the freedom and anxiety that defined the 1970s
California as ground zero for self-actualization movements, the burgeoning of therapeutic culture
Living inside of the Hollywood machine that creates American mythology
The rise of geographic mobility and rootlessness, leading to California being a destination for the displaced and searching
The counterculture's literary voice that captured both the idealism and the crash of the American Dream

Read these books:

As always, choose your level of participation:

Here's the supplemental material to prepare you for delving into these two literary lions of 1970’s Los Angeles - sharp-eyed chroniclers who turned their own lives and the glittering wasteland around them into unforgettable art:

- L.A. Magazine article on photographer Annie Lebowitz, who captured California in the 70s, its iconic landscapes, its cultural landmarks, its people and the vibrant, often chaotic, rhythms of their daily life.
- Quotes from Didion and Babitz contemporary, the famous writer and journalist, Norman Mailer, revealing the cultural vibe of the times that these two were moving against:
  - Mailer on Women’s Liberation: “I don’t think that women have done much in developing their ideas. Can you tell me some new ones that have come out of women’s liberation in the last decade or so? What are they saying now that they weren’t saying fifteen years ago? What astonishing theses has Ms. magazine come up with lately?” [Conversations with Norman Mailer]
  - Mailer on Women Writers: “I have a terrible confession to make — I have nothing to say about any of the talented women who write today. Out of what is no doubt a fault in me, I do not seem able to read them. Indeed I doubt if there will be a really exciting woman writer until the first whore becomes a call girl and tells her tale. At the risk of making a dozen devoted enemies for life, I can only say that the sniffs I get from the ink of women are always fey, old-hat, Quaintsy Goysy, tiny, too dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish, fashionable, frigid, outer-Baroque, maquillé in mannequin’s whimsy, or else bright and stillborn. Since I’ve never been able to read Virginia Woolf, and am sometimes willing to believe that it can conceivably be my fault, this verdict may be taken fairly as the twisted tongue of a soured taste, at least by those readers who do not share with me the ground of departure — that a good novelist can do without everything but the remnant of his balls.” [Advertisements for Myself]
- This clip from the movie “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” with Hunter S. Thompson speaking of “that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
- This video on “The New Journalism: Remembering the late Tom Wolfe,” describing the literary waters that these women swam in.(Just as importantly, push “more” on the description and read what they wrote, SO GOOD!)
- This trailer for the documentary “The Last Movie Stars,” capturing that perfect blend of glamour and existential searching. (Plus you can hear Lana Del Rey’s haunting “Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems” song)
To these albums of introspective female voices, 1970s LA, confessional writing, and emotional rawness:
- Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”
- Carole King’s “Tapestry”
- Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours”