Eve Babitz's Letters from “Too L.A.” Read By Gina Gershon

Eve Babbitt's To Joseph Heller, April 14, 1964.

Dear Joseph Heller, This is an overt fan letter.

I read Catch-22 last year, and I've been feeling guilty about not writing you ever since.

Then I read an interview with you in The Realist and put it off for another spell.

Anyhow, I adore you.

I am in one of your situations at the moment, and this weekend it reached such heller proportions that you won't have to wait another week for my overt fan letter.

A very terrible thing happened to me.

I was born a girl.

It would be okay if I were ugly or something or even startlingly unattractive, but as luck would have it, I'm gorgeous occasionally.

Here's the thing.

I wrote this fabulous book and I'm trying to get it published.

So I show it to people and they say, gee, this is a fabulous book.

Let's hop into bed.

I can get it published for you.

And that wouldn't be so bad either, only everyone is so old and ugly and untalented.

It always winds up with me running out of the apartment, clutching my manuscript to my overdeveloped chest, screaming obscenities all the way home on the bus, usually in a wet bathing suit.

Oh, Joseph Heller, what do you think I should do? I'm only 20 years old, and this has happened eight times already, and pretty soon I'm going to run out of people and agents.

I'm poor, besides.

Sincerely yours, Eve Babbitts.