Week Eight: PAPERBACK | Hollywood Babylon, by Kenneth Anger

This week’s selection comes from artist/hedonist, Norman Gaille.

This is THE classic compendium of old Hollywood scandals, written by child actor turned underground queer film legend and occultist, Kenneth Anger. Perversion is his forte, and this book is without question a necessary addendum to his films. It’s pretty outdated by today’s standards for shock, but it’s still wonderfully trashy, irreverent, sensational, and a lot of times, outright false. What I love is that all of the shit that Anger made up in this book, or rumors that he recounted without checking a single fact, are now ingrained in Hollywood urban legend. That’s a serious legacy, better than any painted masterpiece, sitting in moth balls in a stuffy museum. Read it in one sitting, then give it a place of prominence on the back of your toilet for your friends to discover when they’re squatting, vulnerable. -NG