On his blog at Vanity Fair, James Wolcott has a post worth sharing, and not just because he sensibly links to Deborah Shapiro’s excellent piece about Eve Babitz from back in the Second Pass’ infancy. He shares an anecdote that also includes Leonard Michaels:

. . . on one visit to L.A. [Babitz], me, Amy Hempel, and Leonard Michaels strolled through Venice Beach, stopping at Muscle Beach to watch the oiled prodigies go through their Atlas exertions with free weights and on the chin-up bars. It’s difficult to imagine a more striking contrast than that between the bodybuilders in their briefs and sculpted physiques and the saturnine-looking Michaels in his English-prof wear.