Didion and Babitz

And, anyow, what if the competition wasn’t a competition at all? What if the competition was actually a cooperation, Joan and Eve writing L. A. together? Their sensibilities were polarized, their styles clashing. Their inventions, though, were identical: to make literature that exploited what was novel and exposed what was familiar in a city, a society, and an epoch under convulsive pressure. from Didion & Babitz

This kept me turning pages, even if I had never heard of Babitz and never read Didion. (So, judge me, Reader. I haven’t read EVERYTHING …. YET.)

Anolik writes like she’s whispering into my ear, sharing juicy revelations about an era and place foreign to me, when the scene revolved around sex, drugs, and rock and show more roll—and artists and writers and Hollywood–at a time when I was at a conservative small town college and starting marriage to a seminary student. So, why do I care about Eve Babitz with her zillions of boyfriends, some gay or bi or rich or famous, her struggle to find a place as an artist in a world were she was considered ‘a piece of ass’? Because Anolik made me care.

The book reveals Joan Didion through Eve Babitz’s eyes, their friendship/competition and how it impacted ‘literature’, what each brought to the table.

My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interest. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.” Joan Didion

Didion, such a legend, so controlled, so aloof. And the high spirited hedonist Eve, goddaughter to Igor Stravinsky, whose family partied with famous musicians and artists. Eve tried art and then writing, never quite taken seriously. He voluptuous body out of sync with the times–the one way I identified with Eve: “I thought I was fat, too. I look at pictures now and see that I looked like a normal person, but that was fat then.”

I know I’m not a major important serious author who’ll be forever under the Bs at the library. I’m a gossip storyteller who likes L. A. rather than hates it. Eve Babitz

Anolik is biased, for sure, but she lets us know it. She was obsessed with Babitz, and this isn’t her first book about her. But with all this delicious insight, I really have to read Didion and Babitz now. Better late than never.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book. show less

I didn't think I was going to be that interested in this book. However, this odd parallel bio angle was intriguing to me, even though the structure is pretty loose and unconvincing. It felt like a false and forced combination in order to tell more stuff about Babitz that wasn't in Hollywood's Eve. The personal stories of meeting Babitz were pretty engaging, but not important enough. She doesn't convince the reader that Didion thought much about Babitz at all. Nonetheless, after finishing it, I drove over to Hollywood Forever to visit her urn...appropriately stored on a shelf with some of her memoirs. If you didn't know it was there, you would just pass it by. A person larger than life in life (and more so in death)...is now just show more quietly, at rest. Maybe....you could even skip this book and just read Eve and Joan instead. In other words, all that is good about these writers is found in their own writings. This book just points you to them. show less

Rounding up from my real rating (2.5) only because it is something of a page turner, and I raced through it, never considering abandoning the effort. Let's just say it up front - this is all Babitz and zero Didion, and let's face it: very few general readers know who Eve Babitz was, but everyone knows who Joan Didion was, even if they've never read her. The author, being quite astute (like Joan) knows that a book only about Babitz would never have the industry buzz and access to the bestseller list that this one does, so Joan is brought along for the ride. I have nothing against Babitz, but this detailed account of her life (propelled by a cache of Eve's unsent letters discovered after her death in 2021) is in many places, very boring. show more Sex, drugs, art, and rock and roll, followed by much more of the same, ad infinitum. And she had a lot of tragedy in her life which isn't adequately explored, in my opinion. It is unfortunate that Eve did not have the discipline (or stability) to write a straight ahead autobiography, which I think would have been a much better book than this one. show less

This can read as rather distasteful gossip, with Babitz’s biographer, Anolik, bigging up Babitz and trashing Didion, for most of the book. However, as I have only read parts of the stories before, and as I find myself fascinated by the milieu, I kept reading it.
I often got annoyed by Anolik projecting her opinions onto others and “breaking the fourth wall” with her “Reader” interjections. Yet I kept reading.
The snippets about Didion also appeared opinion based almost exclusively upon Anolik’s impressions and interpretations, with little evidence. There is truly little original about Didion in this book and little about Didion, which disappointed me.
So, I’m glad to have read this book, but wished it could have been show more shorter, more succinct. show less

I love eve babitz and apparently so does Lillie. This book is wholeheartedly about Eve with a sprinkling of Joan thrown in to justify the title. If you dont know about Eve, she's is a phenomen. An artist, a collageist, an album cover designer, a magazine contributor, a writer. A total one of a kind. She lives her life with unadulterated abandon! To know her is to love her. Quick witted, a wild cat in a woman's body, a match for any man, a genius of sorts, an alcoholic, a drug addict, a sex addict...you name it, she could become addicted. Ive read 2 books about her and one book, her original, Eve's Hollywood, she wrote. There was nobody who was anybody in the 60s and 70s she didn't know.