Didion and Babitz

By: Lili Anolik, Emma Roberts

Narrated by: Lili Anolik

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Air Mail, Harper’s Bazaar, The Washington Post, and more!

Joan Didion is revealed at last in this “vivid, engrossing” (Vogue), and outrageously provocative dual biography “that reads like a propulsive novel” (Oprah Daily) revealing the mutual attractions—and antagonisms—of Didion and her fellow literary titan, Eve Babitz.

Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan? —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972

Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin, and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside, a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies and centered on a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood.

7406 Franklin Avenue, a combination salon-hotbed-living end where writers and artists mixed with movie stars, rock ‘n’ rollers, and drug trash. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American writer: Joan Didion, a mystery behind her dark glasses and cool expression; an enigma inside her storied marriage to John Gregory Dunne, their union as tortured as it was enduring. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the breaking and then the remaking—and thus the true making—of another great American writer: Eve Babitz, goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky, nude of Marcel Duchamp, consort of Jim Morrison (among many, many others), a woman who burned so hot she finally almost burned herself alive. Didion and Babitz formed a complicated alliance, a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity.

Didion, in spite of her confessional style, is so little known or understood. She’s remained opaque, elusive. Until now.

With deftness and skill, journalist Lili Anolik uses Babitz, Babitz’s brilliance of observation, Babitz’s incisive intelligence, and, most of all, Babitz’s diary-like letters—letters found in those sealed boxes, letters so intimate you don’t read them so much as breathe them—as the key to unlocking Didion. And “what the book makes clear is that Didion and Babitz were more alike than either would have liked to admit” (Time).

Fascinating and escapist listen

If you’re a fan of Lili Anolik’s previous work, you know to expect a deep dive and a great listen. If this is your first exposure to Anolik’s work, the writing style (more like a gossipy conversation between you and the author), may strike you as unconventional, but I recommend it — especially for this story. The whole book is a fascinating flashback to a particular era with every detail brought to life. Highly recommend!

Two Lonely Heroines

I loved how supportive but brutal this book was it felt like the embrace of one’s sister comforting yet unabridged condemnation for yr mistakes and where your going wrong in both rights for each character really gets you to think whose your cosmic soul mate you’d never claim

Who knew

Who knew who much I’d enjoy this contrast and comparison of two iconic women writers of their time. The 1960’s/70’s Hollywood gossip within these chapters is juicy and the cattiness is fierce.

Great Gossipy Fun!

Apparently, this is not for everyone. It's endlessly gossipy, more than a little snarky, and occasionally annoying. (Anolik is a super fun, lively writer, but sometimes her style--"What Eve Wanted:" and that kind of formulation--grated on me.) But what in life is perfect? I'm guessing Anolik's greatest offense to readers is challenging the notion that Didion was a frail, saintly martyr to ART. I'm a huge fan of many of Didion's books, but am always happy to hear the worst of someone. And is unstoppable ambition really so bad, as long as you're at a safe distance?

Overall, it's a blast to listen to. Great details of California, celebrity culture, and the ravages of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It races along, toggling between the lives of these two very different--yet linked--women and writers. Yes, there's more about Babitz than there is about Didion, but I finished the book feeling I'd learned more about the real Joan Didion than I'd learned from reading more "scholarly" examinations. Just go with it.

Here and elsewhere, Anolik seems to be harkening back to the good old days when literary figures made themselves relevant by producing good work and then showing up on TV talk shows (drunk, frequently) and trashing their contemporaries. Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Jacqueline Susann, and so on. We should all be grateful.

Honestly, a super enjoyable read/listen.

Fascinating

Read or listen to understand “Fascinating”. Draw your own conclusions. Be your own best critic.