Joan Didion’s fiction and nonfiction captured the zeitgeist of Hollywood and California in the 1960s and ‘70s. Decades later, she wrote deeply personal accounts of the deaths of her husband — writer John Gregory Dunne — and her daughter, Quintana. She died in 2021, less than a week after the death of Eve Babitz, another author of the era who chronicled LA’s cultural milieu. However, Babitz never achieved the critical acclaim and recognition that Didion did. In her heyday, she was an “it” girl who partied every night and slept with Hollywood stars like Jim Morrison, Harrison Ford, and Annie Liebowitz.
Through their writings, Babitz and Didion cemented LA in our collective imagination as a sultry hotbed, where the culture was equally (or more) important than New York. The women were also the best of frenemies.
Lili Anolik is a biographer of Eve Babitz and author of Hollywood’s Eve. Her new book, Didion and Babitz, examines the duo's relationship and what it reveals about LA and its famous women.
Going into this book, Anolik described herself as obsessed with Babbitz — she held a preoccupation that was “unbalanced, fetishistic, even sick.”
Anolik, however, says she “wasn’t a good match” with Didion.
“There was something about Eve. … They knew all the same people. They were writing about the same, very particular kind of postman in Los Angeles, but I just loved how Eve did it. She was the opposite of Joan. She was the un-Joan, the anti-Joan. So she was thrilling to me for that reason as well. She was … a much-needed alternative. You need them both.”
After writing Hollywood’s Eve, Anolik discovered letters that Babitz wrote but never sent. They were stored in a box in her West Hollywood apartment for decades. One letter was addressed to Didion.
On October 2, 1972, Babitz wrote, in part, “Just think, Joan, if you were 5’11,’’ and wrote like you do and stuff, people would judge you differently and your work. They'd invent reasons. Could you write what you write if you weren't so tiny, Joan? Would you be allowed to if you weren't physically so unthreatening? Would the balance of power between you and John have collapsed long ago if it weren't that he regards you a lot of the time as a child? So it's all right that you are famous. And you yourself keep making it more all right, because you are always referring to your size. And so what you do, Joan, is live in the pioneer days, a brave survivor of the donor pass, putting up the preserves and down the women's movement, and acting as though art wasn't in the house, and wishing you could go right.”
What prompted the letter, Anolik explains, was a piece that Didion wrote for The New York Times, in which she criticized the women’s movement and argued that women concocted sexism in their heads.
“Joan wanted to be the biggest writer in America, and I love that about Joan. I love Joan's ambition. And I think that what Eve felt was that to get into the boys’ club, Joan did things like emphasize her own tininess, as if she were unthreatening. And I think she felt that she threw the women's movement under the bus, so that she could go with the boys. She felt Joan was a betrayer. … So I don't think she was just being casually catty. … I think it was a deep thing that really upset her.”
Author Joan Didion speaks at an International Press Club event in New York City on March 28, 1983. Mandatory credit: Peter Karas-USA TODAY NETWORK.
In her new book, Anolik also writes about a three-hour C-SPAN interview that Didion gave in 2000. The host took callers, and one of them was Babitz, who deftly cuts out everyone and has a private conversation with Didion on TV.
The moment represents the two women at a crossroads, Anolik explains: “It's inside jokes, and she makes Joan laugh, and you just can sense what the dynamic was like between them. It's moving to me. … And Eve's already been in this horrific fire, she set herself on fire accidentally in the late 90s, and she had third degree burns over 50% of her body. … Eve really won't write again. It's over. And in 2001, I think the Huntington [disease] starts to eat her brain. So she's just about to drop off the cliff. And Joan, in this fascinating way, Joan had a huge book in 1979. … It's an instant cultural touchstone. … Then she has this 20-year period, and she's very respected … but she doesn't really catch on, like she doesn't have a book that really goes big. And on C-SPAN, it's a career retrospective, which is both a compliment and an insult. It's basically saying your best days are behind you. … [Her husband] John [Gregory Dunne] is going to die a short time later, and she's going to turn his death into The Year of Magical Thinking, which is going to put her on a whole new plane. … She's gone from national treasure to legend. … The only way you can ever hear [Didion and Babitz] talk to each other, and I love their rhythms. … I find it … moving, moving, moving.”
Didion later became a model, whereas Babitz lived in an apartment reeking of isolation, decay, and despair. They ended up in opposite places. “[Babitz] was living in obscurity that's violent, and Joan is the opposite.”
“But then there is this weird moment where they dovetail a little bit again. … Eve just has this crazy rise at the very end of her life,” Anolik adds. “It's wild. I would hear her referenced on the Gossip Girl reboot, or you'll see pictures of Kendall Jenner reading her on a yacht. … There was this sense where she rose up to meet Joan by the end.”
Now, after writing this book, Anolik admits that she goes back and forth between the two when choosing whose side to be on.
“It’s like a yin and yang thing. … You just need both. And if you're picking a model to have a career after, you pick Joan, it's a no brainer. But … I love them both, even if Eve is my preference.”