Didion and Babitz - by Lili Anolik (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in a closet in the back of an apartment full of wrack, ruin, and filth was a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. These boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside: journals, photos, scrapbooks, manuscripts, letters. No: inside a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies, and was centered on a two-story house rented by Joan Didion and her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, 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, drug trash. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American writer: Joan Didion, cool and reserved behind her oversized sunglasses and storied marriage, a 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), who burned so hot she finally almost burned herself alive. The two formed a complicated alliance: a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity; a friendship that was as rare as true love, as rare as true hate. Didion, in spite of her confessional style, her widespread fame, 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-as the key to unlocking the mighty and mysterious Didion"--

Book Synopsis

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).

Review Quotes

"[Anolik's] research and sources are unparalleled; she interviews so many ­people on the scene, including ­Babitz herself, that most of this book is direct speech: cool people, talking at you. . . . [a] fun, brilliant book." --Telegraph

"Gossipy, shocking, intimate, very funny and always smart [...] a reminder that even literary biographies can be thrilling." --The Herald

"A stimulating, provoking read . . . a fascinating slice of history. . . . Reading often feels like eavesdropping on a freewheeling, no-holds-barred gossip session . . . this is a truly exhilarating double biography." --Independent

"Red-hot and propulsive." --Spectator

"Fun, gossipy." --Irish Independent

"Didion and Babitz looks at the complicated relationship between late literary icons Joan Didion and Eve Babitz. . . . What the book makes clear is that Didion and Babitz were more alike than either would have liked to admit." --TIME

"High-octane . . . propulsive. Nearly every page has a revelation that fans of either or both women will relish. It's gossip, but it's literary." --Elle Australia

"Lili Anolik's dual biography reveals the writers' vicious battle to be the true voice of 1970s California. Anolik is never dull, and her book is propulsive." --New Statesman

"Anolik makes a convincing case for Babitz's literary genius and sets up an interesting contrast between the two women--one loose, libidinous and joyfully debauched; the other shy, cerebral and tightly controlled . . . Anolik dishes dirt on all the major and minor players in their haute bohemian circle." --The Associated Press

"A sparkling and ardent look at the conflicting sensibilities of two iconic Californians . . . Like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, or the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Didion and Babitz are similar in circumstance yet opposed in style. Their rivalry feels fated. A person can and probably should admire both, but her heart can belong to only one. . . . It is both enormously informative and openly prurient, deliciously greedy for the details of Babitz's and Didion's private lives. At times, it is even gossipy. I mean this, of course, as a compliment. Didion & Babitz is one of my favorite books of the year, and Babitz, an avid champion of gossip, would no doubt have approved of its tenor . . . as much a memoir of infatuation as a literary study." --Washington Post

"Fun . . . [Anolik] is a thorough reporter with an ear for humorous detail (apparently Didion's husband, John Dunne, called Babitz 'the dowager groupie'). She manages to bring her midcentury Los Angeles setting to life in a way that feels fresh." --The New York Times Book Review

"Immaculately researched and laced with gold." --The Times, Best Books of 2024 (UK)

"This book is a perfect gift for one's creative friends, professional frenemies, LA enthusiasts, and ex-boyfriends. . . . A must-read for anyone who worries about being too self-centered and mercenary in their work life. It says, 'Don't worry, you could be so, so, so much worse.'" --Vulture

"As Lili Anolik argues in this joint biography, Didion & Babitz represent more than what it means to be a woman who writes: They're two halves of American womanhood. It's a big swing, but one that Anolik knocks out of the park, showing readers how Didion was the sun to Babitz's moon, the superego to her id." --Bustle

"Thank god for Anolik's journalistic instinct to preserve the Didion & Babitz story in her own luminous prose, for handling the narrative with care, for making good art in our post-empire world." --W Magazine

"Addictively intriguing . . . Anolik brilliantly uses these two legendary writers and their complicated lives to tell a story not only of what it means to capture a scene and stand in the center of a cultural moment, but also the arduous road of a female writer yearning to be taken seriously." --Interview Magazine

"Anolik is a galvanizing, exacting, mordantly funny, and lionhearted writer, directly addressing the reader and sharing the evolution of her arresting analysis, a heady mix of biography, reporting, social critique, psychology, and literary criticism based on hundreds of interviews. . . . [Didion and Babitz] died within a week of each other, and their legacies will be forever shaped by Anolik's double portrait forged in inquisitiveness, empathy, intellectual firepower, and love." --Booklist (starred review)

"Anolik unearths a complicated, contentious--and scandalously overlooked--alliance between these two glamorous behemoths of Californian literature. . . . What results is a love letter in the form of this detailed biography that reads like a propulsive novel. You'll be reaching for Didion's and Babitz's books to search for evidence of the messy truths revealed on these pages." --Oprah Daily

"Compelling . . . truly the culmination of Anolik's already excellent work on Babitz as well as a brilliantly cutting examination of the complicated legacy of Didion." --Esquire

"Anolik brings her journalistic instincts and her deep passion for Didion and Babitz to create a vivid, engrossing work." --Vogue

"Dazzling and provocative . . . I found myself cheering on Anolik's decision to make one more foray into Babitz's glittering, free-falling, unencumbered yet troubled world. Would I want my daughter to follow Babitz's path or Didion's, if given the choice? Probably not Babitz's. But what a ride." --Leigh Haber, The Los Angeles Times

"[Anolik's] double biography is an account of a dispute between highly creative frenemies where the wounds festered for years and no one ever worked it out on the remix." --New York Magazine, Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024

"Didion & Babitz takes off the kid gloves in [a] revelatory look at two writers who became foes . . . With an abundance of pop-psych insight and who's-who detail, Didion & Babitz captures the scene its two namesakes shared nearly as vividly as they did." --The San Francisco Chronicle

"Lili Anolik established herself as the Eve Babitz whisperer with her unforgettable magazine stories about the then-mostly-forgotten-but-now-celebrated L.A. author and her book Hollywood's Eve. Her new release further explores Babitz's friendship and rivalry with that other California girl, Joan Didion--and while Anolik's own allegiance is clear, her book is a captivating look into the way two very brilliant, very different writers maneuvered around one another, and the starry, messy world they inhabited. Someone get Ryan Murphy a copy, we smell a new season of Feud." --Town & Country, Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024

"A revealing investigation of Babitz's complicated relationship with Joan Didion. . . . [Anolik] provides astute character portraits of both writers, suggesting that though Didion was disciplined and spare where Babitz was sensual and lush, the two shared a single-minded commitment to their artistry. It's a crackling dual biography of two of L.A.'s brightest literary lights." --Publishers Weekly

"Lili Anolik takes us under the hood, not just of literary history but of what makes a woman palatable for public consumption. The greatest female writer to take on the female writer, Lili never falters. Sentence by sentence, page by page, she does Joan and Eve proud and explains the truth about why women who speak their truth will always be societal dynamite. The book is magic. It's all I ever needed." --Lena Dunham

About the Author

Lili Anolik is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a writer at large for Air Mail. She is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller Hollywood's Eve and Didion and Babitz. Her last podcast, Once Upon a Time...at Bennington College, was produced by Cadence13. In 2024, she was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for profile writing. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.