This book was one of my most anticipated reads, and unfortunately, one of my most disappointing. Billed as an exploration of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, the book leans far more toward Babitz’s story, leaving Didion under-explored and often mischaracterized. Anolik’s intense fascination with Babitz turns the account into a one-sided narrative that relies heavily on speculation, assumptions, and biases, especially when it comes to Didion. Statements like “don’t be a baby” in the introduction set a dismissive tone that feels unsavory, and ultimately, the Didion insights lack depth and nuance. If you’re interested in more substantial portrayals of either woman, I’d recommend The World According to Joan Didion for Didion or Babitz’s own work, like Slow Days, Fast Company. Unfortunately, this book feels more like a speculative character analysis than the nuanced dual biography I’d hoped for.

Lili Anolik wrote the definitive biography of Eve Babitz, “Hollywood’s Eve,” which was published in 2019. Anolik had thought that she had excavated all that there was to know about Eve, and she had moved on from her preoccupation, when Eve’s sister, Mirandi, contacted Anolik to tell her that when Eve was transferred to an assisted living facility, Mirandi uncovered sealed boxes that their mother had packed away twenty years before. When Eve died days before Christmas in 2021, Anolik went to the Huntington Library in San Marino where Eve’s archives are maintained. Anolik assumed that the boxes would contain meaningless detritus and was shocked when she realized that the boxes held correspondence exchanged between Eve and Joan Didion. After reading the first of many letters, Anolik understood that she did not know Eve at all, explaining that she only had full access to the Eve of 2012-and-beyond, and that that Eve was at a remove from “Past Eve.”

As Anolik details, Eve and Joan met in 1967, which was not surprising since they both inhabited what Anolik refers to as the “Franklin Avenue scene” and ran with the same artists, musicians, and moguls (until Didion and her husband, John Dunne, decamped for Trancas Beach). According to sources Anolik quotes, Eve would have dinner with Joan and John several times a week. Eve was getting by as an album cover designer and photographer, but at twenty-seven, she was aging out of th Troubadour scene. Joan did a good turn for Eve, recommending to Rolling Stone a piece that Eve had written about the girls of Hollywood High, which the magazine published and was Eve’s first byline. When Eve began writing her first book, “Eve’s Hollywood,” Joan championed it, allowing her reputation as an in-demand writer to be traded on and, more astonishingly, she and John edited the book. By 1973, Eve had rejected Joan’s protection and support, and her gratitude was replaced by scorn.

Anolik takes a deep dive into the complicated alliance between these two artists – one frail, sickly, but ambitious, driven, and “as deliberate a creation as any of her books” and the other voluptuous, profligate, and promiscuous, but so filled with the spirit of her time and place that her hard-living came at the cost that she was washed up by late 1970. Their friendship soured and had a lasting effect on both writers. Anolik quotes from letters to Joan that Eve failed to send (or destroy) that are laced with snark and condescension: “Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan?” Anolik offers new perspectives on both artists in the cultural scene of late 1960s and early 1970s Hollywood. Thank you Simon & Schuster and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this riveting tale of two beloved artists.

What a delightful treat of a book! Lili Anolik promises a new look at these prolific writers, and boy, does she deliver on her promise. With an engaging conversationalist style, Anolik deep dives (again) into her fascination/obsession with Babitz, only this time around brings Didion in for the ride. The result is a journey back to Southern California in the Sixties and Seventies, a compelling read of the time and the women both of their time and ahead of their time. A must read for any Joan Didion and/or Eve Babitz fan. Many thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the opportunity to read this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Didion and Babitz is a bit of a strange book. The justification for this fairly indulgent work is that the author happened upon a new trove of correspondence between Eve Babitz, a very minor figure in 60s/70s LA art scenes, and Joan Didion, a literary giant and cultural icon. The author already having penned a book on Babitz for unclear reasons other than a private obsession believed it was worth adding a sequel for readers to explore her relationship with Didion. It doesn't hurt that there is a built in audience to read about Didion; this is of course why I picked up the book.

All in all, we end up with a bit of a cross-cutting biography of these two women, who seem wildly different from each other. It isn't an intellectual biography so we're not graced with close reads of the oeuvres of each subject. It also never quite becomes clear just how close the relationship between the two subjects was. The most tangible evidence we are presented is a 1972 letter and a note from Didion recommending a piece by Babitz to an editor. However, this wouldn't matter much if the point is to compare them in some sort of Jungian way, which does appear to be more of the authors goal. This seems more an implicit project though, Lili Anolik, our intrepid author, is loathe to really get explicit about what she sees as the differences between these two women and why she thinks they're meaningful. Nonetheless, Anolik boldly concludes her book with the claim that "Joan and Eve are the two halves of American womanhood, representing forces that are, on the surface, in conflict yet secretly aligned - the id and the superego, light and dark, sex and death." The author could have specified this a bit more, but the work does provide a clear contrast between the lives of these two women whose lives circled each others': Joan, a masterful mercenary, and Eve, a dissolute dilettante.

There is a lot of personal, gossipy details of the social lives of the various figures in the lives of Didion and Babitz, which is the most redeeming and useful content in the book. I recommend this to reader curious about Didion and her social milieu. Didion, as the author notes, is an enigmatic figure, who readers often project quite a bit of themselves onto and often fail to see what's really there. I think the author does have a decent idea about who Didion is but is a little too close to her other subject.

I really wanted to read this book, and I expected to enjoy it a lot, but it's not the book I was expecting. It really should be called Babitz vs Didion, showing both the author's primary focus (Eve Babitz) and the way she sets the writers against each other. I agree, their relationship was complicated, but this is an author who takes sides. And who is expecting to offend her readers. I guess we're warned: "Reader, don't be a baby" is right there in the introduction. But it seems like a mistake to take on a project about two writers when you're "crazy for" one of them and describe the other one's "persona--part princess, part wet blanket" and "resent her for siccing on us, the innocent reading public, an army, seemingly unending, of middle-class young-women personal essayists who take their feelings very ultra-seriously and expect us to do the same." I also thought this was going to be a book primarily about their writing, but it felt like a book that was mostly about parties. If you like gossip and rockstars, and you don't mind an author being mean or intruding on the narrative, you'll have a lot more fun than I did. It's definitely an adventure, just not one for me.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free e-arc in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are all my own.

Lili Anolik's DIDION AND BABITZ is a fascinating read. I found myself returning to it frequently, intrigued as much by Anolik as I was by her subjects Joan Didion and Eve Babitz. It is blazingly clear that the author of this nonfiction book is still quite obsessed with Babitz, even though she claims the obsession waned after finishing Hollywood's Eve. This added a level of interest for me, especially in comparing how Anolik approached writing about Didion and Babitz, who were both ambitious and, at times when needed, calculating.But the author's obsession for and love of Babitz creates an uneven presentation and maybe that should be more pronounced in the book's jacket copy.

From a creative writing teacher's perspective I love this example of a writer's obsession. My students and I discuss harnessing fascinations, curiosities, and obsessions in their writing, especially when it comes to deciding which longer projects can hold their imagination and energy. I look forward to bringing this book to them and discussing Anolik's choices and approach(es) to her subject matter.

Ha ha. The Goodreads blurb for this starts, "Joan Didion is revealed at last," which is bullshit. It's mis-titled, or at least mis-stylized. Should be Didion in tiny letters and BABITZ in big, hulking ones. The book also ends by eulogizing Joan and Eve's friendship and making the "bold" claim that they were ultimately soulmates, which is closer to truth but in the context of the monotonous claims made in the previous 300 pages... bullshit. It's on me, duh, because I read and disliked Anolik's last Joan-bashing book. This one was better because the scope was widened just a hair, but worse because she didn't seem to know what to do with the extra information/room to run. Fascinating that the spiky, dark, hateful bits of Eve make her complicated and real, but the spiky, dark, hateful bits of Joan make her boring and evil. And not to pile on, but the addresses to the reader made me feel ill. Would not have been so openly hateful, but much of this book is about the writerly response to criticism so it feels apt and I genuinely hope she sees this!

my thoughts on the much anticipated Didion & Babitz:

- which probably should have been be titled “Babitz on Didion,” not “Didion & Babitz”
- the author is self-consciously hyper-aware of the way her projections onto Didion are mediated by her own obsession with Babitz, and she wants the reader to know this, devoting a section of the front matter “to the reader” in addition to the preface.
- nevertheless, we are perhaps not convinced because Lili Anolik cannot help but be blinded by that same obsession, and thereby takes Babitz’s less filtered, manic-pixie persona as somehow more authentic because there is simply more messy, chaotic content to deal with
- certainly the unknowable persona of Joan Didion that this book’s PR promises to unveil is enriched and complicated by Babitz’s letters
- but there are layers of perspective revealed in the way these letters are presented to us: the silent Didion, Babitz’s intensity that waffles between adoration and tirade, Anolik’s obsession. the author’s own comparison to Ingmar Bergman’s film Persona is apt
- diehard Didion thought-daughters will already understand intuitively that Joan’s persona is a made thing, whether art or artifice
- what i think is closest to “the truth” is that the masks women authors perform are valid, strategic choices under American patriarchy and capitalism
- Babitz’s gritty, open access “knowability” is just as much a strategic choice as is Didion’s carefully wrought unknowability.
-Anolik claims these two women are “two halves of American womanhood, representing forces that are, on the surface, in conflict yet secretly aligned — the superego and the id, Thanatos and Eros, yang and yin.”
- Oof, hardly, but perhaps for white, privileged womenhood of a certain era. but if these are the only two options for pr clear which side of writer womanhood Anolik herself aligns with Babitz’s. But that’s the only side we really get here, so in all: “Didion & Babitz” feels obsessive and lopsided—and self-consciously artificial in some ways—but still a fascinating read for those who love either or both of these authors.

this book should just be called babitz. i get it, so much has been said about didion, and babitz has been a relatively underhyped writer in comparison, up until the last decade. but good lord, joan is only brought into this to be dragged down for the sake of making babitz look good. joan is villainized for taking a different, more disciplined approach to her writing and it’s like… i almost question the need to even compare the two. besides being in the same place at the same time, they had such different styles and approaches.

lili anolik so obviously siding with eve made this lose a lot of credibility for me. the reader doesn’t really get a chance to form their own opinions because of this bias. super unbalanced, unlike the title and cover suggest. and what a shame because didion and babitz’s relationship seemed so complex and interesting! i wish anolik had dug further into joan’s perspective so that we could truly see both sides of the story.

even though the book sides with her, i really don’t even think this paints eve in that great of a light either. it feels super gossipy when anolik has people who were loosely involved in the franklin avenue scene talking about eve’s sex life and drug use, and speculating on didion’s marriage and her husband’s sexuality. also really disliked the condescending tone anolik uses throughout the book. the whole “dear reader” thing got old fast. this book should not have taken me as long as it did to finish it.

i liked the chronological weaving together of both writers’ lives and the publication of their works. eve’s letters and anolik’s conversations with eve and her sister were really insightful as primary sources. also love to see eve getting her flowers and being recognized! this style just did not click with me.

This past year, I went through the transformative process of reading as much Joan Didion and Eve Babitz writing as possible. I came across Didion & Babitz around this time, having seen a TikTok of a girl reading an ARC of the book. I immediately went and requested my own copy (thank you to the publisher for the e-ARC!) to supplement my reading of these two legends.

There is one thing you should know when going into this biography - it was written by Lili Anolik, a self-expressed Babitz fangirl (about two-thirds into the book, she states that she "love[s] [Eve] with a fan's unreasoning abandon"). Because of this, the book is not so much a study of the respective careers of Didion and Babitz and how they intertwined, but an abridged version of Babitz's life with some asides as to how she felt about Didion.

And Babitz's feelings towards Didion were complicated, which leads the author to paint Didion in a less-than flattering light. (An aside - this isn't the first unflattering portrait of Didion that I've read this year; Griffin Dunne's memoir paints her in a harsh, imperfect light). So if you read Didion's amazing writing and expect her to be as perfect as her prose, you will most likely be let down by this book.

Despite this, it's an interesting insight into how two powerhouses of California nostalgia inspired and challenged each other. This quote from the end of the book summarizes the two of them perfectly: "Joan and Eve are the two halves of American womanhood, representing forces that are, on the surface, in conflict yet secretly aligned—the id and the superego, light and dark, sex and death."

In the end, Didion & Babitz gives readers a unique, if imperfect, insight into the lives and legacies of two cultural icons. While the author's bias towards Babitz may cloud the objectivity one might hope for in a biography, it does provide a compelling portrait of the complicated relationship between two women who shaped and reflected the contradictions of California and American womanhood in the 20th century. Whether or not you agree with the author's portrayal of Didion, the book succeeds in highlighting the deep, sometimes uneasy connection between these two literary figures, capturing the tension and magic that defined their individual careers and the way they continue to resonate in our cultural zeitgeist to this day.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC of Didion and Babitz. I found this book fascinating, especially as a snapshot of Eve Babitz’s wild, artistic Hollywood life in the 60s and 70s (the author also wrote a more comprehensive biography of her called Hollywood’s Eve). While Eve and Joan knew each other and clashed from time to time (illustrated by, among other things, a highly critical letter Eve wrote to Joan castigating her for her failure to read Virginia Woolf), the book also spends a lot of time on each of their personal lives and relationships separate from each other. I loved this, and I’m definitely going to check out Hollywood’s Eve as a follow-up. Highly recommend.

What a strange book this is. First, we have a biographer who admits to intense fascination and love for one of her subjects, Eve, and approaches the book with a giddy, tweenlike reverence for her. It goes without saying that Eve gets a lot of airtime and more generous representation, which could be disappointing for Didion fans.

Barely into this book and without prior context such as Eve’s role in feminism and its challenges to societal norms in the 60s and 70s, Anolik presents Eve as a libidinous woman gifted with a figure who actively pursues men for sex. Having shared Eve’s unpopularity as a girl and her attempt to hide her body with frumpy clothes, this reads as a woman who is struggling to feel wanted and engages in risky and self-destructive behavior. Otherwise, one is tempted to think—who is this train wreck of a woman and why am I giving her a bird’s blink moment of my time? Maybe it’s as simple as salacity is clickbait.

The framework of this book is what is the most troubling to this reader. Anolik chose to go the catfight route—the stereotype that professional females can’t get along and are jealous of one another’s success. Such a pity to be pumping air into the lungs of this narrative instead of stomping it out with her respected journalistic heels. This is not something I care to read about or support but the chatty asides to the “Reader” feel collusive, as if we’re tucked under covers together reading this gossipy, tabloid whatever-it-is story.

Babitz, Didion, and all others who blaze the trail for women’s rights deserve better, particularly when there has been no period since the 60s and 70s that is more urgent than right now.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for this ARC!

Let me start off by saying, I’ve only read one book by Joan (The Year of Magical Thinking) and none by Eve Babitz. But reading this book has made me want to change that. I was a huge fan of Joan’s memoir and I have had Play It As It Lays on my TBR for far too long.

Lili has written a beautiful, funny and well thought out book about two incredible women. Although both women were polar opposites in their personality’s, they were writers at their cores.

I can’t recommend this book enough to fans of Joan or Eve!

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an early copy of the book for review.

My main flaw with the book is that it just needed a better thesis and structure, since telling the book in chronological order really affected the pacing. There were definitely some sections that were only there because of the author's love for the topic, not necessarily because they enhanced the story. Speaking of things that were influenced by the author's bias is the very clear emphasis of Eve on the book; something that was said to explicitly not happen. The book feels like a retelling of Eve Babitz that occasionally lets you get a glimpse into Didion's live to contrast the live Eve was living. Something that wasn't very masterfully executed until the final few pages. And lastly, my only petty complaint is that he book is constantly introducing new people into the fold, and expects you to memorize their names immediately; something I did not do. This leads to some areas of the book not really being that comprehensible. So, some more exposition would have definitely the book as a whole.

this was a soapy, gossipy, guilty-pleasure good time. i love didion and i love babitz and i never imagined i'd stumble into such a wonderful treasure trove of information about them.

More Babitz than Didion. I enjoyed the information provided but not the author's voice. Would still recommend.

Thought this book was well written and overall very informative on both the lives of Eve Babitz and Joan Didion. Though there was a lot more speculation about the life of Joan and the people close to her. Felt sort of gross to read about

Didion and. Babitz is a lively story of two major writers from and their complicated relationship--friends with. complications that ultimately destroyed their friendship.

Didion is, of course, Joan Didion, author of famous essay collections hailed as definitive representations of their times--The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem being the best known, praised, and loved. Didion also wrote the best selling and critically acclaimed grief memoirs, The Year of Magical Thinking (written after her husband died suddenly of a heart attack) and of her daughter's illness and death, Blue Nights. These in addition to her novels. And I am definitely a "Team Didion"--which matters in regards to this book.

Because Lili Anolik is clearly from the beginning, long before she declares it outright "Team Babitz." Eve Babitz--like Didion a California girl, specifically from Los Angeles, was a . . . phenomenon of her time. Anolik describes her as an artist whose primary art form was her life. She was the epitome of "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll." Fascinating, exuberant, Babitz created album covers and wrote books that were spotty in execution but which have recently surged in popularity. The best, according to Anolik, being Slow Horses. Her narrative is disguised autobiography, and (in the excerpts I've read vivid and alive with a passion for living).

As irritating as I sometimes found Anolik's adoration of Babitz, I couldn't put the book down. The writing, the anecdotes. Anolik believed her obsession with Babitz had faded following the completion of her biography. ("obsession" is a mild word--years of writing, reading, rereading which lead to yeras of phone calls and visits) And then, out of nowhere, Eve's sister contacts her--she's discovered a box of correspondence between Eve and Joan. Anolik meets up with the sister and her passion is reignited.

The result is this book: a tale of two seemingly opposite in personality writers, friends--until they weren't. Didion championed Babitz's work, edited her writing--until Babitz "fired" her ("fired" is the word used by Babitz). Anolik present a convincing argument that in many ways the two women were two halves of one whole, each living out the other's shadow side.

Babitz's burnout and decline was, for me, the inevitable result of endless quantities of drugs and sex and excess. A drug addict who created some beautiful work and lived out fantasies of many of us living ordinary, careful lives. And Didion living out a different fantasy--the beyond-famous, iconic writer who through severe discipline and care curation of image achieved the highest levels of literary fame.

Although the book should, I somehow feel, be depressing, it's not. Anolik brings Babitz's wild energy, talent, and passion to life and the result is exciting, fun, a roller-coaster ride. I just think she could have been a little less hard on Didion--but maybe sometimes there's no room for compromise. Following in the footsteps of Eve Babitz could certainly lead to equal excesses in feelings and judgments.

Anolik is a gushing fan--and proud of it. And her enthusiasm is contagious. She never converted me to Team Babitz (although sadly for me she significantly damaged my image of and feelings for Didion). The narrative ride through Los Angeles from the late 1950s through the 1970s, Babitz's iconic photo playing chess with Marcel Duchamps, her relationships--intense, doomed--with many men (including Jim Morrison), her excess in everything makes for an exciting read. Her final years are not fun and her covered by Anolik much more quickly than her early years. And her final picture of the two women, the two artists whether or not I agree is powerful and somewhat heart-breaking.

In the story of these women, we get to experience Los Angeles as it came into the spotlight of the 1960s, it's rivalry with New York, and the opposite pictures presented by Didion (the nightmare side) and Babitz (a joyous celebration of sun and water and parties). And if you enjoy gossip and good storytelling, this book is a pleasure. Strongly recommend.

I'm grateful to NetGalley, Scribner, and the author for the opportunity to read this book.

This was my most anticipated book of the year and it’s an easy favorite for me. I’ve read the author’s book on Eve Babitz, "Hollywoods Eve", all of Babitz’s published work and about 70% of Didion’s published work, so this was extremely in my wheelhouse. It’s a sort of biography of both women throughout their lives, but also their relationship to one another and to their work. I do think it’s pretty obvious that the author, having spent so much time, both working and not, with Eve and Eve’s history, that the book feels pretty skewed towards her perspective. She was also much more knowable than Joan Didion. It was interesting to read about Didion without the cool, magisterial veil that so often surrounds who she was as a person and a writer. I also just love the way Lili Anolik writes - it feels like reading an Eve Babitz essay - dishy and fun, razor-sharp but not unkind, sort of like drinking a glass of champagne in good social company. Will be buying many copies of this for friends and enemies.

Lili Anolik’s Didion and Babitz is an exploration of two iconic writers, Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, whose work defined the spirit of California across in the late twentieth century. Anolik is a magnificent writer whose words I was entranced by. I personally enjoy her conversational style. The first several chapters are all-consuming and drip with anticipation of what was to come. In a strange way, I felt almost scared to death with excitement because I knew from then on, I would continue to read anything Anolik writes. I already knew she is a genius from her masterpiece podcast on Bennington College so I was really excited for this book. I was enjoying the beginning, but I slowly lost interest as time went on because there was so much excessive detail on Babitz. Some moments were brilliant, some felt too long. Anolik has written extensively about Eve Babitz and knows her intimately. She clearly has an affinity for Babitz, and a respect for Didion’s brilliance and aura, however I wish there was a more balanced portrayal of the two women because it felt so much more focused on Babitz. For fans of Babitz, it’s a good piece on her life and her work. I do recommend this for anyone who is interested in the two writers, but I would suggest to adjust your expectations going into it.