Anolik pulls “iM nOt ThAt KInD oF GiRL” to create sides to a kinship that, in her eyes, cannot entail duality.

Dear Lili,

Pay attention now.

I think you’ve been doing podcasts for too long that your conversational tone has spoiled your writing voice. There’s a clear divide between the first half and the second half of the book that when it all comes together, it’s a haphazard approach to two literary giants who shaped L.A.

The problem, dear Lili, is that you had a wealth of knowledge.
But the biggest issue, dear Lili, is the burden you must carry in creating a momentous work that sheds light on a relationship so special when we think of literary beefs. Either through deadlines or the pressures of Babitz coming into the spotlight of culture, everything felt rushed and your total point in siding with one over the other is ludicrous.

Why must we be Team Babitz or Team Didion? Why can’t we be both? They speak to both shades of LA, the fun party girl aesthetic but also the intense gothic that looms over the city. You compared two sides of the coin perfectly with their takes on the Santa Ana winds.

Thank you for your intense gatherings with flawed opinions. I say all this because this book is still stuck in the first draft. Requires countless edits and reformatting in creating a constructive argument. Also requires more emotional distance. Like we get it, you had a stalkerish sensibility to love Babitz, to get to her, even if it was by way of, literally, sniffing her out.

For fans of LA, Babitz, and Didion, you’ll find a lot of wealth of information here in regards to the Franklin Ave scene and New Hollywood. Their relationship to their worlds and their art at the time is all gathered here. Not good. Not great. Misses the mark. But still an illuminating read. 3 stars for the cornucopia. Would’ve given this a 4.5 if it was just written a bit better.

A non-fiction account of two of my favorite literary icons who ran in the same scene, side by side, though both were cast in a very different light.

The problem with this book (well, one of them) is that its tantalizing description of “Joan Didion, revealed at last” isn’t entirely true. Anolik has an intense fascination—fetishistic, in her own words—with Babitz and it rings true in this book which sheds more light on Babitz's relationship to Didion than it does on Didion’s relationship to Babitz. Meaning… It feels like a mostly one-sided account of their relationship, focusing more heavily on Babitz’s experiences, and either using that information to make uninformed assumptions about Didion and her life or leaving Didion in the background for much of the book.

For an author to end the introduction of their book to readers by saying, “People are inclined to get a little soft in the head where Joan Didion is concerned” and “Reader: don’t be a baby” to set the scene for her Didion-bashing is a bit unsavory and clued me in from the start that I wasn’t going to like this. But I don’t know, maybe I’m just being a baby? Maybe I’m just soft in the head?

Anolik is the go-to person when you want your Babitz information, having spent years with her before her death. Unfortunately, in the case of this book, that access to Eve pushes her in to Eve’s corner and makes her incredibly biased against Didion. There is no investigative journalism here when it comes to Didion, only assumptions and speculation that benefit her side.

For example, this is Anolik “breaking in” to a letter Eve wrote to Joan:
“I’m breaking in. Eve is criticizing Joan for what she regards as Joan’s obsessive and inexplicable machismo. For Joan, strong and hard and clear signifies masculine, while doubts and unsettled feelings are weak, dithery silliness: feminine.”
All speculation; I’m reading what Anolik assumes Eve means, what she assumes Joan feels.

If you’re looking for a better biography on Didion’s life I would suggest The World According to Joan Didion or if you want an account of Didion’s later life from a person who was actually close to her, I would suggest the memoir The Uptown Local. And if you’re looking for a better biography on Babitz, well, just read her work. It’s all autofiction anyways.

I think I would only recommend this book to readers who were looking for gossipy speculation on a personal relationship between two women without much proof to back it up. The “research” done on Didion here can be found with a swift Google search. It’s unfortunate that this was such a flop just because the author was intent on measuring two brilliant women against one another rather than lifting up both of their voices and work.

Thank you Scribner and NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review. Available 11/12/2024. *Quotes are pulled from an advanced reader copy and are subject to change prior to publication*

I attempted to download this ebook for review....but it would not download. It said I am not authorized....
Shame....I was looking forward to reading this. It is what it is. Hope this does well.....I guess approving a book doesn't mean you will actually receive the book.
So 1 star

Want to love this but found it meandering, pedantic, long winded and heavy with details that don’t really shed light on the two powerhouse writers. I think I’ll read other biographies on them

A well-researched expansion of the author's original Vanity Fair article, the non-linear narrative helps draw you into what should be a fairly undramatic story. Disclosing scandals about Eve Babitz is nothing new, where this book excels is in revealing new sides to the public's idea of literary titan Joan Didion.

After Eve Babitz died in December 2021, her sister found a trove of boxes in a closet in her apartment They included journals, photos, scrapbooks, manuscripts and unsent letters. This bounty of ephemera concentrated on a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was centered on a two-story house at 7406 Franklin Avenue in Los Angeles, rented by Joan Didion and her writer husband John Gregory Dunne. It was during this time and in this place that Didion’s cool and reserved persona was formed. However, it was also instrumental in the formation of Eve Babitz – goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky, nude of Marcel Duchamp and consort of Jim Morrison (among others).

The two women had a complicated relationship that swerved from friendship to enmity. Anolik argues that Eve’s records from this formative period provides a window through which to more fully understand both of them. If only that happened.

The content of Didion and Babitz is approximately 10% Didion, 45% Babitz and 45% every person who ever had a conversation or an opinion about either one of them. Lili Anolik is obviously predisposed toward Babitz and the new material forms only a fraction of the storyline. Aside from one letter from Eve Babitz to Joan Didion and another from Eve to Joseph Heller, the boxes seem not so much an archival treasure as an excuse to retell Eve’s story (Anolik’s previous book Hollywood’s Eve was published in 2019)

The book is at best chaotic and self-congratulatory operating from a disingenuous premise that it seeks to explore how the dynamic and changing relationship between Didion and Babitz mirrors how they are received in the publishing world. Instead, it is a shallow collection of gossip, rumor and speculative psychoanalysis.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for this review.

As a big fan of both Joan and Eve’s work, I always wondered how the two would interact with each other. I loved navigating through the venn diagram and intersections of these two literary icons. The only things that detracted this were the author’s Eve leaning bias throughout and the conversations with people peripheral to the authors felt more like filler than necessity at points.
Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner for the e-ARC!

More for fans of Babitz (and Anolik's previous bio. Hollywood's Eve) than Didion for sure but either way Didion and Babitz was sooo much fun to read!

As a huge fan of both, I was really excited to read this thinking I would learn more about these talented women. I'm so extremely disappointed that this was full of author assumptions, gossip, and unnecessarily going through a list of men they had been with. The author doesn't hold back their dislike of Didion throughout the entire book. Really disappointed and a waste of time.

This one wasn’t for me. The book felt too personal to the author to fully enjoy the parts that spoke about Babitz and Didion. While the parts pertaining to Babitz and Didion did captivate and hook me in, there was too much self insertion from the author for me to fully enjoy the work.

There is a real, untapped opportunity in the world of biographies for works that that aren’t dry and academic, and instead show us what it’s like to research someone’s life down to its intimate details, decide how to interpret it, and ultimately spend months (if not years) wrapped up in someone else’s world.

Anolik is one of the rare writers to take this approach. She’s to be credited for bringing Babitz her current (and much deserved) fame thanks to her Vanity Fair some years ago, and really is an expert on all things Babitz-related.

I loved reading her account of coming across a box of Babitz’s unspent letters, and her analysis of the overlap between Babitz’s and Didion’s work (from one editing the other, to writing about mutual acquaintances if not each other). Her letting us in on her dilemma about including conflicting testimonies was fascinating. She’s also done incredibly thorough research and countless interviews, ranging from Bret Easton Ellis and Babitz’s sister Mirandi, to Griffin Dunne. (The last two are gifted storytellers who share particularly great stories; I can’t wait to read Dunne’s new book and really hope that Mirandi’s sees the light of day).

Despite all this, and unfortunately, this book is very hard to read, self-congratulatory, and chaotic at best. It’s ironic that a book about writers and editors would read so poorly written and edited. I found the parts that are literary analysis were often not very good, and the ones that are biography downright offensive when it came to Didion.

Look, anyone writing a biography should have at least half an ounce of respect for the people whose dirty laundry they’re researching. Anolik does for Babitz, but doesn’t hide the fact she doesn’t for Didion. It gets annoying really fast to read again and again that Didion was terrible because she was, essentially, an ambitious woman who wanted to be successful, she wasn’t womanly or feminine enough, or because didn’t state in ‘Blue Nights’ whether or not her daughter died of alcoholism. It’s gross.The book fully lost my good will when Anolik insisted on outing Didion’s late husband (writer John Gregory Dunne), purely to have one more reason to criticize Didion because of her ‘failed’ marriage. Yeah, I still can’t believe I read what I read that either.

It was all the more disappointing that I greatly enjoy Anolik’s articles and her podcast episodes. All in all, Didion & Babitz is a real shame because it is full of fascinating information about two of the greatest female writers of the 20th century; it forgets that two women can both be talented at the same time, and we don’t need to pit them against each other.

Anolik does do a great job at showing the complexity of Babitz’s character; there she is gentle and respectful, and writes beautifully about the gap between the artist and what we perceive in her writing. I wish she’d applied the same talent to the Didion chapters, and maybe taken a more critical lens at some of those testimonials. After all, there are a LOT of men being interviewed, about driven and talented women who achieved more success than them in the 60s and 70s. Now that’s a story and context I want to hear, rather than assume (as Anolik does) that Didion’s ex-boyfriend writer must be objective in his bitter analysis of her ‘failed’ marriage. (And who knows, maybe he is! But Anolik comes across as a very unreliable researcher here when she fails to ask that question)

Thank you to Netgalley for the chance to read this advance copy of a book about two of my favourite writers.

dearest gentle reader,

if one finds themselves in the search for a long winded, harshly written book about a made up rivalry between two literary giants, look no further than anolik's <i> didion and babitz. </i> if one find themselves in the search for a well written, coherent jornalistic piece, i urge: look elsewhere.

to quote anolik herself: she picked a side, and she'll stick with it. that, of course, being eve's side. and i can only wonder <i> why </i> "picking a side" is even necessary. to a normal human being, it wouldn't be. both didion and babitz, personal opinions aside, are wildly regarded as two of the best writers the united states has ever produced. and their circumstances aren't as intertwined as anolik would have you believe. didion and babitz aren't wharton and james. they don't share this insane, symbiotic literary relationship - they were friends. until, of course, babitz decided they weren't. but the question that lingers throughout the entire book is: why should eve's drug induced whims decide the course of an entire literary piece, aka this book, and <i> why should i care? </i>

anolik answers: because it's fun! and this author can't help but agree. there is a reason i read it all, even as a bad taste swirled endlessly in my mouth. but why is it fun? because, dearest reader, there is nothing the world loves more than seeing two women fight one another. even as the battlefield is rigged by anolik's lack of journalistic integrity. didion never stood a chance against babitz and the writer's "love (...) with a fan's unreasoning abandon" for her. now, i can't judge too harshly: both these women are dead. they can't be hurt anymore. and, like it or not, with fame comes the consequences of being splayed out for all to see, crucified as people see fit. but, still. there's a difference between tweeting "joan didion sucks!" and writing an entire book bashing her for... not being like babitz? to quote anolik again: "i respect her work rather than like it; find her persona-part princess, part wet blanket-tough going (...)". so then, i wonder, why would she choose to write an entire book about her?

except, of course, she didn't. for every three pages bestowed on didion, she spends thirty on babitz. goes on incessant monologues - especially towards the end of the book - about how brilliant babitz is. only to turn around and shit on everything didion has ever done, including, but not limited to, biting rants about her personal opinion of didion's books (no one cares!) and frankly cruel analyses of her personal life.

anolik is an impartial narrator and writes a mean spirited, gossip filled book that accomplishes nothing except spread her unfounded theories for all the world to chew on. john dunne was abusive! she shouts. he was gay! ... or, maybe he felt inferior to joan! .... or, maybe he wanted to fuck eve? who really knows! he's dead, after all. he can't defend himself. so why not just gather intel given by random, biased people and write the narrative as i see fit. didion was bitter because she hated femininity, eve represented everything she despised. eve had gigantic tits and was free and didion was small and itsy-bitsy and repressed. eve was everything didion longed to become. didion was a heartless bitch that used her husband's and daughter's deaths to get the one thing she's ever wanted, fame, while eve is a tragic artist, misunderstood, who was thrown aside because she was just too real! that's why these women hate each other, reader. agree with me.

well, i don't, and i won't. it doesn't really matter to me that both of them are dead. nor does it matter that they opened themselves up to speculation. one can't, and must not, make assumptions about real people's lives with little to no facts to back them up. it doesn't matter how much anolik loved babitz, or how much they talked, or how much she knew about her. when you gather a bunch of men to interview (and, oh god, <i> there was so many men</i>), couple that with scattered pieces of unmailed letters (UNMAILED!), and the voices in your head that tell you these women despised each other, you'll end up with a very entertaining novel, but one that holds no value other than spreading cruel gossip and deceptive allegations. (note that i said novel, reader. to call this nonfiction is as deceptive as anolik's claims.)

the introduction of the novel centers around a letter babitz wrote to didion (but never sent), and it's frankly a great piece of writing. <i> could you write what you write if you weren't so tiny, joan? </i> brutal - and interesting. but a tiny quote does not a book make. especially when it's blown way out of proportion. as i mentioned before, this letter was never sent. babitz and didion didn't have a giant fight, didn't despise each other. babitz was an unstable drug addict that up and decided she just didn't like joan anymore after years of friendship. anolik even admits it herself: <i> (...) after 1979, she'd given one thought to eve for every fifty eve's given to her. </i>

so, i must question again. <i>why does this book exist?</i> the only two reasons i can think of: 1) anolik wanted to continue writing about babitz, and 2) the two women together sell more than them as individuals. which i can't judge, i was interested in this, after all, as i imagine many more people will be. but the point i must keep making is that <i> anolik clearly doesn't want to write about didion. </i> so, please, please, PLEASE, leave her name out of your mouth. let her rest in peace without having people desecrate her personal life and body of work for cruel, meaningless reasons.

all this to say: this book is mean, useless, and badly written. don't waste your time, reader.

Joan Didion and Eve Babitz were two sides of the same coin in LA in the 1970s, with Didion as the buttoned up striver and Babitz as the wild child. Their paths briefly crossed and then diverged, with Didion rising to fame again in the 2000s and Babitz fading into poverty and obscurity before her death. The book alternates between the two women's stories and is far less critical of Babitz than Didion, who generally gets the gold star treatment from critics. Overall a sharp, smart read.

I suspect that I was not alone in the hope, upon hearing of the death of Eve Babitz, that some undiscovered trove of writing would soon come to light. We learn here, though, that she died in relative squalor and that all survived was an old box of unsent letters packed decades earlier by her mother.

These letters nominally provided the impetus for the author - who had previously delivered the biography Hollywood’s Eve (get it?) - to revisit the telling of the story of Eve Babitz’s life. One letter in particular, written to Joan Dideon sets the stage where Didion and Babitz are juxtaposed.

Curiously, letters form only a tiny fraction of the storyline. Indeed, aside for one just mentioned and another to Joseph Heller (of Catch 22 fame), the boxes seem not an archival treasure, but rather an excuse to retell Eve’s story. Joan Didion’s story is but a shallow counterpoint to Eve’s in this telling.

The author hardly hides her distain for Didion, who is repeated treated as a cunning, conniving careerist. This is not to say that much negative is said of Didion’s often brilliant writing, rather it is her ambition, especially realized ambition, that grates when compared with Eve, the consummate, tragic free spirit.

As with Hollywood’s Eve, I found it often hard to discern where I was reading well-supported biographical detail and where I was being treated to the conjectures of the author. The author is very much present as a party to this dialogue. Aside from the aforementioned cost, her presence enhances the text.

After all, Eve Babitz lived a life worth retelling.

Thanks to Net Gallery and Scribner/Simon and Schuster for the opportunity to preview an advanced copy in return for a candid review.

2.5 /5 ⭐️
Thank you NetGalley and Scribner for an ARC of this book!

I took a few days to digest this book after writing a formal review, but I must say I was quite disappointed by this book. I wish I read this book with an audiobook, as the writing style really lends itself to vocal narration. As someone who is familiar with Anolik's other works in other mediums, I believe her work is most successful in an audio format.

Now to the content of the book itself. Anolik positions her book as the exploration of a rivalry between famous writers: Joan Didion, and Eve Babitz. She explores the dynamic and changing relationship between the two woman, and then how they are received in the publishing world. Anolik is extremely biased toward Eve Babitz, and depicts Joan Didion as a "the enemy". Biases are fine and expected, but I entered this book thinking I was going to gain more insight about the writers rather than read Anolik's personal opinions on the women. There are several points in the book where Anolik clearly states that she is inserting her own opinions, which poses the question: to what extent can reporters become a part of the narrative?

The beginning of the book begins with a "content" warning, which tells the reader that explicit topics will be discussed. In reality, the explicit sections were not as shocking as I anticipated. If you are familiar with the work of Babitz, then these conversations will not be a surprise. The aspects which I did find a little bit more jarring were the discussions surrounding the personal lives of the writers, specifically Joan Didion. Anolik describes Didion's relationship with her husband and peers harshly. Didion is depicted as a weak and mean individual, and Anolik often comes to conclusions regarding the authors life that do not feel backed in facts. As a fan of Joan Didion's writing, I was looking for this book to fill in more details about the author's life. In reality this book while providing a little bit more context to the life of the writer, consistently jumped to Anolik's assumptions rather than grounding thoughts in fact.

I would suggest this book to anyone who enjoys the work of Eve Babitz and is looking for a personal and intimate account of the her life, yet I would suggest Didion fans to proceed with caution.

3.5 rounded up to 4. Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the arc. I was immediately drawn to this book. I’ve read both Didion and Babitz, and while the author is more invested in Eve - I am a Joan Didion acolyte. I couldn’t miss this volume.

Two women with tremendous mythos around them are revealed beautifully here. Legends are made human. Mistakes and triumphs are recounted with clear eyes. Lili Anolik has quite a captivating writing style as well. I’m impressed at how well her pen holds up against the weight of her subjects. My only real gripe is the length of the book. It could have been shorter and I did want more Didion less Eve. Anolik’s preference for Babitz is a bit much at times.

Anolik has an erudite tone with a dry and biting humor. She reveres her Eve without turning her into a god. Joan Didion is one of my literary heroes, but after reading this book I’ve arrived at the conclusion that’s always making itself known: there are no heroes. If you love Babitz or Didion or both, you may like this.

To anyone curious, the percentages of the contents of this book are as follows:

10% Joan
45% Eve
45% every tangential being ever to have had simply a conversation with them and the differing and often insensitive assumptions they had about either woman

If you are more truly a Didion fan, this book will not be ideal: Anolik is extremely predisposed towards Babitz, sometimes visibly villainizing Didion purely for her austere character and sensibility, commonly almost comparing the women in a mean competitive sense.

I picked up this book, as any of us would, as a seasoned reader of both women’s works, but also not as a Ride or Die fan of either in the way the cool girls of today are. I expected a beautiful tribute to both women, the ways in which they were warmly alike and charmingly different, something as cinematic and enveloping as their work itself.

I instead received an overdrawn roll call of every man that ever passed through their lives, Eve’s entire sexual history and her surrounding relationships biography’s, and light condemnation of a shrewd and private Joan set against free and sensual Eve.

This book should have been 50% shorter, more evenly parsed, and should’ve read more as a testament to both women and their souls than a slap in the face of every ill begotten say so from anyone to ever show up in their lives. The whole book reads as a shallow collection of gossip, rumor, and speculative psychoanalysis done by many men and the author that doesn’t feel accurate to either woman. I left this book feeling like I knew neither woman any better in any way that truly mattered. I feel as if Anolik had an idea to profit off of these joint women’s spike in relevancy in the last 10 years and especially within the internet sector of “cool” women, and decided to tenuously and loosely weave them together through the brief and often spiteful correspondence she could find. From what I can tell, I do not see these women as two sides of the same coin, but I also don’t know them as well as Anolik claims to and does. There are some reflecting and conflicting attributes in these women, but so goes for any two women you pair together, that does not mean a valuable argument can be made for their unconscious connection.

This book exhausted me, the only truly enjoyable part to read was the last 15%, the most accurate to my expectations of the content of the book, and even still the author continues to make insensitive remarks (especially towards Didion regarding her loss). I think this concept is going to be a big moneymaker, and good on that, but I don’t think it is truly flattering or genuinely attributive to either woman, and any connection of the two within its page feels like an afterthought and a stretch.

I have been a fan of Didion’s for years and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing her mythology deconstructed by learning about her doppelgänger, Eve Babitz, a name that was completely unknown by me before reading this book.

I love when. Biography authors become completely immersed in their subject matter . That do not subscribe in speculation about their subject but speak in absolute truth and authority, as Anolik does. She inserts herself into the text, but not as a distraction, but rather how she becomes consumed with her subject matter, As a reader, she draws us in too.

I’d recommend this biography unconditionally.

Didion and Babitz is a lush, juicy look into the relationship between Joan Didion and Eve Babitz. Set in the literati world of the 70s, the story follows their relationship to each other and how the world around them affected them as well. If you've ever wanted to know more about these American literary icons, you won't want to miss this book.

I will write a much longer review on this whenever the weather permits but thank you so much to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC of Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik in exchange for an honest review. Like most literary communities, I am enamored and intrigued by Joan Didion and Eve Babitz. Joan's work fell into my lap more naturally as a girl who grew up wanting to become a journalist. "Creative nonfiction" is a genre that has swept me away for most of my life. I came across Eve Babitz a bit later and in my mind, they have always been in that realm of LA writers who could capture the city's essence. I have to be honest, I am not usually interested in the personal lives of writers that I admire because I believe it's like meeting a hero, I don't care to know about their less-than-admirable qualities. I fear that knowing makes me enjoy their work less but I'm slowly getting out of that. So, I went into this relatively blind. I did not read Lili Anolik's "Hollywood Eve" book before this but I wish that I did because this book references it a lot. I knew a bit more about Joan Didion's personal life through a biographical sense because of the documentary "The Center Will Not Hold" directed by Griffin Dunne, her nephew (and the iconic actor). With Eve, I knew nothing besides some of her semi-autobiographical work so this was my first introduction to Eve Babitz the person.

Here, I learned that she idolized Marilyn Monroe and had ambitions to be an artist. I was able to understand why she felt inspired and betrayed by Joan Didion and Didion's alignment with masculinity to protect herself. Human beings are complicated and these were complicated and thoughtful women. Lili Anolik fleshes out these iconic women and her connection to Eve Babitz through hundreds of interviews helped me better understand where Eve could have been coming from. I felt like I knew a lot about Eve Babitz after this. I gravitate more towards Joan Didion and her sensibilities because I've read more about Joan and she died as the most iconic American woman writer. So, it's no surprise there. Lili did not have the same access to Joan (did anyone?) and so it felt like Joan and Dunne popped in and out of focus throughout this book. I didn't mind that at all though because I was able to see a different side to her that isn't just praise. I feel myself rambling so I'll end it here for now.