Didion & Babitz

Journalist Anolik follows up Hollywood's Eve, her 2019 biography of writer Eve Babitz (1943--2021), with a revealing investigation of Babitz's complicated relationship with Joan Didion (1934--2021). Tracing how Didion served as Babitz's mentor, ersatz mother, and nemesis over the course of their lives, Anolik recounts how the two met in June 1967 after Babitz fell in with the Hollywood crowd that congregated at Didion's house parties. Didion took a liking to Babitz's genre-straddling pieces and used her clout to secure Babitz's first byline, an essay about the death of her high school classmate published in Rolling Stone's fiction section in 1971. Drawing on previously unreported correspondence, Anolik reveals that Didion edited the manuscript for Babitz's first book, Eve's Hollywood, but their relationship soured as Didion's sometimes harsh criticism left Babitz so indignant she eventually fired Didion. Anolik traces their divergent paths over the ensuing decades, describing how Babitz's star burned brightly before flaming out while Didion methodically built a reputation as the consummate writer. Though Anolik admits her bias for Babitz ("Joan is somebody I naturally root against"), she 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. Agent: Jennifer Joel, CAA. (Nov.)

A study of two writers uncomfortably entwined. After Eve Babitz (1943-2021) died, her biographer Anolik came upon a letter from Babitz to Joan Didion (1934-2021) that startled her. Filled with "rage, despair, impatience, contempt," it read like a "lovers' quarrel." "Eve was talking to Joan the way you talk to someone who's burrowed deep under your skin, whose skin you're trying to burrow deep under." That surprise discovery suggested a "complicated alliance" between the two. In sometimes breathless prose, with sly asides to the "Reader," Anolik draws on more than 100 interviews with Babitz and many other sources to follow both women's lives, tumultuous loves, and aspirations before and after they met in Los Angeles in 1967, sometimes straining to prove their significance to one another. "Joan and Eve weren't each other's opposite selves so much as each other's shadow selves," she asserts. "Eve was what Joan both feared becoming and longed to become: an inspired amateur." At the same time, "Joan was what Eve feared becoming and desired to become: a fierce professional." Didion had just won acclaim forSlouching Towards Bethlehem when Babitz, newly arrived from New York, began socializing with her and her husband, John Gregory Dunne. The reticent Didion and the sensual, energetic Babitz could not have been more different, and Anolik clearly prefers Babitz. "I'm crazy for Eve," she admits, "love her with a fan's unreasoning abandon. Besides, Joan is somebody I naturally root against: I respect her work rather than like it; find her persona--part princess, part wet blanket--tough going." Their relationship--hardly a friendship--fell apart in 1974 when Didion and Dunne were assigned to edit Babitz's autobiographical novel,Eve's Hollywood. Babitz, resentful of Didion's attitude and intrusion, "fired" her, pursuing her writing career on her own. Didion soared to literary fame; not, alas, Babitz. A cheeky, gossipy dual biography. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.