California frenemies: an unsent letter
Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik (Scribner, 2024)
Reviewed by Michael Jimenez
We can almost approach this book like a call-in scenario during a C-SPAN interview. The author being interviewed is Joan Didion, wearing her trademark sunglasses, a writer many contemporary writers name-drop to show how serious they are about writing, whereas the one who called-in, Eve Babitz, now enjoys posthumous fame with a rising fan club―including Kendall Jenner and Emma Roberts (329). This interview on C-SPAN might once have been viewed as a charming interaction between two literary acquaintances, but Lili Anolik’s new book Didion and Babitz argues that this relationship was more serious and complicated than previously known.
The author of this book, Lili Anolik, has something of an obsession with Eve Babitz, the Los Angeles writer known for her rollercoaster of a life in Hollywood during the sixties and seventies (7-8). For years earlier, Anolik struggled to find a niche to write about. She eventually stumbled upon Babitz, from a random quote she cannot now locate. Anolik’s 2014 Vanity Fair piece and her debut book, 2019 Hollywood’s Eve, reintroduced Babitz to the literary world, sparking the reprinting of Babitz’s texts.
Hollywood’s Eve was new and exciting in 2019, but Babitz is now no longer a secret. She is more of an it girl now. So why did Anolik almost immediately write what seems like a sequel volume?
Anolik presents herself as a self-aware writer, who became familiar with the older, reclusive Babitz, who Anolik viewed and views as “the secret genius of L.A.” (322). It took some time, but she eventually became close to Babitz and her inner circle. Upon the discovery of unsent letters in Babitz’s sloppy closet, found at the end of her life Anolik realized she did not tell the complete Eve Babitz story in her first book. A major character was missing―Joan Didion. A letter addressed to Didion, and never sent, reignited Anolik’s obsession with Babitz’s story.
Among other things, the letter included the following: “Could you write what you do 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.” The very critical letter pushed Anolik to the realization that Didion was a much bigger player in Babitz’s life than she portrayed in her first book (13-14). Eschewing traditional biography and relishing gossip, Anolik revisits Babitz’s life, but with Didion as her silent partner and frenemy.
Babitz and Didion were very different and idolized drastically different people. Babitz’s hero was Marilyn Monroe and Didion’s was Ernest Hemingway. Monroe was dismissed for being ditzy like Eve. However, Monroe and Babitz hid cultural genius behind their similarly flirtatious personalities. Babitz’s best writing is in a carefree, frank, yet flirtatious style. Babitz was an insider at many of the parties and social events in the late twentieth century L.A. scene, seemingly always ready to have a good time. Didion was also part of these wild times, but habitually wrote from a cautious distance. Honoring her literary hero, Hemingway, she worked on her craft in a serious manner, agonizing over each word in her drafts.
It’s not as though one of the authors got the story and the other didn’t. As much as Didion approached each project as an observer, she obviously had the talent to get people to talk to her. Babitz simply had a different approach to getting the story, for example, instead of writing about The Doors frontman Jim Morrison like Didion as a spectator, Babitz was personally close to him in a way that made her writing about him seem more authentic, because she took part in the whole rock and roll ethos. Didion would never do anything that could suggest a resemblance with a rock and roll groupie. Babitz resented Didion for downplaying her feminine side. Didion wanted to be a famous writer not a famous woman writer (72).
Babitz’s feelings towards Didion are best described as “complicated” (196). Anolik’s book aims to find out why Babitz had a sort of passive-aggressive relationship with Didion. A few comments here and there and the unsent letter are the biggest evidence that Anolik has. At this point, the aggression is one-sided since there is little evidence that Didion thought much of Babitz at all. Despite Anolik’s efforts, the passive-aggressive relationship seems to have been not as much with Didion as within Babitz. When Didion mentioned Babitz, it was as the fun loving but reckless writer from L.A., which is pretty much how everyone saw her. In fact, when Babitz took her role as a writer seriously, it was Didion who proved to be her “benefactor” (181). Didion rarely stuck her neck out for just anyone, but she played a direct role in helping Babitz get some of her most important work published. According to Anolik, Didion thought Babitz had raw talent but needed some structure and believed enough in her as a writer to try to help with editing duties. However, it seems that Babitz did not appreciate or at the very least resented the help (148-9, 259-60).
Even though Anolik clearly adores Babitz, she admits that Eve was being petty and dealt with Didion unfairly (200-01). Yet many readers find Anolik to be treating Didion unfairly, as well. Whereas Anolik was intimate with Babitz, she tends to handle Didion with her own cool distance, at best. One cannot help but see Anolik continue Babitz’s passive-aggressive tone with Didion. To build up Babtiz’s legacy she proceeds to target Didion’s. Anolik sees Didion as an opportunist upon the death of both her husband and daughter, reappearing on the public scene as a celebrated memoirist, a “national symbol of spousal grief” (313). Anolik writes that “Joan was an alchemist. The pain of life became the gold of literature once she ran it through her typewriter” (315). Anolik goes so far as to say this is what separated Didion from Babitz: “Joan’s unblinking voyeurism: her tragic flaw; her saving grace” (301). In contrast, Babitz was a “sensualist” absorbed into the very world she wrote about (201).
As much as the reader learns about Didion and Babitz, the book is also about Anolik. She picks sides. She plays up tensions. This flair for the drama is what makes it hard to put Anolik’s book down. According to Anolik, Didion, knew how to “brand” herself (308). That is why Didion is a literary icon. Perhaps, because of Anolik’s books, we are witnessing the same evolution for Babitz via Anolik’s branding.
Would Babitz appreciate this branding at the expense of Didion? Is there a narrative being forced from a box of unsent letters? Listen again to the CSPAN clip and there does not seem much to it. In fact, it comes across as a nice memory of a forgotten time in L.A. Anolik’s book shines in revealing a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood feel, but, like Quentin Tarantino’s film, there is much in this book that seems like a director’s playful revision of the historical facts.
Michael Jimenez is an Associate Professor of history at Vanguard University. He is the author of Remembering Lived Lives: A Historiography from the Underside of Modernity and Karl Barth and the Study of the Religious Enlightenment: Encountering the Task of History.
