Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik review –the seductress and the sphinx
This account of the purported bond between Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, two fascinating chroniclers of late 20th-century America, is titillating but diminishes both writers
Reading Didion & Babitz is a bit like being held hostage. At the outset, I very much wanted what it appears to offer: an account of a friendship between two uncommonly fascinating American writers, Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, inspired by the discovery of a cache of letters found hidden at the back of the latter’s wardrobe after her death, aged 78, from Huntington’s disease in 2021. I guess you could say I was tied to my chair.
After a while, though, it came to me that these women had not, after all, engaged in much of a correspondence; the letter offered as bait at the start of Lili Anolik’s book, in which Babitz says mean things to Didion (“Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan?”), had, it turned out, never been posted. At which point, my disappointment was severe. I wanted to bust right out of the airless room in which I’d been kept for 190-odd pages, listening to Anolik’s annoying, digressive, smart-alecky prose – a style known to me as High 21st-Century Frantic American. Quickly, someone, open a window! Let me out of here.
Continue reading...Topics
More from The Guardian
-
Ukraine war live: Russia launches massive missile strike, hitting energy grid and residential areas
World - The Guardian - 14 minutes ago -
Rightwing settlers in Israel welcome ‘dream team’ of Trump and his hardline appointments
World - The Guardian - 4 hours ago -
UK must choose between EU and Trump, trade experts warn
World - The Guardian - 14 hours ago -
Trump picks oil and gas industry CEO Chris Wright as next energy secretary
World - The Guardian - 10 hours ago -
Xi says China is ‘ready to work’ with Trump in final meeting with Biden
World - The Guardian - 8 hours ago
Latest in World
-
Ukraine war live: Russia launches massive missile strike, hitting energy grid and residential areas
World - The Guardian - 14 minutes ago -
Senegal votes in election that will decide if president can carry out the reforms he promised
World - ABC News - 19 minutes ago -
Israeli strikes kill 12 in Gaza as arrests are made over flares fired at Netanyahu's home
World - ABC News - 19 minutes ago -
Latest typhoon batters the Philippines, displacing about 400,000 people
World - ABC News - 19 minutes ago -
Learning to scoot is all very well, but what’s the point if you can’t ring your own bell?
World - The Guardian - 23 minutes ago