Eve Babitz and Joan Didion may be dead. But their feud isn’t

A new book on the Los Angeles authors leaves no petty stone unturned as it explores their fraught friendship

Joan Didion, the original girlboss of American letters, keeps inspiring new takedowns. Critiquing Didion’s racism, the writer Myriam Gurba compared her to an onion: “She’s very white, very crisp, and she makes people cry.” An anonymous woman in a Los Angeles bar called Didion “that lady from Sacramento”. (Didion might have fooled the New York Times, but Angelenos know she wasn’t from Los Angeles.)

Eve Babitz’s recent takedown of Didion might be the most extraordinary, though, because it has been issued from beyond the grave.