Didion and Babitz

By Lili Anolik

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs

Lili Anolik's 2024 dual portrait follows Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, two writers who captured Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s from very different angles. Didion was cool, controlled and admired in New York literary circles, while Babitz, an artist and party girl turned memoirist, wrote about the city's sensual side. Anolik draws on a trove of unsent letters found among Babitz's papers to reconstruct their friendship, their rivalry and the editing relationship that bound them.

Recommended by 1 person

• Ryan Holiday: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”