In ‘Didion & Babitz,’ journalist Lili Anolik unpacks the volatile yet symbiotic relationship between two literary icons.
We may receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.—moved into an assisted living facility in 2021, a box of drafts, diary entries, and, perhaps most enthralling, unsent letters was found sitting in her closet.
After all, it was because of a recommendation letter from Didion that Babitz published her very first short story, in, which, Anolik discovered in her research, Didion also helped Babitz edit. In short: “Eve had a benefactor, and that benefactor’s name was Joan Didion.” What then, exactly, soured their relationship? Didion’s editing style, possibly. Babitz’s prose clashed with Didion’s, in every way her opposite.
Anolik relates the writers’ differences in style to their physical likeness, their bodies. Babitz’s body was the antithesis of Didion’s: “an explosion of voluptuous flesh, and helplessly carnal,” writes Anolik. Conversely, diminutive in size through food restriction, “there was an overwrought quality to thinness, almost a hysteria. She had no flesh, allowed herself no flesh,” Anolik writes.
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