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📚 Joan Didion and Eve Babitz Shared an Unlikely, Uneasy Friendship—One That Shaped Their Worlds and Work Forever, Vanity Fair
At the Frankfurt airport, I balanced a precarious stack of Ritter Sports in one hand to free the other to select a magazine. I rarely buy print publications (like everyone), but it’s a bit of a tradition when I travel. Not me singlehandedly saving the print industry! A pinkly-clad Lewis Hamilton broodingly beckoned from Vanity Fair. I paid with exact change in euros and stuffed my sweets and souvenirs into my bag. Walking to the gate, I perused the cover. My eyes were assaulted with the copy: “Joan Didion’s Best Frenemy.” You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, I thought. By chance, I had chosen a magazine with an article about Eve Babitz. And what book was in my bag at that very moment? Slow Days, Fast Company. This article was an intriguing read, especially because it felt surprisingly… charged. Lili Anolik just released a biography about Babitz and her article is dripping with bias. She’s decidedly team Eve over team Joan, and it’s fun. She’s quick to call out Didion for certain artifices. For example:
“Joan famously wrote, ‘It had not been by accident that people with whom I had preferred to spend time in high school had, on the whole, hung out in gas stations.’ It’s a good line—self-revelation disguised as social commentary. Only the self being revealed is false. The people with whom Joan spent time in high school were, on the whole, middle-class strivers, like herself.”