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9781668065495

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""Didion and Babitz looks at the complicated relationship between late literary icons Joan Didion and Eve Babitz. . . . What the book makes clear is that Didion and Babitz were more alike than either would have liked to admit."" --TIME ""[Anolik's] double biography is an account of a dispute between highly creative frenemies where the wounds festered for years and no one ever worked it out on the remix."" --New York Magazine, Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024 ""Didion & Babitz takes off the kid gloves in [a] revelatory look at two writers who became foes . . . With an abundance of pop-psych insight and who's-who detail, Didion & Babitz captures the scene its two namesakes shared nearly as vividly as they did."" --The San Francisco Chronicle ""A revealing investigation of Babitz's complicated relationship with Joan Didion. . . . [Anolik] provides astute character portraits of both writers, suggesting that though Didion was disciplined and spare where Babitz was sensual and lush, the two shared a single-minded commitment to their artistry. It's a crackling dual biography of two of L.A.'s brightest literary lights."" --Publishers Weekly ""Anolik brings her journalistic instincts and her deep passion for Didion and Babitz to create a vivid, engrossing work."" --Vogue ""Dazzling and provocative . . . I found myself cheering on Anolik's decision to make one more foray into Babitz's glittering, free-falling, unencumbered yet troubled world. Would I want my daughter to follow Babitz's path or Didion's, if given the choice? Probably not Babitz's. But what a ride."" --Leigh Haber, The Los Angeles Times ""Anolik is a galvanizing, exacting, mordantly funny, and lionhearted writer, directly addressing the reader and sharing the evolution of her arresting analysis, a heady mix of biography, reporting, social critique, psychology, and literary criticism based on hundreds of interviews. . . . [Didion and Babitz] died within a week of each other, and their legacies will be forever shaped by Anolik's double portrait forged in inquisitiveness, empathy, intellectual firepower, and love."" --Booklist (starred review) ""Anolik makes a convincing case for Babitz's literary genius and sets up an interesting contrast between the two women--one loose, libidinous and joyfully debauched; the other shy, cerebral and tightly controlled . . . Anolik dishes dirt on all the major and minor players in their haute bohemian circle."" --The Associated Press ""Fun . . . [Anolik] is a thorough reporter with an ear for humorous detail (apparently Didion's husband, John Dunne, called Babitz 'the dowager groupie'). She manages to bring her midcentury Los Angeles setting to life in a way that feels fresh."" --The New York Times Book Review ""Anolik unearths a complicated, contentious--and scandalously overlooked--alliance between these two glamorous behemoths of Californian literature. . . . What results is a love letter in the form of this detailed biography that reads like a propulsive novel. You'll be reaching for Didion's and Babitz's books to search for evidence of the messy truths revealed on these pages."" --Oprah Daily ""Compelling . . . truly the culmination of Anolik's already excellent work on Babitz as well as a brilliantly cutting examination of the complicated legacy of Didion."" --Esquire ""Immaculately researched and laced with gold."" --The Times, Best Books of 2024 (UK) ""As Lili Anolik argues in this joint biography, Didion & Babitz represent more than what it means to be a woman who writes: They're two halves of American womanhood. It's a big swing, but one that Anolik knocks out of the park, showing readers how Didion was the sun to Babitz's moon, the superego to her id."" --Bustle ""Lili Anolik established herself as the Eve Babitz whisperer with her unforgettable magazine stories about the then-mostly-forgotten-but-now-celebrated L.A. author and her book Hollywood's Eve. Her new release further explores Babitz's friendship and rivalry with that other California girl, Joan Didion--and while Anolik's own allegiance is clear, her book is a captivating look into the way two very brilliant, very different writers maneuvered around one another, and the starry, messy world they inhabited. Someone get Ryan Murphy a copy, we smell a new season of Feud."" --Town & Country, Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024 ""Lili Anolik takes us under the hood, not just of literary history but of what makes a woman palatable for public consumption. The greatest female writer to take on the female writer, Lili never falters. Sentence by sentence, page by page, she does Joan and Eve proud and explains the truth about why women who speak their truth will always be societal dynamite. The book is magic. It's all I ever needed."" --Lena Dunham

""Anolik brings her journalistic instincts and her deep passion for Didion and Babitz to create a vivid, engrossing work."" -Vogue ""Dazzling and provocative . . . I found myself cheering on Anolik's decision to make one more foray into Babitz's glittering, free-falling, unencumbered yet troubled world. Would I want my daughter to follow Babitz's path or Didion's, if given the choice? Probably not Babitz's. But what a ride."" -Leigh Haber, The Los Angeles Times

Author Information

Lili Anolik is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a writer at large for Air Mail. She is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller Hollywood's Eve and Didion and Babitz. Her last podcast, Once Upon a Time...at Bennington College, was produced by Cadence13. In 2024, she was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for profile writing. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.

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