BETWEEN THE LINES Lili Anolik's recently released "Didion & Babitz" is a very fun look into the greatest literary rivalry I never heard of: between Joan Didion, one of the widely acclaimed writers in history, and her lesser known peer, Eve Babitz. "Joan and Eve are the two halves of American womanhood, representing forces that are, on the surface, in conflict yet secretly aligned — the superego and the id, Thanatos and Eros, yang and yin," Anolik writes. This book is born of a box of long-forgotten letters to and from Eve at the peak of her career, found by her sister who shared them with Anolik, a close family friend since writing her Babitz biography, "Hollywood's Eve" published in 2019.
The letters revealed, among other things, that Didion had used her fame to get Babitz her first book deal for "Eve's Hollywood" and even edited an early manuscript. Then, for reasons that will only ever truly be known to the now-deceased frenemies, Didion and Babitz had a falling out — likely over creative differences and Babitz' tendency towards defensiveness in regards to her writing. Despite Didion's initial support of the book, Babitz writes some overtly unkind things about her in "Eve's Hollywood.
" The book's dedication is long and includes the line, "And to the Didion-Dunnes for having to be who I am not." An essay titled "The Luau" references Didion, thinly disguised as Lady Dana, and acknowledges that a letter of support from this "highly fashionable writer" helped Babitz cinch .
