You’d be hard-pressed to find a person (well, maybe besides Ryan Murphy) who loves a feud more than I do. To quote Marie Kondo, “I love mess,” and said mess is all the more intriguing to me when it involves two extremely wry and fabulous West Coats writers.
Both Joan Didion (who worked for Vogue!) and Eve Babitz, the tragically glamorous literary-world frenemy she circles in Lili Anolik’s new book, Didion and Babitz (Scribner), are closely associated with California—Babitz for her iconic 1982 Jim Morrison groupie novel L.A. Woman, and Didion for, well, setting almost everything somewhere in the Golden State, including her 1970 novel Play It As It Lays—and over the years that I’ve lived here, I’ve longed to incorporate a little more of their heady glamour into my life.
Photo: Virisa Yong/BFA.com
Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be some tired screed about how there’s no literary scene in California. Anyone familiar with Didion, Babitz, or indeed Myriam Gurba, Paul Beatty, or Melissa Broder would be perfectly capable of arguing otherwise; and the corncupia of readings, book parties, and events hosted by Casual Encountersz and the always-sold-out Silver Lake Reading Club speak for themselves, as do haunts like Book Soup and Musso and Frank.
Still, I rarely make it to those mostly west-of-WeHo spots; living in East Hollywood, I spend most of my time blogging from bed, walking my dog around the Silver Lake Reservoir, ordering soup dumplings at the mall in Glendale, or trawling yard sales in Burbank (where all the chic older ladies with great vintage live). And, anyway, the part of me that wishes my life were a little more Babitz-esque has always longed to spend time at places like the Chateau Marmont, where I imagine that she, Didion, and Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, got up to all kinds of bad behavior Didion would elegantly avoid confirming if she were still with us today.