How Joan Didion And Eve Babitz Were The ‘Madonna And Courtney’ Of Their Time

Joan Didion and Eve Babitz were not merely literary sensations. They’ve become symbols: platonic ideals of what it means to be a young woman with a keen eye, a cultivated style, and a sharp pen. (All you need to see on someone’s Instagram Story is a pic of the Eve’s Hollywood reissue, or a repost of Joan Didion’s Celine ad, to know what kind of woman you’re dealing with: a writer.) Though both are known for writing about 1960s Los Angeles, the friends-turned-rivals couldn’t have come about their iconography more differently. Eve was the bimbo-ish party girl who happened to become a writer; Joan was the highly-disciplined intellect who happened to write about the LA party scene. And in her new book about the pair, Didion and Babitz (out now), author Lili Anolik — who ushered in the Babitz renaissance after publishing a profile on her in Vanity Fair in 2014 — argues that what these women actually represent are “two halves of American womanhood.”

“When I say that every woman is a Joan or an Eve, I should say that every woman has to choose whether to be a Joan or an Eve. Because every woman is intrinsically both,” Anolik tells NYLON. “Joan is the sun, Eve the moon. Joan is the superego, Eve the id. Eve was Joan’s idealized self and Joan was Eve’s ideal practical self.”

As such, Didion and Babitz charts the rise and fall of the relationship between the original literary It Girls. The book is peppered with dishy details about the parties Babitz attended at Didion’s Franklin Avenue house, the celebrities who were in both of their thralls, and, of course, their respective secret love affairs. But for all the titillating gossip, Anolik still manages to elevate the importance of their connection far above the fray. “The dynamic we’re talking about isn’t a lightweight thing. It’s primal and profound,” she explains. “I’ve often thought that the subtitle of Didion and Babitz could’ve been How Should a Woman Be?, since that’s the question it’s subliminally trying to answer.”

You first discovered Eve through a quote of hers that may or may not have appeared in a book. You then sought out old copies of her out-of-print books. At the time, did people know about Eve Babitz? Obviously, you ushered in the renaissance, but did “in the know” people even really know about her?

I can tell you definitively that in-the-know people did not know. I mean, I peddled my Eve Babitz profile all over town before Graydon Carter finally bought it for Vanity Fair. It was “so what?” and “say what?” across the board.

I’m exaggerating a bit. Emily Gould, back when she had an imprint [with Coffee House Press], tried to reissue Eve’s books. The late great art critic Dave Hickey was teaching her at the University of Las Vegas. So, Eve certainly had her fans, but she was a minor cult figure. Over the course of the last 10 years, the years following the Vanity Fair profile, she’s become a major phenomenon.

What was the passage where you knew Eve had you hook, line, and sinker?

Slow Days, Fast Company was the first book of Eve’s that I read. I was 50 or so pages in when I came across this passage and that was it. I was a goner:

“I’ve often noticed that there is a moment when a man develops enough confidence and ease in a relationship to bore you to death. Sometimes one hardly even notices it’s happened, that moment, until some careless remark arouses one’s suspicions. I have found that what usually brings this lethargy on is if the woman displays some special kindness. Like making dinner.”

It’s very clear in the book that while you respect Joan, her work is not your cup of tea. How much of hers had you read prior to embarking on the first Eve project?

While it’s true that Joan Didion isn’t to my taste, I recognize her prose prowess, how fluent she is, how authoritative. So, if I don’t have love for her, I have respect. And then there’s the fact that literary LA is my beat. Eve Babitz is my subject. As is Bret Easton Ellis. As is Pauline Kael. Which means I’m never not bumping up against Joan Didion. So towering a figure is she on that particular scene, she blots out the sun.

In your research for this book, what did you discover that endeared you to Joan most? Or surprised you most?

Joan’s least likable qualities — or the qualities that conventional wisdom deems least likable — are the qualities I like most. People get soft in the head about Joan. She’s a romantic figure to them, and they prefer to concentrate on the romantic aspects of her literary rise, turning a blind eye to the unromantic.

For instance, they don’t want to talk about her discipline — even though discipline, mundane, no-fun, day-in-day-out discipline, is the main reason why she was so good. Her capacity for hard work was infinite, endless. And people really don’t want to talk about her ambition — that itch she had, that push to be the best, or how fundamentally chilly she was. There’s a need to sentimentalize her. To focus on her roles as wife and mother, to warm her up, to make her cuddly. As I see it, though, Joan was a writer before she was a wife or a mother, before she was a person even. That she was willing to pay the price personally, was willing to turn herself into the hardest of hard cases in order to achieve greatness — this is thrilling to me.

For the uninitiated, let’s talk a little bit about Joan and Eve’s “frenemy-ship.” What do you think they admired most about one another? What do you think they resented most about one another?

For Vanity Fair’s September 2022 issue, I wrote about a letter Eve wrote to Joan in 1972, in which she asked, “Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan?” I posted the piece on Instagram. All of a sudden, Courtney Love began peppering me with DMs about the poison pen letters she and Madonna exchanged for years. She went on about how she had other small friends but that Madonna’s tininess, for whatever reason, drove her up a wall. That’s the moment I realized that Joan vs. Eve was bigger than Joan and Eve, bigger than the personal — the conflict between them was universal.

So, in the Madonna vs. Courtney scenario, Madonna is, of course, the Joan figure: trim, controlled, eye on the prize. And Courtney is the Eve: a walk on the wild side, morally courageous, emotionally sloppy but with something inside her that’s freer than anything inside Madonna. There was an obsessive mutual attraction-slash-mutual repulsion between Madonna and Courtney, same as there was between Joan and Eve. And the moment I realized this is the moment I realized that if I do my job right with this book, all women readers — and a few men — will be asking themselves, “Am I a Joan or an Eve?” Because you’re either one or the other.

In a way, you make the case that one couldn’t truly exist without the other. Eve even dedicates one of her books to “the Didion-Dunnes for having to be who I’m not.” How did these two women fuel one another?

Eve’s greatest book, Slow Days, Fast Company, is as necessary to Joan’s greatest book, The White Album, as The White Album is as necessary to Slow Days, Fast Company. To read only one of the books is to get only half of the story. You want to understand post-Manson Los Angeles, you’ve got to read both. And Joan is the reason we have both to read. She took Eve seriously when no one else did. Joan is why Eve’s first piece was published in Rolling Stone, and why Eve’s first book, Eve’s Hollywood, was bought by a major publisher. She sponsored Eve’s Hollywood, said she’d edit it. Sure, Eve ended up “firing” Joan off the book. But no way would it have sold in the first place without Joan’s seal of approval. Joan, in so many ways, is responsible for Eve, is what made Eve possible.

“Eve Babitz with the great big tits” is a refrain that comes up a lot in your book. In an interview with Lit Hub, you talk about how she was considered a bimbo. Recently, there’s been a major reclamation of the bimbo. There are a lot of writers who are basically like, “I can wear a miniskirt and write killer prose.” Do you think Eve was trying at all to be subversive? Or was she simply being?

Something that drove Eve crazy about Joan was Joan’s insistence on being addressed in private life as “Joan Dunne” or “Joan Didion Dunne.” That one of the most ambitious people who ever lived was playing the little woman, the little wifey. Yet Eve was similarly insistent. If you asked her to describe herself, “groupie” was invariably the word she used. And while Eve did have an impressive number of rock ‘n’ roller notches on her lipstick case — Jim Morrison, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, several of the Eagles, Warren Zevon — only a dummy would mistake her for a groupie. She never wanted to land one of those guys, the groupie dream. She’d kick them out of bed before the sheets were dry. She just wanted the experience. Plus, she was always serious about her art, whether it was designing album covers or making collages or writing books.

So, no, I don’t think Eve was being subversive, not consciously. I think she was just doing what came naturally. And, look, if you wanted to be on the scene that she and Joan were on and you were a female, you could be on it as a voyeur or as a participant. Those were your options. Joan picked voyeur. Eve picked participant.

Even if Eve wasn’t being subversive, self-presentation was a big part of both Joan and Eve’s success. It reminds me a lot of the way you speak about Donna Tart — how the aesthetic is just as big a part of the lore as the work.

First of all, both Joan Didion and Donna Tartt can write. But it’s not just their books that seduce and beguile. Joan Didion is a writer. But Joan Didion is also a mood, a style, an attitude, a way of operating in the world — famished body, famished prose, oversized sunglasses, chronic migraines, etc. Which is to say, Joan Didion is also a persona. And so effective was she in creating this persona that, at a certain point, “Joan Didion” became synonymous with the word “writer.” There are other famous writers, writers who are much celebrated, but these writers don’t become models for French fashion houses. Their every utterance isn’t studied by literary young women the way a tasseographer studies tea leaves. Joan understood the concept of branding before branding was a concept.

Eve, on the other hand, never got it. She was the thing — an embodied creature. She didn’t advertise the thing. I’ll give an example. Julian Wasser took famous photos of both Eve and Joan. Julian’s photo of Eve, naked, playing chess with Duchamp, is one of the most renowned in California art history. But there’s no way to know Eve is Eve unless you were told beforehand. Her hair is covering her face like a veil. In Julian’s photos of Joan — Joan in front of and inside of her Corvette — Joan is very clearly Joan. And those photos have become, over the years, an effective promotional tool for her.

Eve’s failure to create a public persona, to brand herself is why — in part, anyway — she didn’t really have a career that caught fire. But at the end of her life, my original Vanity Fair piece made her a sensation because it gave her a persona. It pulled together her wild and chaotic life, shaped it into a coherent narrative, made it all pop: Stravinsky’s goddaughter, Duchamp’s nude, Jim Morrison’s consort, the fire she nearly burned herself alive in when she was in her fifties. Eve now is a cultural heroine and her brand is: the anti-Joan.

The concept of the “Literary It Girl” is something that’s drawn a lot of ire on Twitter. But I think Eve and Joan were the first true literary It Girls. What would they both make of this phrase? How would their thoughts differ?

I’m sure Joan and Eve would dismiss the phrase “It Girl” as vulgar, tacky nonsense — but not the idea behind the phrase, which is serious, and which they took seriously. Both wanted to be the writer making a splash, to be the voice of the culture. Was Joan the first literary It Girl? Maybe. Having “It” is a 20th century concept. Fitzgerald and Hemingway had been It Boys — that is, figures who were emblematic of their era, who acted out the dramas and excesses of their time and place. Joan certainly did that for late sixties and early seventies L.A. So did Eve, as people discovered later. What’s crazy is that Eve became an It Girl when she was an old woman!

What was the most salacious piece of gossip you uncovered in this book?

That the great love of Joan’s life wasn’t John Gregory Dunne. It was a guy she’d written out of her origin story even though he was the key figure in that story: a guy named Noel Parmentel. Noel was a journalist, a Southerner, an older man, a charmer — a figure out of a Hemingway novel. Joan met him when she moved to New York in the late fifties. He was her first lover and her first promotor. He made it happen for her professionally. He got her writing into magazines and got her first novel, which had been rejected by over a dozen houses, into print. When he made her understand that he would neither marry her nor give her a baby, she had a nervous breakdown. So he found her a husband. John Gregory Dunne was an acolyte of his, a hanger-on, a sort of little buddy-sidekick type. He told Joan to marry Dunne, and she did. Marrying Dunne was, I believe, her way of marrying Noel.

How it ultimately worked out between Joan and Noel — well, you’ll have to read my book to find that out.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.