Didion and Babitz in LARB

Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, authors of indelible portraits of post-1960s Los Angeles, died within days of each other in December 2021.

Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, authors of indelible portraits of post-1960s Los Angeles, died within days of each other in December 2021. In their work the city and its denizens appear in all their guises — windswept and sun-drenched, canny and deluded, egalitarian and hopelessly stratified, carefree and carnivorous. It’s no surprise that Didion and Babitz have been traversing LARB’s pages from the journal’s very first days. Below is a selection of pieces in which some of our favorite contributors pay homage to and wrestle with the legacies of two women who left a lasting stamp on L.A.

— LARB Editorial

Diet Coke and a Game of Chess: The Radical Work of Eve Babitz and Joan Didion
Nikki Darling pays homage to two women authors forever associated with Los Angeles.
Nikki DarlingDec 28, 2021
- Memoir & Essay
On Joan Didion and Being Serious
Sophia Stewart reflects on Didion’s legacy as a serious writer and a style icon.
Sophia StewartMar 13, 2021
- Memoir & Essay
Lost and Found: Reading Joan Didion in California
Scott Bradfield reviews the Library of America edition of Joan Didion’s early novels and essays.
Scott BradfieldJan 1, 2020
- Fiction
- Memoir & Essay
With Love and Squalor: On Lili Anolik’s “Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.”
Lauren Sarazen praises “Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.” by Lili Anolik.
Lauren SarazenJan 14, 2019
- Biography & Autobiography
My Favorite Year: In Los Angeles with Eve Babitz in 1971
Dan Wakefield recalls his favorite year, spent with Eve Babitz in her city.
Dan WakefieldNov 28, 2018
- Memoir & Essay
- Nonfiction
Eve Babitz’s Expensive Regrets
In “Black Swans,” Eve Babitz probes the causes and consequences of why the ’60s and ’70s were so debauched.
Lauren SarazenMay 2, 2018
- Fiction
Dreaming Jacaranda
If her early books cemented Eve Babitz’s image as the Edie Sedgwick of 1960s L.A., then “Sex and Rage” was an attempt to examine her own celebrity.
Liska JacobsJun 19, 2017
- Fiction
The Glamour Machine: Eve Babitz’s Los Angeles
“Slow Days, Fast Company” consistently reveals Babitz’s fascination with America, which she considered a place apart from Los Angeles.
Kim FayJun 19, 2017
- Fiction
Forgotten Accounts: Didion’s “South and West”
Didion's latest "South and West": irredeemably past, and yet speaking to the current impasse.
Colin DickeyFeb 19, 2017
- Cultural Studies
- Memoir & Essay
Saint Joan
"Much of Didion's writing about LA reads not as accurate description of the city but as penance for her great sin of leaving New York."
Colin DickeyAug 23, 2015
- Biography & Autobiography
Notes on a Native Daughter: Joan Didion at 80
Because Tom Wolfe and because James Baldwin and Hunter S. Thompson and Michael Herr, but because Didion most of all, an American essay today without the sudden and revelatory personal aside is hardly an American essay at all.
Emmett RensinDec 17, 2014
- Fiction
- Memoir & Essay
Staring Clear-Eyed at the Culture: Joan Didion and the Postwar Deluge
On her hunger for both the rainbow and the rainbow’s end.
Matthew Brandon WolfsonOct 11, 2013
Joan Didion, One Week after 9/11
Didion, on the first plane out of New York after 9/11
Jon WienerSep 11, 2013
L.A. Woman
What truly sets Babitz apart from L.A. writers like Joan Didion or Nathanael West is that a part of her still buys the Hollywood fantasy.
Steffie NelsonDec 18, 2011
Paperback Writers: Joan Didion
Didion is so afraid of her own depths of feeling she can’t avoid revealing them. That’s her contradiction, her fascination.
Oct 29, 2011
Having, or Making, or Thinking About Making a Drink
Reading Didion’s prose has always been an aural experience as much as a literary one, as much about rhythm and intonation.
Meghan DaumOct 28, 2011
Where the Morning Went
This is autobiography at its most fragmented.
Oct 26, 2011
The Baby
Didion circles the images of her past like a wary woman who has found a basket lodged in the reeds that contains a sleeping infant.
Oct 25, 2011
Positions of Privilege
Joan Didion is, as we know, a cool customer.
Oct 24, 2011