Didion and Babitz in LARB

Didion and Babitz in LARB

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. 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