A review by inthearchives
Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik

1.5

Firstly, for anyone thinking of reading this because of the deliberate impression that it contains exchanges between Babitz and Didion, it does not. The sole correspondence is Babitz’s unsent ‘Woolf’ letter to Didion, which has been published elsewhere. There is no rediscovered epistolary material of Didion’s in this book.  

Initially, this seemed like a misguided attempt to protect Babitz from relative obscurity by “killing Joan,” which, as many others have pointed out, is tiresome. By the end of the book, with little evidence to support the so-called “amity to enmity” arc, it feels less like an effort to secure Babitz’s rightful position and more like the author finding a way to mythologise her own role in Babitz’s legacy.

Interesting, considering how much Didion’s supposed “climbing over corpses” for the sake of her own writing seems to offend the author. (McLennan’s Joan Didion and the Ethics of Memory offers an interesting perspective on Didion’s work in this regard.)

Overall, ephemeral work with far too much of the author’s interpretation (bordering on invention) to be of much use to the record.