Joan Didion Biographer Is as Unsparing as She Was: “I’m Just Trying to See Her Plain” Lili Anolik, who’s unearthed Eve Babitz and exposed Donna Tartt, now strips the sentiment which has gathered ...

In a 1939 essay, the critic Philip Rahv argued that there have been two main types in American literature: the solemn and semi-clerical, which he associates with Henry James, and the exuberant, ...

“Most of us have a Joan Didion origin story, the article or book, or photograph or quote that first made us want to know more about this quiet oracle,” Evelyn McDonell begins. She mentions one of an ...

Joan Didion leans against her Corvette Stingray, a cigarette perched between her fingers. Her unsparing, unsmiling gaze seems to sear through the lens of photographer Julian Wasser’s camera, and one ...

Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Cover Art for “Didion & Babitz” owned by Scribner. Remember 2022’s “Blonde” and the controversy it ...

An entire generation of literary-minded women has not stopped telling itself stories influenced by master storyteller Joan Didion. The same, alas, cannot be said of Eve Babitz, a Hollywood bad girl ...

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times. Readers can decide when “Notes to John,” which shows the writer grappling with guilt and vulnerability, is published next week. By ...

Sunshine, palm trees, and traffic — Los Angeles is the set for America’s dream of itself as flirty and fun. That Hollywood’s sensibility has been felt on the page as well as the silver screen is owed ...

A revelatory new book is as penetrating and hardboiled about the late Joan Didion as she was about others. The writing icon’s acclaimed career was in key part defined by living in, working with and ...