You’d be hard-pressed to find a person (well, maybe besides Ryan Murphy) who loves a feud more than I do. To quote Marie Kondo, “I love mess,” and said mess is all the more intriguing to me when it involves two extremely wry and fabulous West Coast writers.
Both Joan Didion (who worked for Vogue!) and Eve Babitz, the tragically glamorous literary-world frenemy she circles in Lili Anolik’s new book, Didion and Babitz (Scribner), are closely associated with California—Babitz for her iconic 1982 Jim Morrison groupie novel L.A. Woman, and Didion for, well, setting almost everything somewhere in the Golden State, including her 1970 novel Play It As It Lays—and over the years that I’ve lived here, I’ve longed to incorporate a little more of their heady glamour into my life.
Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be some tired screed about how there’s no literary scene in California. Anyone familiar with Didion, Babitz, or indeed Myriam Gurba, Paul Beatty, or Melissa Broder would be perfectly capable of arguing otherwise; and the corncupia of readings, book parties, and events hosted by Casual Encountersz and the always-sold-out Silver Lake Reading Club speak for themselves, as do haunts like Book Soup and Musso and Frank.
Still, I rarely make it to those mostly west-of-WeHo spots; living in East Hollywood, I spend most of my time blogging from bed, walking my dog around the Silver Lake Reservoir, ordering soup dumplings at the mall in Glendale, or trawling yard sales in Burbank (where all the chic older ladies with great vintage live). And, anyway, the part of me that wishes my life were a little more Babitz-esque has always longed to spend time at places like the Chateau Marmont, where I imagine that she, Didion, and Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, got up to all kinds of bad behavior Didion would elegantly avoid confirming if she were still with us today.
As fate would have it, however, on Tuesday Anolik threw a party for Didion and Babitz at the Chateau Marmont. There, City of Angels denizens including Emma Roberts, Nicole Richie, Elizabeth Olsen, and Da Vine Joy Randolph came together to read some of Didion and Babitz’s funny, gorgeously written, occasionally scathing letters for an audience that sipped Casamigos martinis and snacked on tiny grilled-cheese-sandwich triangles. (Babitz reducing Didion to a “sharp, accurate journalist” is especially brusing when recited aloud.)
While it’s not generally my policy to stray far from the open bar at a book event (or any event, really), curiosity got the better of me around 7 p.m. PST, when I made a right into the tiny, wood-paneled side bar off the Parlor to see what a properly mixed dirty martini at the Chateau tasted like. For the very normal price of $30, I found out—and it was as though the drink had been distilled by the god of L.A., Angelyne, herself. Then, by the time I’d lurched back into the main room to watch Gillian Jacobs and How Long Gone’s Jason Stewart mix with East Coast visitors including the New Yorker’s Naomi Fry, bow-tie-sporting waiters were handing out individual cartons of fries. If there’s a better, more Babitzian combination than a martini so dirty it’s pond-hued and a palmful of hot, perfectly salted frites, I have yet to find it.
Ultimately, my Los Angeles may look a lot closer to the one John Mulaney captured in his recent Netflix special Everybody’s in L.A. (“Los Feliz translates to ‘the happy ones,’ but it is, in fact, filled with very unhappy people”) than the madcap, always-partying house on Franklin Avenue that both Didion and Babitz passed through during their years in the city. But I’m grateful that the two women gave me an excuse to put together a ludicrous ‘fit featuring shoes I couldn’t really walk in, make my way to the Chateau Marmont for the very first time, and—most crucially—make semi-direct eye contact with Beverly D’Angelo.
