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Didion and Babitz
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Narrated by:
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Lili Anolik
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Emma Roberts
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By:
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Lili Anolik
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Air Mail, Harper’s Bazaar, The Washington Post, and more!
Joan Didion is revealed at last in this “vivid, engrossing” (Vogue), and outrageously provocative dual biography “that reads like a propulsive novel” (Oprah Daily) revealing the mutual attractions—and antagonisms—of Didion and her fellow literary titan, Eve Babitz.
Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan? —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972
Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin, and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside, a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies and centered on a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood.
7406 Franklin Avenue, a combination salon-hotbed-living end where writers and artists mixed with movie stars, rock ‘n’ rollers, and drug trash. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American writer: Joan Didion, a mystery behind her dark glasses and cool expression; an enigma inside her storied marriage to John Gregory Dunne, their union as tortured as it was enduring. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the breaking and then the remaking—and thus the true making—of another great American writer: Eve Babitz, goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky, nude of Marcel Duchamp, consort of Jim Morrison (among many, many others), a woman who burned so hot she finally almost burned herself alive. Didion and Babitz formed a complicated alliance, a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity.
Didion, in spite of her confessional style, is so little known or understood. She’s remained opaque, elusive. Until now.
With deftness and skill, journalist Lili Anolik uses Babitz, Babitz’s brilliance of observation, Babitz’s incisive intelligence, and, most of all, Babitz’s diary-like letters—letters found in those sealed boxes, letters so intimate you don’t read them so much as breathe them—as the key to unlocking Didion. And “what the book makes clear is that Didion and Babitz were more alike than either would have liked to admit” (Time).
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Lili Anolik (P)2024 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.
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Seriously, that was the ending?
- By alicia in athens on 02-13-25
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Master of Salt & Bones
- By: Keri Lake
- Narrated by: Stefanie Kay, Ryan West
- Length: 17 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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When I was a little girl, I dreamed a handsome knight would come and rescue me from my wretched mother. He'd ride up on his white steed and break the curse I've been fated to carry since the day I was born. Funny how things changed over time, how the fairytale twisted into something far more crooked—and darker—than I ever imagined. In reality, my knight is scarred and broken, living alone in a castle of bones that overlooks the sea. He isn’t searching for me. He never was.
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5 STARS
- By AudioObsessed on 03-12-23
By: Keri Lake
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Fahrenheit 451
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: Tim Robbins
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."
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Wish I Hadn't Cliff Noted This in High School
- By Joel on 03-27-17
By: Ray Bradbury
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Mary Jane
- By: Amy Herzog
- Narrated by: Rachel McAdams, April Matthis, Brenda Wehle, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 16 mins
- Original Recording
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Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams stars in Mary Jane, a poignant and intimate drama following a single mother’s journey caring for her chronically ill young son. Set in New York City, the play unfolds in two parts—Mary Jane's small Queens apartment and a pediatric hospital. With unflinching honesty and unexpected humor, we witness Mary Jane's tireless devotion, her interactions with medical professionals, and her struggle to maintain her sense of self.
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Amazing performance
- By Andrew Reynolds on 12-28-24
By: Amy Herzog
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The Grandmother
- By: Jane E. James
- Narrated by: Anna Cordell, Max Dinnen
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.
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Not too outlandish
- By Jackie H on 12-14-24
By: Jane E. James
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Brain Damage
- By: Freida McFadden
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.
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Who Else Laughed, Cried, and Shuddered?
- By Jennifer Chichester on 09-16-22
By: Freida McFadden
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Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
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Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Slayers: A Buffyverse Story
- By: Christopher Golden, Amber Benson
- Narrated by: Amber Benson, Charisma Carpenter, James Charles Leary, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Original Recording
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Original cast members from the beloved TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, reunite for an all-new adventure about connections that never die—even if you bury them. A decade has passed since the epic final battle that concluded Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV). The game-changing spell that gave power to all potential Slayers persists. With new Slayers constantly emerging, things are looking grim for the bad guys.
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A dream come true
- By Anonymous User on 10-12-23
By: Christopher Golden, and others
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He Who Fights with Monsters 2
- A LitRPG Adventure (He Who Fights with Monsters, Book 2)
- By: Shirtaloon, Travis Deverell
- Narrated by: Heath Miller
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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But Jason Asano is settling into his new life. Now, a contest draws young elites to the city of Greenstone to compete for a grand prize. Jason must gather a band of companions if he is to stand a chance against the best the world has to offer. While the young adventurers are caught up in competition, the city leaders deal with revelations of betrayal as a vast and terrible enemy is revealed. Although Jason seems uninvolved, he has unknowingly crossed the enemy’s path before.
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Contrary to common reviews
- By Karen on 05-21-21
By: Shirtaloon, and others
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Hollywood's Eve
- Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.
- By: Lili Anolik
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Los Angeles in the 1960s and '70s was the pop cultural capital of the world - a movie factory, a music factory, a dream factory. Eve Babitz was the ultimate factory girl, a pure product of LA. The goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High, Babitz posed in 1963, at age 20, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was naked; he was not. The photograph, cheesecake with a Dadaist twist, made her an instant icon of art and sex. Babitz spent the rest of the decade rocking and rolling on the Sunset Strip, honing her notoriety.
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Tedious
- By Kim on 01-11-20
By: Lili Anolik
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Eve's Hollywood
- By: Eve Babitz
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Journalist, party girl, bookworm, artist, muse: By the time she'd hit 30, Eve Babitz had played all of these roles. She was immortalized as the nude beauty facing down Duchamp and as one of Ed Ruscha's Five 1965 Girlfriends, and Babitz's first book showed her to be a razor-sharp writer with tales of her own. Eve's Hollywood is an album of vivid snapshots of Southern California's haute bohemians, of outrageously beautiful high school ingenues and enviably tattooed Chicanas, of rock stars sleeping it off at the Chateau Marmont.
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A fun read!
- By Ryan Stanley on 09-11-18
By: Eve Babitz
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Slow Days, Fast Company
- The World, The Flesh, and L.A.
- By: Eve Babitz
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Eve Babitz captured the voluptuous quality of LA in the 1960s in a wildly original, totally unique voice. These stories are time capsule gems, as poignant and startling today as they were when published in the early 1970s. Eve Babitz is not well known today, but she should be. Her firsthand experiences in the LA cultural scene, translated into haunting fiction, are an unforgettable glimpse at a lost world and a magical time.
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obsessed with Eve
- By Debbie L. Smith on 06-25-20
By: Eve Babitz
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Hollywood's Eve
- Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.
- By: Lili Anolik
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High, Eve Babitz posed in 1963, at age 20, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was naked; he was not. The photograph made her an instant icon of art and sex. Babitz spent the rest of the decade rocking and rolling on the Sunset Strip, honing her notoriety. There were the album covers she designed: for Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds, to name but a few. There were the men she seduced: Jim Morrison, Ed Ruscha, Harrison Ford, to name but a very few.
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Really bad book
- By jlmillsaps on 04-20-20
By: Lili Anolik
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L.A. Woman
- By: Eve Babitz
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
L.A. Woman is quintessential Babitz, the story of Sophie, a 20-something blonde Jim Morrison groupie gliding through a golden existence in L.A.; and Lola, a German immigrant who settles in Hollywood in the '20s to drive Pierce Arrows recklessly down Sunset Boulevard and who knows that Maybelline mascara cakes and that Rudolph Valentino is the essence of life. Sophie and Lola, like the many other women who move in and out of this electric saga, know that while L.A. is constantly changing, it is essentially eternal.
By: Eve Babitz
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Dark Rooms
- A Novel
- By: Lili Anolik
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only 16. The crime is solved, and quickly--a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession--but memory and instinct won't allow Nica's older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed.
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Dark and enthralling
- By Christine B. Whelan on 04-29-15
By: Lili Anolik
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Hollywood's Eve
- Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.
- By: Lili Anolik
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Los Angeles in the 1960s and '70s was the pop cultural capital of the world - a movie factory, a music factory, a dream factory. Eve Babitz was the ultimate factory girl, a pure product of LA. The goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High, Babitz posed in 1963, at age 20, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was naked; he was not. The photograph, cheesecake with a Dadaist twist, made her an instant icon of art and sex. Babitz spent the rest of the decade rocking and rolling on the Sunset Strip, honing her notoriety.
-
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Tedious
- By Kim on 01-11-20
By: Lili Anolik
-
Eve's Hollywood
- By: Eve Babitz
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Journalist, party girl, bookworm, artist, muse: By the time she'd hit 30, Eve Babitz had played all of these roles. She was immortalized as the nude beauty facing down Duchamp and as one of Ed Ruscha's Five 1965 Girlfriends, and Babitz's first book showed her to be a razor-sharp writer with tales of her own. Eve's Hollywood is an album of vivid snapshots of Southern California's haute bohemians, of outrageously beautiful high school ingenues and enviably tattooed Chicanas, of rock stars sleeping it off at the Chateau Marmont.
-
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A fun read!
- By Ryan Stanley on 09-11-18
By: Eve Babitz
-
Slow Days, Fast Company
- The World, The Flesh, and L.A.
- By: Eve Babitz
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eve Babitz captured the voluptuous quality of LA in the 1960s in a wildly original, totally unique voice. These stories are time capsule gems, as poignant and startling today as they were when published in the early 1970s. Eve Babitz is not well known today, but she should be. Her firsthand experiences in the LA cultural scene, translated into haunting fiction, are an unforgettable glimpse at a lost world and a magical time.
-
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obsessed with Eve
- By Debbie L. Smith on 06-25-20
By: Eve Babitz
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Hollywood's Eve
- Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.
- By: Lili Anolik
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High, Eve Babitz posed in 1963, at age 20, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was naked; he was not. The photograph made her an instant icon of art and sex. Babitz spent the rest of the decade rocking and rolling on the Sunset Strip, honing her notoriety. There were the album covers she designed: for Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds, to name but a few. There were the men she seduced: Jim Morrison, Ed Ruscha, Harrison Ford, to name but a very few.
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Really bad book
- By jlmillsaps on 04-20-20
By: Lili Anolik
-
L.A. Woman
- By: Eve Babitz
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
L.A. Woman is quintessential Babitz, the story of Sophie, a 20-something blonde Jim Morrison groupie gliding through a golden existence in L.A.; and Lola, a German immigrant who settles in Hollywood in the '20s to drive Pierce Arrows recklessly down Sunset Boulevard and who knows that Maybelline mascara cakes and that Rudolph Valentino is the essence of life. Sophie and Lola, like the many other women who move in and out of this electric saga, know that while L.A. is constantly changing, it is essentially eternal.
By: Eve Babitz
-
Dark Rooms
- A Novel
- By: Lili Anolik
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only 16. The crime is solved, and quickly--a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession--but memory and instinct won't allow Nica's older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed.
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Dark and enthralling
- By Christine B. Whelan on 04-29-15
By: Lili Anolik
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Black Swans
- By: Eve Babitz
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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A collection of original short stories offers an intimate and dark portrait of life in the United States as they journey through California seeking answers to our changing world, dealing with such topics as jealousy, AIDS, sex, and Jim Morrison. A new reissue of Babitz’s collection of nine stories that look back on the 1980s and early 1990s - decades of dreams, drink, and glimpses of a changing world. Black Swans further celebrates the phenomenon of Eve Babitz, cementing her reputation as the voice of a generation.
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Torrid affairs @ Chateau Marmont
- By Ariana Sweany on 10-29-24
By: Eve Babitz
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The World According to Joan Didion
- By: Evelyn McDonnell
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion was a writer’s writer; not only a groundbreaking journalist, essayist, novelist and screenwriter, but a keen observer who honed her sights on life’s telling details. Her insights continue to influence creatives and admirers, encouraging them to become close observers of the world, unsentimental critics, and meticulous stylists. The World According to Joan Didion is a meditation on the people, places, and objects that propelled Didion’s prose and an invitation to journalists, storytellers, and life adventurers to “throw themselves into the convulsions of the world,” as she said.
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Woke, revisionist retelling of Didion's life and work.
- By c on 02-10-24
By: Evelyn McDonnell
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem
- Picador Modern Classics
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Maya Hawke
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures the unique time and place of Joan Didion’s focus, exploring subjects such as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up in California and the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.
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No, Maya, No
- By Anonymous User on 02-15-25
By: Joan Didion
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Blue Nights
- A Memoir
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.
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Twilights turn Long and Blue
- By Darwin8u on 01-02-17
By: Joan Didion
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Sex and Rage
- By: Eve Babitz
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The popular rediscovery of Eve Babitz continues with this very special reissue of her novel, originally published in 1979, about a dreamy young girl moving between the planets of Los Angeles and New York City. We first meet Jacaranda in Los Angeles. She's a beach bum, a part-time painter of surfboards, sun-kissed and beautiful. Jacaranda has an on-again, off-again relationship with a married man and glitters among the city's pretty creatures, blithely drinking pink ladies with any number of tycoons, unattached and unworried in the pleasurable mania of California.
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Adored all of the characters—even the insufferable ones
- By Sarah on 01-04-23
By: Eve Babitz
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I Used to Be Charming
- The Rest of Eve Babitz
- By: Eve Babitz, Sara Kramer - Editor, Molly Lambert - introduction
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Eve Babitz knew everyone, tried everything (at least once), and was never shy about sharing her thoughts on any subject, be it sex, weight loss, drug use, or her ambivalence toward New York City. From the 1970s through the 1990s, Babitz wrote on a wild variety of topics for some of the biggest publications around, from Esquire to Vogue to The New York Times Book Review. I Used to Be Charming brings together this nonfiction work.
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Only Thing Wrong - the Narrator
- By SusanV on 10-25-19
By: Eve Babitz, and others
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Joan Didion at the 92nd Street Y
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Joseph Lelyveld
- Length: 46 mins
- Original Recording
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Joyce Carol Oates called Joan Didion "an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time." Ms. Didion is the author of the novels Play It as It Lays and The Last Thing He Wanted, the essay collections Slouching Toward Bethlehem and The White Album, and the memoirs Where I Was From and The Year of Magical Thinking.
By: Joan Didion
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
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Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty
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The Friday Afternoon Club
- A Family Memoir
- By: Griffin Dunne
- Narrated by: Griffin Dunne
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At sixteen, he got kicked out of boarding school, ending his institutional education for good.
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Griffiths phrasing made it easy to listen and absorb.
- By Nancie Keay on 06-17-24
By: Griffin Dunne
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South and West
- From a Notebook
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Nathaniel Rich
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion has always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays and articles—and here is one such draft that traces a road trip she took with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. She interviews prominent local figures, describes motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, a visit with Walker Percy, a ladies' brunch at the Mississippi Broadcasters' Convention.
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"Notes" Are Not a Book
- By Carole T. on 03-11-17
By: Joan Didion
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The White Album
- Essays (FSG Classics)
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Susan Varon
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1979, Joan Didion's The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.
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You Feel Like You Are There
- By Kelly Jo on 07-15-24
By: Joan Didion
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Play It as It Lays
- A Novel (FSG Classics)
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the listener. Set in a place beyond good and evil—literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul—it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis.
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For every woman who’s been told to be the good wife
- By Otter Pop on 11-08-24
By: Joan Didion
What listeners say about Didion and Babitz
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- Alyssa
- 11-17-24
Fascinating and escapist listen
If you’re a fan of Lili Anolik’s previous work, you know to expect a deep dive and a great listen. If this is your first exposure to Anolik’s work, the writing style (more like a gossipy conversation between you and the author), may strike you as unconventional, but I recommend it — especially for this story. The whole book is a fascinating flashback to a particular era with every detail brought to life. Highly recommend!
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- beanielady5
- 01-03-25
Two Lonely Heroines
I loved how supportive but brutal this book was it felt like the embrace of one’s sister comforting yet unabridged condemnation for yr mistakes and where your going wrong in both rights for each character really gets you to think whose your cosmic soul mate you’d never claim
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- caraprice
- 11-21-24
I loved all the Hollywood references
While I thought this book was super interesting, especially with all the Hollywood references that I was familiar with, it was super hard to follow in the audible version. Many times I had no idea that Lily had changed people and their stories and I had to rewind this a lot to figure out what was going on. The information, however, was really great, and although it was annoying, not knowing where I was or who we were talking about, I really did enjoy it. I read Lily‘s book Hollywood’s Eve, on my Kindle and I could follow along perfectly with that. I think maybe reading this book would’ve been better for me. I did like all the attention to detail about Hollywood and all the surrounding players, and I would definitely read one of Lillys books again… Just read it rather than listen.
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- David P
- 01-02-25
Great Gossipy Fun!
Apparently, this is not for everyone. It's endlessly gossipy, more than a little snarky, and occasionally annoying. (Anolik is a super fun, lively writer, but sometimes her style--"What Eve Wanted:" and that kind of formulation--grated on me.) But what in life is perfect? I'm guessing Anolik's greatest offense to readers is challenging the notion that Didion was a frail, saintly martyr to ART. I'm a huge fan of many of Didion's books, but am always happy to hear the worst of someone. And is unstoppable ambition really so bad, as long as you're at a safe distance?
Overall, it's a blast to listen to. Great details of California, celebrity culture, and the ravages of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It races along, toggling between the lives of these two very different--yet linked--women and writers. Yes, there's more about Babitz than there is about Didion, but I finished the book feeling I'd learned more about the real Joan Didion than I'd learned from reading more "scholarly" examinations. Just go with it.
Here and elsewhere, Anolik seems to be harkening back to the good old days when literary figures made themselves relevant by producing good work and then showing up on TV talk shows (drunk, frequently) and trashing their contemporaries. Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Jacqueline Susann, and so on. We should all be grateful.
Honestly, a super enjoyable read/listen.
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- ODG
- 01-26-25
Fascinating
Read or listen to understand “Fascinating”. Draw your own conclusions. Be your own best critic.
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- Dorothy L. Lipman
- 11-16-24
I’m still Team Joan
Very interesting; had me googling all sorts of names. But I still love Joan Didion’s writing even if it is contrived. Will need to find some Eve to read. I am also Team Virginia Woolf -
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2 people found this helpful
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- MNN
- 12-04-24
Thrilling
There’s an audio clip (no spoilers) that really ties this story together, that solidifies all the third party insight, it’s frankly, and literally thrilling.
It plays a little less like your traditional audiobook, more elevated, similar to a podcast at times. The author (Lili Anolik) reading her own words, and Emma Roberts voicing Eve’s letters—takes you there.
Enjoy!
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-10-25
Lots of conclusions the author came to were quite a logical stretch
Did this book’s thesis make any sense to me? Absolutely not. Did I enjoy it? Resounding yes
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- Susan Tschudi
- 01-05-25
Not much Didion here, folks.
Seems to me the author has a keen interest in Eve Babitz and perhaps adding Joan Didion to the title was purposeful for pulling more readers in but Didion’s presence in this book seems like an afterthought.
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-10-24
A hatchet job on Didion
This book is intriguing literary gossip during its best moments. At its worse, the author lets shitty men speak over a dead woman and claim her fame/genius as their own.
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