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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Of all living American writers – Didion will be 81 in December – Joan Didion has been in the uppermost tier of those crying out for a truly great literary biography. Her own life has been crucial to ...

With Joan Didion's diaries recently in publication, the spotlight has never been more closely focused on the writer's inner life. A picture is worth a thousand words, and photos of Joan's New York ...

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 ...

In “Didion & Babitz,” author Lili Anolik opens with some advice: “Reader, Don’t be a baby.” It’s an apt warning for readers who might consider themselves Joan Didion and/or Eve Babitz aficionados.

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 ...