EVERY DETAIL OF EQUAL PROPORTION
Didion + Babitz + attention to all parts
I have been reading Didion & Babitz, by Lili Anolik. The book is about the connection between the two women, how they were alike and different, with more charge between them than might have ever expected. I’m kind of like… duh! Two fab women are going to have that effect.
For context, I am a bigggg Babitz fan. I connect with her! I love her! Fun and smart and messy! I wrote about her when I first wrote about Los Angeles. There is also no way a person can not be impressed by Joan Didion. I read The Year of Magical Thinking in a ski lodge when I was seventeen — drinking hot chocolate, relishing the tears that pourrrrred down. It took three hot chocolates, and one sitting, to finish the book. Best to abbreviate crying when one is on spring break.
Every time I start to write the title of the book ‘Didion & Babitz’, I end up writing ‘Didion v. Babitz’, which is either the book’s fault or society’s (or… I suppose… mine).
Anyway, in reading the work, I have been moved less by the details of difference in these writers and more by a quality of both of their work that feels important. Or maybe it’s a quality I just really enjoy. Either way, once I started noticing, I couldn’t stop and didn’t want to.
This thing that they share— I am going to describe it as:
==== Every detail is of equal proportion.====
Some examples, and then I’ll explain:
“It had not been an accident that the people with whom I had preferred to spend time with in high school had, on the whole, hung out in gas stations.” -Joan
(gas station is of equal proportion to the quality of people)
“One of my favorite things I ever did. Dali was at the St. Regis, and I took Frank Zappa with me. We drank Chartreuse and ate hash candy.” -Eve
(Dalí and Zappa’s meeting as proportional to the detail of Chartreuse) (also one of her favorite things?!).
Or, when Didion was covering the Patty Hearst trial, she wrote down what she ate on the plane, in the sky:
“Lunching Aloft on Beltsville Roast Turkey with Dressing and Giblet Sauce,” … “Stuffed Celery au Roquefort over the Rockies”.
(the place as proportional to elevation as proportional to the food)1
“I once saw her wear a lynx coat to a rock’n’roll concert, and it brought down the house.” -Eve
(lynx coat as proportional to house brought down).
For each, the detail of the material indicates the quality of the experience. Each part of the telling as equal to the other, which has an absurdity to it, of course. Because we think it’s more important that Zappa and Dalí met, than what they drank. And it’s more important that Joan covered the Hearst trials, than that she ate turkey between sessions. There’s this quality of each element of an experience being profound, the details treated just the same as the impact.
Not only do I think this style of writing is glamorous — I also think it’s weirdly zen. Sneaky! Ostentatious at first, so we’re distracted by the elements that indicate the most social power (brought down the house, the rock’n’roll) — but the brain still hums with the realization of the object itself (the lynx coat, perhaps its wearer). Each element mattering, offsetting the last. That it works with food and drink should be no surprise. Eve was famously, holistically ravenous and Joan, after all, was said to make a terrific parsley salad.
Not much to say, except that I like this quality and it I think it feels like real life. It also helps with memory and recall and humanizing what happens in realtime. So here are some details to look at, small parts of big houses that I look at and imagine about. To what might they be proportional?? That’s entirely up to you.
