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Joan Didion - "Goodbye to All That"

Joan Didion - "Goodbye to All That"
Joan Didion is not a humor essayist, although her works do offer instances of subtle, pointed humor. Among her finest works is "Goodbye to All That," an essay on loving, and then leaving, New York City.
When I first saw New York I was twenty, and it was summertime, and I got off a DC-7 at the old Idlewild temporary terminal in a new dress which had seemed very smart in Sacramento but seemed less smart already, even in the old Idlewild temporary terminal, and the warm air smelled of mildew and some instinct, programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever read about New York, informed me that it would never be quite the same again. In fact it never was.
For the rest of the essay, go HERE! [Photo via]
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