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Originally Posted by astrangerhere
I finished my re-read today. I was just as heartbroken by it as I was the first time I read it. I will wait for the discussion to get rolling before I post any quotes. I will say, however, I think it instructive to read an early essay of Didion's, "Goodbye to All That," that is essentially an elegy for her time in New York as a young woman. She processes that loss in much the same way. I won't post any links here, as I suspect that most of them are not legal.
I also don't want to spoil what happens beyond what has been yet said, but I will say that she left to conduct the book tour for this book two weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center.
It was turned into a one-woman play in 2007 starring Vanessa Redgrave and directed by David Hare. Cate Blanchett filled the role in Australia.
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Thank you for the additional information, astrangerhere! It appears that "Goodbye to All That" can be found in
Slouching Towards Bethlehem and also
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem is available in the Amazon Prime Lending Library for members for free and as a bonus the audiobook is only $1.99 and narrated by Diane Keaton.
It looks like a very interesting collection. From the Audible description:
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Universally acclaimed from the time it was first published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been admired for decades as a stylistic masterpiece. Academy Award-winning actress Diane Keaton (Annie Hall, The Family Stone) performs these classic essays, including the title piece, which will transport the listener back to a unique time and place: the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco during the neighborhood's heyday as a countercultural center.
This is Joan Didion's first work of nonfiction, offering an incisive look at the mood of 1960s America and providing an essential portrait of the Californian counterculture. She explores the influences of John Wayne and Howard Hughes, and offers ruminations on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room. Taking its title from W.B. Yeats' poem "The Second Coming", the essays in Slouching Towards Bethlehem all reflect, in one way or another, that "the center cannot hold."
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