Joan Didion Goodbye To All That Summary

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In both the short essay, “Goodbye to All That,” and the well-written memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion emphasizes New York City’s amusingly sentimental and lively nature and describes the activities and different auras she remembers from living there; these same activities and auras also cause Didion remarkable feelings of grief and nostalgia due to the fact that she is reminded her of her inability to appreciate New York, after moving back to a seemingly deathly Los Angeles, and the sudden deaths of her husband and daughter whom happens to go through a coma all within the same time frame. In “Goodbye to All That,” author Joan Didion illuminates New York City’s sentimental and lively nature by talking about spending more time in …show more content…

To Didion,“Imprecise expression was not just sloppy; it was harmful” (Daugherty, 443). This thorough and emotional expression throughout the text leaves the impression that all the memories she makes caused her nostalgia. For example, in the well-written essay “Goodbye to All That,” Didion mainly focuses on place and setting, particularly shedding some light on her experiences and feelings in both New York City and Los Angeles. She exposes the reader to the aspects of New York City that she misses, aspects which made her think twice about living in California afterwards. Specifically, things as small as specific smells, the foods, the random encounters with strange people, and the “young and fresh feeling” of everyday life in New York City, are what made her reminisce on her time there. Traces of different perfumes she smelled in New York brought her all the way back. Didion explains, “For a lot of the time I was in New York I used a perfume called Fleurs de Rocaille, and then L’Air du Temps, and now the slightest trace of either can short-circuit my connections for the rest of the day” (4). Even the mixture of spices which was used for boiling crabs in New York City stuck with her mind. Then, Didion gives a detailed description of the wild parties that took place on Saturday

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