Goodbye To All That - Essays About Leaving New York - Book

Stemming from Joan Didion's seminal essay Goodbye To All That, essays about leaving New York have become their own genre.

And now here is a whole book of them, Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York an anthology edited by Sari Botton, containing essays by 28 of New York's former, current, and returned writers, who rhapsodize about their love for the city, and lament or celebrate leaving.


 

And if you've never read Didion's essay you must, it set the standard for personal essay writing. You can find it in Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

Do not agree

From Joan Didion's Goodbye To All That, and essay which I love but see the fault of youth in, she writes "the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again." No not true, the guff of your first love will always be your biggest is garbage, and is only uttered by someone who hasn't loved much or settled down young.