11/24/13, 6:54 PMThe Long Goodbye - NYTimes.com

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The Long Goodbye

Matthew Woodson

By ALEX WILLIAMSPublished: November 22, 2013 96 Comments

“New York was no mere city,” Joan Didion wrote in her landmark1967 essay, “Goodbye to All That,” explaining why she abandoned heradopted home of New York, seemingly for good, at the age of 29. “Itwas instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of alllove and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.”

Ms. Didion, who was originally fromCalifornia, did more than just capture,and explode, the enduring image ofthe young writer chucking it all tomake it in New York. She spawned anew literary cliché: the not-quite-so-young writer beating a hasty retreatfrom the city, but transforming thesurrender into a literary triumph via a“Goodbye to All That, Redux” essay.

The literature may be thin when it comes to “See ya,Chicago” or “Later, Los Angeles” odes, but ever since Ms.Didion set the standard 46 years ago, the “Goodbye NewYork” essay has become a de rigueur career move foraspiring belle-lettrists. It is a theme that has been exploredcontinuously over the years by the likes of Meghan Daum in

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11/24/13, 6:54 PMThe Long Goodbye - NYTimes.com

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Joan Didion wrote “Goodbye to AllThat,” about leaving New York, in1967, setting the stage for asuccession of writers, like AndrewSullivan.

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The New Yorker and Luc Sante in The New York Review ofBooks.

Lately, the “Goodbye” essay has found renewed life, as anew generation of writers works out its love-haterelationship with the city in public fashion. Recently,opinion-makers like Andrew Sullivan and David Byrnehave scribbled much-discussed New York-is-over essays;literary-minded Generation Y writers have bid not-so-fondfarewells to the city on blogs like Gawker and The Cut; anda dozen-plus writers, including Dani Shapiro and MaggieEstep, published elegies to their ambivalence toward NewYork in “Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving andLeaving New York,” an anthology published last month.

“If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, thesong goes,” Mr. Sullivan wrote in a Sunday Times ofLondon column last week, explaining his decision to fleeNew York after only a year and return to Washington. “Butwhy would anyone want to make it here? The humanbeings are stacked on top of one another in vast towers thatcreate dark, narrow caverns in between. Gridlocked trafficcompetes with every conceivable noise and everyimaginable variation on the theme of human rage andimpatience.”

New York, I can’t quit you. Or maybe I can.

On first glance, contemporary entries to the genre tend tofollow the same arc as Ms. Didion’s essay. Basically, it is a

classic femme (or homme) fatale story, with New York as siren, New York as lover-substitute, an eight-million-headed stand-in for those sexy bad-news types we all fall for,to our peril, when we are young.

“No man could compete, in my mind, with the lure of a summer night in GreenwichVillage,” writes Hope Edelman in “You Are Here,” her contribution to the anthology.

To Ann Friedman, whose essay “Why I’m Glad I Quit New York at Age 24” recently ran inthe New York magazine blog The Cut, New York is not just a guy, it’s that guy. “I’ve alwaysbeen partial to the friendly guy who doesn’t know how hot he really is (Chicago) or thesurprisingly intelligent, sexy stoner (Los Angeles),” Ms. Friedman wrote, “as opposed tothe dude who thinks he’s top of the list, king of the hill, A-number-one.”

The New York-you-broke-my-heart essay has become such a trope for young femalewriters that Jezebel recently asked, “Is Dumping New York City a ‘Girl Thing?’ ”

(Apparently not. Mr. Sullivan also invoked the romantic-love theme in a recent blog post,describing New York as his “mistress,” though he felt “married to Washington,” his onceand future home. And in a 2010 exit essay on The New York Times blog City Room,Christopher Solomon, who came from the Pacific Northwest, wrote: “Oh, I pursued you.We went to the opera, to plays, to gritty little restaurants in Queens. You — the city — werealways my date. But you never belonged to me. Eventually you, too, moved on, taking yourbuzzing neon promise of fame to the next newcomer.”)

By framing the relationship as a love affair, it makes the inevitable breakup with the

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11/24/13, 6:54 PMThe Long Goodbye - NYTimes.com

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A version of this article appears in print on November 24, 2013, on page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: TheLong Goodbye.

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literary capital seem less like a career failure than a coming to the senses after a youthfulinfatuation.

“In my early twenties, I felt that my life could be one big experiment, and in my mid-twenties I am coming to terms with the fact that no, my life is actually my life,” wroteChloe Caldwell in her anthology entry, “Leaving My Groovy Lifestyle.”

In putting it so, Ms. Caldwell echoed Ms. Didion’s description of how she rationalized themove that she and her husband made to Los Angeles (they returned to New York in the1980s): “I talk about how difficult it would be for us to ‘afford’ to live in New York rightnow, about how much ‘space’ we need. All I mean is that I was very young in New York,and that at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not that young anymore.”

For Ms. Didion, in other words, money was simply an excuse. The reality was, in therelatively cheap New York of the 1960s, even a Vogue junior staff member like her —making $70 a week — could secure a centrally located Manhattan apartment with a viewof, she thought, the Brooklyn Bridge (“It turned out the bridge was the Triborough,” shedryly amended) and pay for taxis to parties where she might see “new faces.” Sure, theearly days were tough — “some weeks I had to charge food at Bloomingdale’s gourmetshop in order to eat,” she wrote. But in general, she could afford to hang around longenough to determine when she had stayed “too long at the Fair.” In sum, she could affordto fall out of love with the city slowly.

Not so for the would-be Didions of today. In their New York, the nice apartments with thebridge views tend to go to the underwriters of bond issues, not to the writers of essays forliterary anthologies. The unaffordability of New York on a writer’s budget is a themerunning through several contemporary variations on the theme.

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READER PICKSALL

ama los angeles

Nov. 24, 2013 at 3:29 p.m. RECOMMENDED 1

grew up in queens, went to a suny school in new paltz and i left manhattan forlos angeles when i was 26. i am now 52 and while i get to "go home" a coupleof times a year - the rhythmic hustle of the subways, the split secondconnections made with strangers and the complicated scents that are a mix ofclean air, garbage stench and human perfumes, are the gentle pulls thatremind me i'll always be a new yorker. however, today i live in topangacanyon, a 10 minute drive down the mountain and another 10 minute ridewith the ocean on my passenger side, and i'm in santa monica where my workis. i fall asleep to the sirens of coyotes and wake up to the oddly pleasant alarmclock of roosters crowing. there's weather up here, nice people who care abouteach other and a view from my backyard that could pass for a tuscan valley.yes you can go home again, but i always am glad to return to topanga!

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It always has - and will be - one of the greatest loves and passions that shapedmy life. No matter where I have traveled - I have one home. A vignettehappening on every street corner; incredible learning and growth seeping in toevery pore, and stimulation that makes the world's greatest operas look timid.I realize my city won't always be faithful, or do what I need it to do (cheaper

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