Joan Didion's essay "Goodbye to All That" is a detailed piece about her experiences in New York city. The story begins with her arrival in New York and continues through almost a decade of her life, stopping ever so briefly to cover major changes in her life and personality. During these stages of her young life she brings to life New York through its place, myth, social landscape and her very own state of mind; and shows the negative effects too much of a good thing can have on one person.
When Didion arrived from Sacramento she was not prepared for the completely different atmosphere of New York City. Everything about it was different from her home, she goes on to say "And knew that I had come out of the west and reached the mirage" (Didion 228). Didion said she loved New York, everything about it was "exotic", she loved the summer rains which fell there but not on her home in Sacramento. She was still very young though, thinking possibly for months that the Triborough Bridge was the Brooklyn Bridge, even though they look nothing alike.
As Didion aged, her love of the city and its surroundings did not diminish. Then came her first springs where "both seemed one and the same, filled with wonder and awe," (Didion 228). Didion continues by recalling a spring day on a street corner, where the sights, sounds, and smells of New York would one day cost something, all of this made her feel like more of a stranger to the city. Even after eight years in New York she still liked being there. She "Liked the bleak branches above Washington Square.the morning chromatic flatness of Second Avenue, the fire escapes and the grilled storefronts peculiar and empty in their perspective," (Didion 234). She begins to love the city in another way than she previously did, it was the quite places she loved where she could be alone, and no one needed to know what she was doing or where she was at.