Joan Didion Goodbye To All That Analysis

Joan Didion’s 1967 essay, “Goodbye to All That,” is a memoir of her eight years in New York City, from her arrival as a naive 20-year-old to her departure as a disillusioned 28-year-old. In the final section of the essay, Didion reflects on the “lesson” she learned from her experience: “it is distinctly possible to remain too long at the Fair.” This statement is part of an extended metaphor that compares New York to a fair or a carnival, where everything is exciting and dazzling at first, but eventually becomes stale and disappointing. Didion uses this literary technique to communicate her feelings of disenchantment and detachment from the city that once enchanted and attached her.

Didion introduces the fair metaphor in the beginning of the essay, when she describes her first impression of New York as “a city that was entirely mine” (Didion 236). She recalls how she felt “in love with everything” (237), how she enjoyed the “sense of constant motion” (238), and how she indulged in the “romantic possibilities” (239) that the city offered.

She recounts how she packed her belongings, sold her furniture, gave away her books, and boarded a plane for California. She does not express any regret or nostalgia for leaving behind what was once her dream city. Instead, she expresses relief and liberation from escaping what had become her nightmare city. She compares herself to a visitor who has stayed too long at the fair: “I could not tell you when I began to understand that…it is distinctly possible to remain too long at the Fair…All I remember now is moving very fast; faster than I ever moved before; faster than anyone should ever move; faster than anyone should ever need to move again” (245). She concludes that she had learned her lesson: “That was the year…when I began making my own days out there on some coast where things were real enough without being entirely so clear-cut as they were supposed to be back East”