Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York
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ISBN: 1580054943 / Publisher: Seal Press, October 2013
Editor Botton, a published journalist and New York expatriate herself, gathers 27 other writers (all female) to relate the joys and sorrows of life in the Big Apple, what it means to leave the city, and what it means to return. Well-known authors, such as Cheryl Strayed, Dani Shapiro, and Ann Hood, are joined by emerging writers including Chloe Caldwell, Valerie Eagle, and Eva Tenuto. They describe financial and emotional toll the city takes, along with its rewards, looking especially at the city's literary life. The title refers to Joan Didion's classic 1963 essay on leaving New York. Annotation ©2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
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From Roxane Gay to Cheryl Strayed, 28 groundbreaking writers share their visceral, heart-bending stories about the everlasting magic-and unavoidable misery-of living in New York City In 1967, Joan Didion wrote an essay called Goodbye to All That, a work of such candid and penetrating prose that it soon became the gold standard for personal essays. Like no other story before it, Didion's tale of loving and leaving New York captured the mesmerizing allure Manhattan has always had for writers, poets, and wandering spirits.In this captivating collection, 28 writers take up Didion's literary legacy by sharing their own New York stories. Their essays often begin as love stories do, with the passion of something newly discovered-the crush of subway crowds, the streets filled with manic energy, and the certainty that this is the only place on Earth where one can become exactly who she is meant to be.They also share the grief that comes when the metropolis loses its magic and the pressures of New York's frenetic life wear thin on even the most fervent dwellers. As friends move away, rents soar, and love-still- remains just out of reach, each writer's goodbye to New York is singular and universal, like New York itself.With Cheryl Strayed, Dani Shapiro, Emma Straub, Ann Hood, and more.
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