Joan Dideon’s ‘Goodbye To All That’

There has never been a story that I identify with so much as Joan Dideon’s short story ‘Goodbye To All That‘ from her collection of short stories ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’.

I’ve read hundreds or thousands of books, I don’t know, but none have been written for me like this story.  And I’ve gone years without picking it up because I was not happy enough to handle it’s weight and relevance.

Some excerpts:

…I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my  finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was

…It would be a long while because, quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean love in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again.

…and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later because I did not belong there, did not come from there but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs.

…I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.

Joan Dideon is worth every minute of your attention.

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