Run, River

Run, River is the debut novel of Joan Didion, first published in 1963.[1]

Run, River
First edition
AuthorJoan Didion
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Summary

The novel is both a portrait of a marriage and a commentary on the history of California.[2] Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily Knight McClellan, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them (murder and betrayal) is suggested as an epilogue to the pioneer experience.[2]

Didion on Run, River

In her 2003 book of essays Where I Was From, Didion turned a critical eye on this novel, calling the novel's nostalgia ''pernicious''.[3] She recalled writing it as a homesick girl lately moved from California to New York, and judged it to be a work of false nostalgia, the construction of an idyllic myth of rural Californian life that she knew never to have existed.

Original title

In a 1978 interview, Didion said that she had intended the title to be Run River but that the English publisher, Jonathan Cape, inserted a comma; "but it wasn't of very much interest to me because I hated it both ways. The working title was In the Night Season", which her American publisher did not like.[4]

References
  1. "The essential Joan Didion: An L.A. Times reading list for newcomers and fans alike". Los Angeles Times. 2021-12-23. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  2. "Joan Didion's Early Novels of American Womanhood". The New Yorker. 2019-11-22. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  3. Mallon, Thomas (2003-09-28). "On Second Thought". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  4. Linda Lipnack Kuehl, "Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71," The Paris Review, Winter, 1978.
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