number one

Didion’s initial attraction to the city is that of fairy tale fascination- she sees New York as an almost permanent retreat where anything is available and possible. It is in this constant state of limbo that she seems to lose track of time and experiences things, as she mentions, like a child in an amusement park. However, her first pull, for all that it lasts a remarkably long time, isn’t grounded in reality. Like a first crush, she romanticizes the city to a point where she later finds she doesn’t want to live in the every day, and the mundane. It is not the gritty nuances of the city that she loves, but the glamour and the projection of something larger than life. She grows bored of the places she knows so intimately, and avoids them, feeling both confusion and unease at the gradual disillusionment. New York had never truly been her home; she had been a permanent visitor. Her move signaled the next stage in her life where she was ready to find a place to settle down.
The role that New York plays is both more or less unique. On one hand, that type of pull and retreat could have occurred in any other number of large and famous cities. But as Didion mentions, New York had a special meaning to her because she came from the West. New York was a completely different environment, simultaneously well known through legend and completely foreign in her personal experience. So while this story could have happened in any city, certain aspects of it happened here by virtue of the connection she had from hearing about it as a girl in the West. Even if this had happened in London or Paris, there is no guarantee she would have felt the same pull, and therefore had the same retreat.