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 First edition | |
| Author | Joan Didion |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Ivan Obolensky |
Publication date | 1963 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 264 |
| ISBN | 0-006218792 |
| OCLC | 312968389 |
Run River is the debut novel of Joan Didion, first published in 1963. [1]
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]
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.
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]