Run, River
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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]
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.