Run River

NY: Ivan Obolensky, Inc, 1963. First edition. With TLs from Didion from her East 75th Street apartment back to a friend in Sacramento, in which she muses on the unexpected difficulties of moving (particularly with regard to the unpacking of silver and her typewriter) and considers, wearily, the banal critical reception of her first book: "The general tenor of the reviews I've seen so far of my book seems to indicate that I am a very good writer with a very bad problem, which is that I ought to be (A) in psychoanalysis (B) in love (C) out finding God." The "Sis Kennedy" to whom she refers is likely childhood friend Nancy Kennedy, sister of former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who also makes an appearance, referred to in the letter as "Tony."

Didion's first book, written while she published articles mainly for Vogue and at the beginning of her relationship with future husband John Gregory Dunne, was indeed a commercial and critical disappointment, not quite the onramp to literary success that Didion and publisher Obolensky had imagined. Reviews noted the Southern Gothic tone to Didion's tale of a hops ranch and its resident family gone to seed; certainly it forecasts Didion's characteristic skepticism toward things generally being all right in the end. It has since proved itself as a testing ground for Didion, a place in which she worked out the better and the lesser parts of her prose. Bound in full teal cloth showing faint rubs to edges and corners, else an uncommonly fine, bright copy in an equally fine dust wrapper.