In this classic essay, Didion describes moving to New York City from her native Sacramento at the age of twenty-one, and, as she freely admits, a somewhat naive twenty-one, her mind, "programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever heard about New York," with the typical feeling, at that age, that, "nothing like this...has ever happened to anyone before." Intending to stay for only six months, she falls in love with the city. As she says, "I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again."

This initial love led her to prolong her residency, since, "I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month." But as the next years roll past, and the "new faces" she encounters soon become familiar and that "extraordinary" event eludes her, the city eventually loses its charm. Thus, at the age of twenty-eight, she begins to understand that it is "distinctly possible to stay too long at the Fair."

During this last period of her stay, she loses her ability to relate to other people, often tuning out of conversations. She starts to become annoyed by the signs of wealth and consciously avoids certain areas of the city, among them the most symbolic, such as Time Square and the New York Public Library. Eventually she begins to cry spontaneously, for no reason, and finds herself unable to leave her apartment, classic symptoms of the depression against which she would wage a lifelong battle. Yet, during this dark period, Didion obliquely mentions that she had also gotten married. Possibly thinking a change might help, her husband, John Gregory Dunne, decides to take a six-month leave of absence from his job, and the couple move to Los Angeles.

As Didion summarizes her decision to move, "I was very young in New York, and...at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not that young anymore."