The rich have no class

To wit: they've ruined Nantucket. If I had money, which I do not, I would very probably endeavor to "own" a "piece" of Nantucket. My long-term plan has always involved coastal New England; I was to see that -- at whatever cost -- a permanent green light be made operative somewhere at the end of a dock that was distant from, but just in sight of, the back of my property. There would be good times and great parties, and everyone would be invited.

That was my attitude in my younger years. But these days I no longer care about Nantucket -- even the best lot on the island has a vista with tasteless new homes, that cheap yuppie fakery which in the past decade have spoiled more than the last dusty nooks of historic America; they're part of something larger, and it's a blight on the world. It's too late for Nantucket, and for the nostalgic images of privileged old Nantucket and for the Nantuckets and Martha's Vineyards and Long Islands of literature and my youthful dreams -- no amount of proposed "education" or well-meant laws or blind denial will turn this new dreck into something good; no contractors build in the old ways, none of the old sturdy materials are available, and no space has dignity.

This age has long been skating in the twilight, now fast fading; but in the darkest hours between the gloaming and the dawn come the dreams, the visions, the drawing of new mythologies. And the answer: everything has to start over.