Civil Society

I was born in New York City, and I have lived in or around it for a good part of my life. Some neighborhoods, although altered nearly beyond recognition, are still charged for me with the emotions of past events—at least, during those moments when I pass through them.

For what seemed one hundred years, I paid rent to landlords for wildly differing lodgings in various sections of the city. I was always trying to find a way to get out of it during that time, a time when I imagined that...