"A lot of people now—even people much younger than James Wolcott—dream of a lost moment when the opportunities were truly 'hidden like Easter eggs,' when the paths were not yet mapped and overrun. How can we be expected to create properly, the thinking goes, without the tools of past success? How can we write without the old serious publications, make movies without risk-taking Hollywood producers, live without cheap urban housing, discover art without the underground, make a career without the circulation-desk jobs?
"Kael's great achievement was to fight this way of thinking, to persuade her readers that work is always done with the machinery at hand."
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