Our story so far: Neal Pollack's son Elijah and Josh Stein's son Mordecai have enrolled at N.Y.U., where they have begun learning about poor people. It is the year 2025.

Elijah and I decided to room together at the Dov Charney Washington Square Studiodrome, the new N.Y.U. dorm built where there used to be a park or something. No one understands me like him or him like me. Also, we get a discount on housing costs because the construction is crazy, which is a good thing since we need all the help we can get. My dad Josh and Uncle Neal say that since they became empty-nesters, the writing assignments have slowed to a trickle. And so I must contend with the clamor of jackhammers and the conversations of the rough-necked construction workers. Elijah counsels that one must needs be patient with the proletariat. Though they lack taste, he says, they do have souls. But frankly I find their patois poisonous. How am I to read Baudelaire's divine verse against a background of coarse and vulgar words?