"Once New York City glowed all night from the lights of those cafeterias.  In any neighborhood you could find a cup of tea, a danish, and a conversation of some nature.  

Now, instead of Dubrow's and Garfield's, instead of the Belmore, instead of the Automat on 14th street, instead of my old haunts on upper Broadway, there are Burger Kings.

 How can the soul linger and know the wonder of its own isolation in such places?




Only desolation encumbered by self-knowledge waits to embrace us now."

(The Final Opus of Leon Solomon, by Jerome Badanes, pp. 73-74.