No, New York isn't dead, exactly. It's just dull. The city has all the intellectual influence of Anchorage and the excitement of Sioux Falls. Broadway, the galleries, the dance troupes--the arts continue in New York, more or less of their own impetus. But for more than a hundred years, the city was also the intellectual capital of the nation, home of the public intellectuals. And it just isn't anymore.

Think of it this way: If you wanted to put new ideas into play, would you move to New York to do it? The New York Review of Books, Commentary, my own journal, First Things--they're in Manhattan. But that's for historical reasons, and few of their writers actually live there. It made sense to be in the city around 1959. But why bother now? New York is loud and dirty, the business costs are absurd, and, truth be told, there hasn't been a new idea, born of the city's shared culture, in more than a decade.