The America of Theodore Dreiser was a tragedy, not far removed from the West Egg home of Gatsby In the ring, in one corner was Jack Dempsey, but other than the heavyweight champ the ring was empty
We are all ghosts, we are all fiction And I will never be a part of it In a nation of characters of every sort what vision can we have To better carry on?
The America of Holden Caulfield was a phony, and Sal Paradise wasn’t only fleeing acrimony The rebel never found his cause and the Lost Generation is still lost
We are prisoners, we are all children And I can never get away from it In a nation of stereotype and phenotype and look-alikes we’re lost There’s nothing left to say