According to the popular intelligence, the fundamental fact about real life is that it has probably ceased to exist. Not for everyone, obviously. But certainly for white, middle-class Americans: the people who went to college, or else want their kids to go there; the ones who subscribe to Time or Newsweek, and who have become popularly acquainted therefore with the news that the life they thought they were living is becoming extinct. For increasing numbers of people, the narrative of upward mobility has turned out to be somebody else's fairy tale: for the disenfranchised auto worker who made it half way through his career only to see the final half disappear overseas; for the working mother who ends up living back with the parents because one person's wages will not support herself and her children; for the info-service trainee who will never see the salary curve that sustained four generations of American dreaming. All these people suddenly find themselves