We might think, for example, about

We might think, for example, about the way in which the search for “The City” structures the last part of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust. Tony Last’s ill-fated and unrealistic fondness for his traditional English estate (Hetton) becomes transformed here into a search for an imaginary place that embodies these same qualities: “He had a clear picture of it in his mind. It was Gothic in character, all vanes and pinnacles, gargoyles, battlements, groining and tracery, pavilions and terraces, a transfigured Hetton, pennons and banners floating on the sweet breeze, everything luminous and translucent.”