Looking over the lush material landscape and the thin spiritual atmosphere of contemporary America, Reinhold Niebuhr called this “the age of sophisticated vulgarity.” That was several years ago, when the first crackles of what was later fanfared into a cultural explosion made his phrase seem an excess of gloom. Now, however, after we have seen so many of the knowledgeable enmeshed by patterns in which they neglect, adulterate, or destroy the best they are or know, Niebuhr's estimate does not appear so extreme. Various kinds and degrees of extremes are my concern here—specifically one strand in the pattern: the extremes that occur toward the end of an artistic movement, when it disintegrates, yet sweeps on in splinters to disable its adherents and opponents alike.