This essay draws on Emmanuel Levinas's concept of the dwelling to understand how neoconservative emphases on family values impede ethical conduct in neoliberal America. Levinas's architectural understanding of egoism maps onto discourses that elevate the nuclear family to unimpeachable heights, and his notion of ethical responsibility provides a road map for rethinking social life along interdependent lines. To that end, this essay turns to Joseph O'Neill's novel Netherland to suggest that aesthetically mediated examples of family dysfunction can disclose ethical forms of sociality that move beyond the nuclear family.