This is partly in response to the "Maybe?" post from below, as well as a continuation of a thread from class on Monday. I don't know about the east-west / modern-postmodern parralel regarding Matt and Nick, but I think it'ss quite useful for unpacking the differences between Nick and Klara. Both moved westward from New York (allegorically, from modernity to postmodernity), but the two have reacted to the shifts in very different ways. The seeds of this theme are planted early. During their first encounter after so long, Klara wonders if life didn't "take an unreal turn at some point;" and "becasue [she's] famous," but because "it's just unreal" (73), to which Nick responds in swiftly modern judgment: "I lived responsibly in the real.