Two indigent romantics--a quixotic antihero and a perpetual damsel in distress--come to this country's most unforgiving urban landscape to seize the American Dream. As the stoic symbols of New York dispassionately follow Greg and Erica through the abyss, the contrast of "have" and "have not," of "passion" versus "plaything" becomes glaringly and unsettlingly apparent: sex trysts, piles of liquor bottles, slum lords, cult-like corporations, monies promised and stolen. Inspired by a long line of novels, from Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer' to Hubert Selby Junior's Last Exit to Brooklyn, ' THIS GILDED AGE casts a glaring light on the principles of America, today. THIS GILDED AGE is ultimately a poetic, twisted tale of one generation's vain desire to define itself in this empty space where once humanity's heart did beat.