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G. K. Chesterton may have been going too far when he said that coincidences are "spiritual puns," but two events of the past week seem to me to add up to something significant in the intellectual life of the United States.

First, there is the death of Susan Sontag, who can be said to have symbolized the post-1960s iteration of that elusive commodity, "the New York intellectual." It would be pointless for me to add to the mountain of commentary on Ms. Sontag's career that has already appeared, except to say this: whatever one thinks of that career, and even a nonadmirer like myself has to concede it had some genuine bright spots, it was clearly over a long time ago, and its exhaustion represented the exhaustion of a whole style of thought and being, and of the set of burning questions thought to go along with it. Just to read the exchange in the pages of The Nation about Sontag's "famous" 1982 Town Hall speech in which she "controversially" proclaimed "the utter villainy of the Communist system," is to be reminded of the incredible insularity and self-delusive provincialism of an intellectual milieu in which such a proclamation, in 1982, would count as anything more than the merest truism. It was just such stupefying insularity, in contrast to the growing vitality of intellectual life in Washington, that led Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb to take the hitherto unthinkable step in 1987 of leaving New York for Washington. They have never regretted it.

So Sontag's death, in a sense, marks the terminal punctuation mark of an era in New York's intellectual history that has been fading away for a long time. But it may also mark the beginning of a new one, or one that is already underway. Pair Sontag's death with another development of the past week, the hiring of Joseph Bottum of The Weekly Standard to serve as Editor of the outstanding New York-based journal First Things, and one has the sense that something fresh may be in the wind. In reversing the direction of Kristol/Himmelfarb's journey nearly two decades ago, Bottum's move is one hopeful sign of the reemergence of New York intellectual life, rising from the ashes under new management.

As recent as three or four years ago, it seemed that all the most important journals of opinion in America were published in Washington. (And the rise of the blogosphere has suggested to some utopians that the very idea of the great city as an intellectual center is obsolete.) But that is no longer true, as a glance at the pages of a stellar newcomer like City Journal will indicate. (Not to mention such lively venues as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Sun, the New Criterion, National Review, and, yes, the Nation and the New Yorker, all of which have a decided New York flavor and voice to them.) The single best piece of writing to appear in the past year about the current world situation, Norman Podhoretz's long article in the New York-based Commentary entitled "World War IV," is a piece that one could not imagine being produced in Washington---not because of a lack of talent or brains or imagination in that city, but because there is a certain combination of perspective, clarity, and forcefulness that seem to be the unique property of New York.

Which is to say that, for all of Washington's many strengths as an intellectual community, one that, because of its status as a national political center, is forced to take account of a genuinely diverse range of perspectives, there are certain crucial areas in which it is lacking, and perhaps always will be. Similarly, there is a great deal to be said for the solid sense of red-state America, and since I have chosen to live in it, I can be counted upon to sing its praises with enthusiasm.

But what neither Washington nor red-state America has been able to do is generate the kind of culture-shaping intellectual and artistic life that this country needs, every bit as much as it needs tax cuts, healthy marriages and families, efficient public services, strong churches, affordable health care, and good schools. That culture-generating function has, throughout history, always fallen to urban elites, and for better or worse, New York and Los Angeles remain the culture-formation centers of the United States, the capitals of our imaginations. A renewal of this nation's culture simply cannot occur if it bypasses them. Given that fact, perhaps one can hope that the coincidences of the past week are more than coincidences. It's up to you, New York.