I finished The Age of Innocence and decided to keep reading as much Wharton as I could, and after awhile, I began to understand what was truly wonderful and great about her work. I realized that when Edith Wharton wrote about New York, she was writing about the New York that she once loved, a New York that she saw vanish as she grew older.

[…]

Wharton’s nostalgia was primarily aesthetic.

Today, when I walk through the neighborhood where young Edith Wharton lived as a child, when I retrace the pathways that gave her a first-hand look at the world that she would eventually commit to paper, I still can’t quite find her exact footsteps. Instead, I stop into nearby Eataly to gaze into the meat case and buy fresh mozzarella. I sometimes take money out of the ATM a few feet away, and every summer find myself drawn to the Shake Shack across the street, inevitably waiting in line for a hot dog and beer to take to watch the US Open on the Madison Square Park big screen. I always take a moment to pause when I’m walking down Twenty-Third to look up and down and try to imagine what it looked like over one hundred fifty years ago. I try and see what Wharton saw; what she loved and what she despised. I try to see the way things were when she was young; the way things were changing as she grew, the way she wanted things to look, and I try to reconcile that with what remains. When I do that, I have an easier time understanding Edith Wharton, her writing, and that little slice of New York I once tried so hard to avoid.