“I realized with mild disappointment that charity could mean something quite different here: that it was not enough to give, you had to be seen to be giving. Hospitals bore the names of their donors in six-foot-high letters above the door. Balls were named after those who funded them. Even buses bore lists of names alongside their rear windows. Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Gopnik were known as generous benefactors because they were visible in society as being so.”
