A room of one's own.(THE STRAGGLER)(designing a study away from the family)(Column)

Our social commentators anguish over the Demographic Crisis of the West; our economic ones, over the relentless--and, they tell us, irreversible--rise in the price of oil. I must say, both concerns seem misplaced when, walking my dog, I pass the six-bedroom, four-bathroom, three-car-garaged McMansions rising to the sky from every vacant lot around here. These middle-American palaces of Versailles (or, depending on your age, temperament, and mood, Gormenghasts) seem designed for people who have several children and are blithe about the cost of home heating and air conditioning. You could in fact lose half a dozen children in one of these places, not seeing them from one week's end to the next, being left alone to toil away from dawn to dusk at earning enough money to meet the stupendous bills coming in from the fuel-oil supplier and property-tax assessor.

McMansions are, in any ...