Word: auchinclosses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Author Louis Auchincloss has produced some 30 books of fiction, an impressive amount in anyone's case, but even more so for a Wall Street lawyer, recently retired, who writes in his spare time. This productivity has been devoted primarily to variations on a central theme: the manners and mores of well-to- do New Yorkers, not restricted to the fabled 400 of old Manhattan society but not much exceeding a few thousand either. There are those who think this subject was pretty well exhausted by the time Henry James and Edith Wharton got through with it. Others argue that...
...Auchincloss gently mocks such pretensions, but he takes seriously those people who try to live by the rules. Times may change; strictures remain for the fortunate few. No Friend Like a New Friend is set in the early 1960s. Frances Hamill, widow of an eminent lawyer, banker and adviser to Presidents, finds herself at a dinner party seated next to Manners Mabon, a short, fat, charming bachelor with no visible means of support. Before long, the matron and the dilettante are seen together constantly at art galleries and museums. People begin to talk, and Frances receives a painful reproof from...
...wife walked into the study. She wore a long black strapless dress. She had been having coffee downstairs with Writer Louis Auchincloss, who was sleeping overnight at the mansion. Cuomo immediately jumped out of his chair and began hugging her, kidding in a deadpan voice that she has never even read his diaries. For a moment she looked flustered that he said it openly. A vibrant and attractive woman with shiny eyes and a slim figure, she is less intense than her husband and handles him easily. Cuomo said it was impossible for anyone to understand him without accounting...
...clients, however, Justine takes action. She does not scream, shout or cry, this woman of Roman virtue; that would send him flying. Instead she talks to the other husband; they agree not only to offer their errant spouses their freedom, but to give them allowances as well (in Auchincloss's world it is often the women who have the money). "Our job," says Justine, "is to strip their fantasy of its glamour. The first thing to remove is its illegality. They must feel free to marry." Her subtle plan works, of course: the family remains intact, at least...
Perhaps. But this sporadically entertaining example reads more like an outline for a novel than a novel itself. Auchincloss may know better than any other practicing writer that rarefied world of old New York money, but he also knows less than many others how to write a vivid story. The trouble is that he tells enough about his subject to make it interesting, but not enough to make it the stuff of memory or dreams. -By Gerald Clarke