I have been on a Louis Auchincloss run, and find his novels fascinating and gripping reading in this time of extreme inequality. I had first read what was Auchincloss' last novel, "Last of the Old Guard," from ten years ago, and found it brilliant in its portrayal of the rise of a now old style law firm. I highly recommend it to every lawyer who has any interest in reading any novel.
Then, recently, I came across quite a few Auchincloss novels in various NM used bookstores. It seems strange to me to have found them here in New Mexico of all places, since the locus of the Auchincloss novels is almost always New York, particularly Manhattan or Long Island, and sometimes Newport, RI. Anyway, I read through--okay, devoured--"A Portrait in Brownstone," and then jumped into "A World of Profit," which I also found powerful, but darker than "Brownstone." That latter novel concerns strivers, particularly Jews, who had "invaded" the WASP NY Old Guard. And please do not assume Auchincloss was anti-Semitic, as he is, in fact, far from it. Right now, I am almost through "A Pursuit of the Prodigal," which is another lawyer-based novel and, man, it is awesome, and again has a Jewish lawyer interloper who, this time, is a less central character. Auchincloss' most famous novel, in his time, "The Rector of Justin," is expected to be next on the way...
For me, personally, Auchincloss proves if one is practicing transactional law, one may write more consistently and deeply. As a trial lawyer, I find it difficult to do more than write these sorts of drive-by's in my blog or on social media (I wrote my one and only novel while serving as a general counsel for two different start ups) as it is not necessary in a blog or social media to have to write something that is sustained. Even this weekend, I find myself worrying about cases I am currently handling, and upcoming appearances in court and in deposition. I also found it amusing when I read of Auchincloss' ability to write portions of his novels while his children were playing around him. That I could not ever do. I was always with our children or not with them at all, as I think they would attest.
As I not so humbly consider myself an acolyte (in terms of a follower) of the late Gore Vidal, I am struck I did not read Auchincloss sooner, considering how much Vidal admired Auchincloss' writings and Auchincloss as a person. What I admire about Auchincloss' works is his lens has a strong sociological bent, and not merely psychological in that Henry James manner, meaning it doesn't take Auchincloss a page to describe a woman putting on make-up in front of her bedroom mirror. I have never found James to my liking, though one day that could change, I suppose. Auchincloss' prose style is post-Sinclair Lewis, meaning it is more "American" and therefore fast-paced in the way Lewis largely pioneered. The writing is sparse in style, as well, but remains elegant and thoughtful. Auchincloss is still very psychological in terms of character studies, which makes him more of American version of Somerset Maugham than even Auchincloss' beloved Edith Wharton. Yet, Auchincloss manages to slow down sufficiently to describe what people physically look like, how they dress and what they eat, and the furniture and artwork in their homes. Auchincloss also has a great ear for dialogue which he combines with his wry sociological observations and brilliant understanding of the practice of law in his lawyer oriented novels; much as Maugham's training as a medical doctor continued to influence his perspective in his novels. What Vidal admired about Auchincloss and I, too, is Auchincloss novels show money as a character in a novel. It is there hovering and inhabiting people, and it a factor in how people treat each other.
For those who believe sociologically-tinged novela of manners of late 19th through mid 20th Century New York have little to offer us in an increasingly diverse and highly wired world, I beg to differ. We are currently in the throes of a vast and deep inequality, exacerbated by the decline of federal and abolition of state estate taxes, which taxes were originally championed by Theodore Roosevelt and Andrew Carnegie over a century ago. If the trends of the past nearly forty years are not politically reversed, we will continue to produce fiefdoms of a type that any enterprising young person outside the top 1% bubble would do well to learn how to navigate though by reading a few Auchincloss novels. It is why I say to The Daughter I find Jane Austen novels have more "bite" than perhaps they did in mid-20th Century America, when worries about finding someone with enough money to stay out of the poorhouse seemed outdated and quaint. Today, young people think about someone who has money in a way that is more of a life raft than in my younger days. Just start with the first line from Austen's iconic Pride and Prejudice and think about how young people view the world facing them today: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."*
I am glad I have come to Auchincloss, but again am sad I missed him when he was walking among us.
* There is of course something Austen and Auchincloss do not dwell on, though they subtlety recognize in the background, which is settler-colonialism and imperialism. This is why the late Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism is such an important sociological analysis of how our cultural cues and myths spring from colonial and imperial assumptions which form the social construct that is our lives in the United States and other first-modern world societies. Said, for example, explained how Austen was aware of British slave trade activities in the Caribbean in her lesser known novel, Northanger Abbey. As we, in 2018, search for meaning in an increasingly stratified economic trend, this recent book, published this year, also reveals a "radical" side to Jane Austen that may have seemed a stretch to readers in, say, 1968, which it no longer seems now. In fact, the recent book's title, about the "secret" radicalism of Austen, shows what we would have seen as a stretch fifty years ago is now akin to a hidden treasure, once lost and suddenly found. I also should say a word about Auchincloss' feminism. He writes his women characters with tenderness and empathy as they navigate though societal strictures that were so prevalent and pervasive even in upper class contexts in the era in which he writes and was writing. This likely springs from the same sources as his adoration for Wharton and his insightful work on women novelists. In this, Auchincloss reminds me again of Maugham, as a male writer who writes women characters as human beings first and foremost, not a different species.
