03 Dec 2010 01:51:14
"A Voice From Old New York" addresses his own youth among the city's richest and most connected residents with the same detached amusement and keen observations of his previous work.
His voice remains both charmingly and disarmingly familiar — but elegant and easy to read. The quick disdain that one expects from a writer steeped in and fascinated by wealth and privilege is certainly here, as when Auchincloss dismisses modern collegians with a wave across his keyboard: "It was a pity that none of my students in the three years I taught at NYU seemed to have any real conception of the beautiful language that was theirs."
And, for anyone who doubts that rich New Yorkers live and often see themselves as a breed apart, there's ample proof in this evocative volume. Auchincloss is clear and direct about high society's position outside the mainstream.
"In a way, we were privileged guests of New York; we knew no more of the West Side world of Leonard Bernstein's opera than a Californian," he writes. "Nor did our families want to know more."
But his chapter "A Few Words about Women" sympathetically addresses the challenges strong-minded women often faced in the mid-twentieth century, when Auchincloss was in his prime. He is equally forthright about topics that most of his peers still squeamishly avoid or even deny, including depression (his father's), alcoholism (among several family friends), boorishness (everywhere) and homosexuality. And his pages on the wealthy and phenomenally long-lived Brooke Astor, a longtime friend, give her more appeal and warmth than almost any story about the recent court trial concerning her will.
Don't expect revelations at long last about the writer's personal life or his long career as an associate and partner in two of New York's top law firms, however. For all his frankness about society, his love of gossip and his sense of drama, Auchincloss is decorous to the end, whether discussing his remarkably close relationship with his domineering mother, his love for his devoted wife or his nearly automatic entrance to boarding school at Groton, college at Yale and law school at the University of Virginia. The gays and lesbians, the alcoholics and even the boors largely remain nameless.
Auchincloss died in January following a stroke. He was 92.
His voice remains both charmingly and disarmingly familiar — but elegant and easy to read. The quick disdain that one expects from a writer steeped in and fascinated by wealth and privilege is certainly here, as when Auchincloss dismisses modern collegians with a wave across his keyboard: "It was a pity that none of my students in the three years I taught at NYU seemed to have any real conception of the beautiful language that was theirs."
And, for anyone who doubts that rich New Yorkers live and often see themselves as a breed apart, there's ample proof in this evocative volume. Auchincloss is clear and direct about high society's position outside the mainstream.
"In a way, we were privileged guests of New York; we knew no more of the West Side world of Leonard Bernstein's opera than a Californian," he writes. "Nor did our families want to know more."
But his chapter "A Few Words about Women" sympathetically addresses the challenges strong-minded women often faced in the mid-twentieth century, when Auchincloss was in his prime. He is equally forthright about topics that most of his peers still squeamishly avoid or even deny, including depression (his father's), alcoholism (among several family friends), boorishness (everywhere) and homosexuality. And his pages on the wealthy and phenomenally long-lived Brooke Astor, a longtime friend, give her more appeal and warmth than almost any story about the recent court trial concerning her will.
Don't expect revelations at long last about the writer's personal life or his long career as an associate and partner in two of New York's top law firms, however. For all his frankness about society, his love of gossip and his sense of drama, Auchincloss is decorous to the end, whether discussing his remarkably close relationship with his domineering mother, his love for his devoted wife or his nearly automatic entrance to boarding school at Groton, college at Yale and law school at the University of Virginia. The gays and lesbians, the alcoholics and even the boors largely remain nameless.
Auchincloss died in January following a stroke. He was 92.
