The Atonement and Other Stories

National Review, Oct 13, 1997 by Jonathan Foreman

The Atonement and Other Stories, by Louis Auchincloss (Houghton Mifflin, 288 pp., $24)

Mr. Foreman is a contributing editor of City Journal.

WITH the possible exception of William S. Burroughs, no twentieth-century American writer has received as much undeserved praise as Louis Auchincloss. Years ago, Gore Vidal, who is Auchinclosss cousin, wrote an essay in which he claimed that Auchincloss had been denied the prizes he deserves because the New York literary scene had been taken over by a modernist Jewish cabal. Not having read any Auchincloss when I read Vidals essay, I did not dismiss this argument as quickly as I should have done.

Like many people, I regret the passing from American literary fashion of authors who describe the way the world really works, who mine the veins of power and status. Todays minimalist realism cares so exclusively about emotions that the world of work scarcely seems to exist. (Given that so few present-day authors have ever worked, except for teaching in creative-writing programs, this is not surprising.) Auchincloss is a lawyer, and so I looked forward to his insights on that profession. Unfortunately, the firms he describes are like cardboard facades, no more real than televisions L.A. Law. Strangely, one gets no sense that he knows anything about the substance of law either though as a longtime partner in major firms, Auchincloss must have encountered it. And if the reader is hoping to learn something interesting about the conflicts that grip people who inhabit powerful old law firms, exclusive clubs, and Mount Desert Island, he will be equally disappointed. Mr. Auchincloss is no John OHara or John Cheever of upper- (as opposed to upper-middle-) class life. Hes more like Michael M. Thomas without the spite.

Not all the 11 stories in this collection are bad as stories. In some of them especially the ones about marital infidelity there is material that would have made perfect grist for the mill of, say, Somerset Maugham. All the stories concern life among those Northeasterners who consider themselves Americas aristocracy. In content, these tales resemble something that might have been written by Nancy Mitford or Evelyn Waugh had they possessed no sense of humor or insight into human nature. Unfortunately for Mr. Auchincloss, snobbery alone whether it connotes a heightened sense of social rank, or a conviction of ones own membership in a superior group does not make for interesting fiction.

The plots follow similar patterns: A WASP banker or lawyer is tempted by a less well-bred colleague, usually a Jew, to do something dishonorable like insider-trading; an upper-class woman marries a vulgar nouveau-riche type for his money, regrets it, but somehow keeps her lofty values intact; or an upper-class woman rebels in some way against the customs of her class by having an affair or getting divorced but triumphs in the end. The stories written from the female point of view tend to be stronger and more convincing. Only one story really came alive for me: a story about homosexual teachers at a Groton-like boarding school.

The stories here are written in a number of voices. Among the narrators are a middle-aged investment banker circa 1982, an aged English interior decorator circa 1943, a society divorcee of a certain age in 1961, a retired English actress writing to a titled friend in 1905, and the seventy-year-old female retired editor of a smart fashion magazine in 1987. All of them sound exactly the same. Nor do they differ in the slightest way from the authors own voice in those stories that have no character-narrator a voice that is excessively prone to saying things like: "and why, pray, was he having such snippy thoughts? Auchincloss writes like an old woman: perhaps a maiden aunt possessed by the spirit of a prep-school headmaster. In case I sound too harsh, here is the extraordinarily long first sentence of the story "Ars Gratia Artis:

Living in the past is constantly derided, particularly by those who like to pride themselves on being abreast, if not actually ahead of, the passing moment, but there comes a time in life for some of us, alas, when it seems the only place where we can live; and that is certainly the case of an infirm and antiquated bachelor living alone except for a loyal caretaker and an uncertain cleaning woman in his old family stone gentilhommicre (Im sorry; I like the French term) on the Yorkshire moors.

The dialogue is even more ridiculous, though less effeminate. Perhaps the author assumes that, because the stories are all set in the past, readers might be gulled into thinking that people actually talked this way at some time. They never did, except perhaps in Errol Flynn movies or novels that deliberately pastiche Jamesian speech. Here is a sample from the title story, set in the early Eighties:

"Oh Sandy, heres another of those terrible cases!

"What cases?

"Another of these insider traders. Really, one begins to wonder if any of the firms are free of it.

"Are you beginning to wonder about mine, my dear?