Louis Auchincloss

Louis Stanton Auchincloss (/ˈɔːkŋklɒs/; September 27, 1917 – January 26, 2010) was an American lawyer, novelist, historian, and essayist. He is best known as a prolific novelist who parlayed his experiences into books exploring the experiences and psychology of American polite society and old money. His dry, ironic works of fiction continue the tradition of Henry James and Edith Wharton.

Gore Vidal said of his work: "Of all our novelists, Auchincloss is the only one who tells us how our rulers behave in their banks and their boardrooms, their law offices and their clubs.... Not since Dreiser has an American writer had so much to tell us about the role of money in our lives."

Biography

Born in Lawrence, New York, Auchincloss was the son of Priscilla Dixon (née Stanton) and Joseph Howland Auchincloss. His paternal grandfather, John Winthrop Auchincloss, was the brother of Edgar Stirling Auchincloss (father of James C. Auchincloss) and Hugh Dudley Auchincloss (father of Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr.). He grew up among the privileged people about whom he would write, although, as he put it, "There was never an Auchincloss fortune…each generation of Auchincloss men either made or married its own money". He attended St. Bernard's School, Groton School and Yale University, where he was editor of the Yale Literary Magazine. Although he did not complete his undergraduate studies at Yale, he was admitted to and attended law school at the University of Virginia. He graduated in 1941 and was admitted to the New York bar the same year.

Podcasts:

Famous quotes by Louis Auchincloss:

"With her high pale brow under her faded brown hair, she was like a rock washed clean by years of her husband's absences at conventions, dinners, committee meetings or simply at the office."
"A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull."
"Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself."
"Only little boys and old men sneer at love."
"Perfection irritates as well as it attracts, in fiction as in life."
"The glittering structure of her cultivation sits on her novels like a rather showy icing that detracts from the cake beneath."
"We were not as rich as the Rockefellers or Mellons, but we were rich enough to know how rich they were."
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