Louis Auchincloss Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Bruce Bawer

Critical Essay by Bruce Bawer

SOURCE: A review of The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss, in The New York Times Book Review, December 4, 1994, p. 62.

Bawer is an American author who has served as literary critic for The New Criterion and whose published works include Diminishing Fictions: Essays on the Modern American Novel (1988). In the following excerpt, Bawer praises Auchincloss's Collected Stories, Asserting that the book's depiction of "upper-crust New York WASPs" chronicles one of "the most significant social changes of recent decades." Bawer also argues that Auchincloss's fiction will outlast that of many of his contemporaries.

Forty-seven years and 50 books after he published his first novel, The Indifferent Children, Louis Auchincloss has yet to receive his full due. Academic critics and editors of anthologies have almost completely ignored him; so have the bestowers of literary awards. (Of all his books, only the splendid 1964 best seller The Rector of Justin...
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