Louis Auchincloss Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Carolyn F. Ruffin

Critical Essay by Carolyn F. Ruffin

SOURCE: A review of Second Chance: Tales of Two Generations, in The Christian Science Monitor, August 20, 1970, p. 13.

In the following review, Ruffin discusses the puritanical nature of the characters in Second Chance.

The Puritans are always with us.

They are particularly with American literary men, even today. It's as though they didn't get in enough licks against the irreverent scribes of this world during the last century, haunting Hawthorne and shooting up out of the deep to disturb Melville.

Now they are after Louis Auchincloss.

Apparently in this collection of some new, some previously published, short stories [Second Chance: Tales of Two Generations], he set out to write about New Yorkers of that notorious generation. He confronts them with their own hypocrisy and weakness, and gives them the chance to decide whether or not it's too late to change.

Auchincloss on Artistic Representation of Society:

I have no desire to return to a...
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