Extract
America First.
Louis Auchincloss died on Jan. 26 at age 92, having long outlived the world he chronicled. "The tragedy of American civilization is that it has swept away WASP morality and put nothing in its place," he wrote.
A Wall Street lawyer until 1987, Auchincloss produced 30 novels and 17 volumes of short stories. Scrawled in longhand from his Park Avenue apartment, they took place in what he called the "comfortable" world--not obscenely rich but able to send a son to Groton and Yale, to spend summers on Long Island and holidays abroad. If Auchincloss's prose seemed upright, so were his subjects. The usual American hero is singular: a gunslinger, a gambler, a maverick making good against long odds. But Auchincloss's focus was on a whole class already arrived, and his approach wasn't mythic so much as anthropological. "It is thought to be irrelevant, a faded and fading genteel-Gentile enclave," his cousin and legal client Gore Vidal wrote, "when, in actual fact, this little world comprises the altogether too-vigorous and self-renewing ruling class of the United States." Since then, whether by shame over its privilege or desire to enjoy the good life, Auchincloss's establishment has surrendered the heights. Prominent names and private clubs remain, but the sense of social responsibility that once accompanied elite status has quietly gone out. The title of Auchincloss's final book--Last of the Old Guard--well described the author himself. In his memory, we present this short story taken from the collection Skinny Island: More Tales From Manhattan. TIME HAD BEEN HEAVY on the hands of Elaine ...See the full content of this document
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