Louis Auchincloss - information

There's a lot of special pleading for Auchincloss. Here's the very best example I found, Bruce Bawer (who should write on books more often):

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/auchincloss-review.html

But even he has to carefully delinate and circumscibe everything: yeah, he only deals with a certain subsection of America, yeah, his concerns are limited, etc.

This is the more unreflective kind of special pleading. This is the kind of thing that made me cancel my New Criterion subscription:

http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/16/oct97/tuttle.htm

This is also the kind of thing that makes people treat conservative critics less seriously. One has the sneaking feeling Auchincloss is admired mainly because he's talking about "our" kind of people.

Here's the other typical assessment of Auchincloss, just sheer goggle-eyed amazement that the poor bastard is here doing what he's doing at all:

http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/books/10790/

Which may be the most honest reaction, actually. His books aren't really interesting, but he is.