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Visions of a vanishing world

The death of J. D. Salinger last Wednesday understandably brought a great deal of what Holden Caulfield called "that David Copperfield kind of crap" about the author: "where I was born, ａｎｄ　what my lousy childhood was like, ａｎｄ　how my parents were occupied ａｎｄ　all before they had me." Salinger himself was a great story: the brilliant young artist who writes a classic ａｎｄ　then disappears into the woods of New Hampshire fｏｒdecades. No more David Copperfield kind of crap fｏｒhim.

Another literary death last week received less attention, but the life ａｎｄ　work of Louis Auchincloss speak as much to us as Salinger’s. A lawyer ａｎｄ　prolific author, Auchincloss, born in 1917, grew up in houses in Manhattan, on Long Island, ａｎｄ　in Bar Harbor, Maine. The family traveled from house to house with its chauffeur (singular) ａｎｄ　its servants (very much plural). He studied at Groton ａｎｄ　Yale ａｎｄ　the University of Virginia law school. He was a wonderful storyteller, but he was the shrewdest of observers ａｎｄ　listeners, too. He seemed to know everybody’s secrets, ｏｒat least the secrets of everybody who lived on the Upper East Side. Tall ａｎｄ　forbidding—ｏｒforbidding until he cracked a joke, ｏｒfound something amusing, at which point he would break into a smile of epic proportions—Auchincloss wrote of a vanishing milieu of Eastern privilege: of prep schools ａｎｄ　discreet lawyers ａｎｄ　quiet clubs where the chairs were comfortable ａｎｄ　the martinis cold.

Salinger will endure much longer ａｎｄ　will be read more widely than Auchincloss, who will be viewed in death in much the same way he was in life: as an interesting novelist of manners. As Auchincloss himself noted in interviews, he was not remotely as accomplished as Edith Wharton, in whose wake he worked, but he was nevertheless an artist to be taken seriously as a chronicler of a certain sphere of life at a certain time. Not a bad fate, that: it is, in fact, the most virtually any writer could hope for, ａｎｄ　which only a tiny number achieve. Auchincloss is to New York in the 20th century what Trollope is to English clerical life in the 19th: a writer who must be read to understａｎｄ　the ethos of a lost world, but whose essential subject matter—the heart ａｎｄ　its discontents—transcends time ａｎｄ　place.

What is most interesting about Auchincloss, is not the elegance of the lives he chronicled but the complexities, the unfulfilled ambitions, the restless hearts of his characters. In Auchincloss’s novels (ａｎｄ　in The Catcher in the Rye), little is what it seems to be. The exteriｏｒappears solid ａｎｄ　secure. But the interiｏｒis a constantly roiling emotional battlefield. Glib analysis was insufficient to the problems of the heart Auchincloss was surveying. His 1974 memoir, A Writer’s Capital,should be required reading fｏｒanyone interested in the craft. It is a book that manages to be honest ａｎｄ　personal without being self-indulgent. He writes of his mother’s anxiety about breaking the conventions of her caste, a reluctance dictated by fear.

"Fear of what?" Auchincloss recalled. "It is hard to describe. Fear of a grading system in which one started with a handicap. Fear of not coming up to some kind of scratch. Fear of being measured in the balance ａｎｄ　found wanting."

Like many of his works, Auchincloss’s Rectｏｒis in part about the tragic nature of lives that at first glance appear immune to tragedy. Who can feel sorry fｏｒa headmaster who laments that his school produces more stockbrokers than priests ｏｒpublic servants? Auchincloss’s answer is that his readers should care, fｏｒthe specialized disappointments ａｎｄ　frustrations of the well established are particular expressions of the universal truth that life is never precisely what we want it to be, no matter how many houses one has.

詞句筆記：

forbidding：形容人神情嚴肅的，不茍言笑的

crack a joke：講笑話，開玩笑

ethos：社會思潮，普遍信仰

in the wake of：緊緊跟隨

例句：In the wake of the removal of this forest for cultivation is a desolate, bare, ａｎｄ　rocky eroded land.

開墾土地而砍伐森林所留下的跡象是一片荒蕪,裸露和巖石被侵蝕的土地。

be immune to：不受……影響的

例句： the tragic nature of lives that at first glance appear immune to tragedy.

第一眼看上去似乎與悲劇絕緣的真正悲劇性的生活。

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