A Writer's Capital

by Louis Auchincloss

Excellent Book

Genres: Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Louis Stanton Auchincloss was an American novelist, historian, and essayist.

Among Auchincloss's best-known books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents, Portrait in Brownstone, and East Side Story. Other well-known novels include The Rector of Justin, the tale of a renowned headmaster of a school like Groton trying to deal with changing times, and The Embezzler, a look at white-collar crime. Auchincloss is known for his closely observed portraits of old New York and New England society.

Reviews

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This past year, full of thrilling encounters with 'The Age of Innocence' and 'Christopher and His Kind,' I've done a lot of self-congratulation for the catholic expansion of my taste. Wow, I thought, I love alike the rich rhetoric of Melville and Nabokov, AND the dry draghtsmanship of Wharton and Isherwood. How grown up am I! But then Louis Auchincloss comes along, with this slight little memoir, to reveal the limits of my taste for the plain style. I read this in a few hours, but was able to do so not because it's simple or dumb, but because Auchincloss is so minutely artful. Lytton Strachey on the letters of Madame du Deffand:

"Here are no colored words, no fine phrases--only the most flat and ordinary expressions. Nothing is described, yet how much is suggested! The whole scene is conjured up--one does not know how; one's imagination is switched into the right rails, as it were, by a look, by a gesture, and then left to run of itself."

This is exactly the experience of reading Auchincloss (in his recent New Yorker profile, Auchincloss's library is mentioned as containing many Strachey first editions). His style--if one can even apply that word to such an effaced manner--is one of perfect ease and economy. You see things but aren't really conscious of being shown them. The artful arrangement of his scenes is almost imperceptable, and it's all quite unnerving. I found myself re-reading parts in search of just what tiny turn of phrase, what sly adverb, what unnoticed change in rhythm conjured the memorable scene for me. It's a common plaudit, but Auchincloss does really get the job done without calling attention to his style. I'm very curious to read his big book, 'The Rector of Justin,' to see if he can write an entire novel with such vanishing subtlety.

[Jay Warner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in the definitive Auchincloss style, I found this memoir engaging. It's interesting to know what makes an author tick; why did he write the books he wrote? How did he come to write? The most informative part of A Writer's Capital, to me, was when he described being a lawyer (a profession he enjoyed immensely) and writing at night. Thinking that he should make a decision to choose writing, he soon found that he was no more prolific just writing than when he was working on both careers as a lawyer and a writer. He made the decision to go back to law and it was the right decision for him. His character sketches of people who influenced him were equally satisfying as his descriptions of his own life and that of his father. I came away from this book with a deeper understanding of Louis Auchincloss and gained another perspective on what makes a writer, and the many different paths that career choice can take.