"Life, Law and Letters" is a series of observations, all of them agreeable, like good talk after dinner. Mr. Auchincloss has a way of being interesting without sounding important. That is, there are no sirens in these pages, or in his fiction, but the intelligence is always whispering. (p. 414)

Racine, Corneille, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Benjamin Cardozo, Henry Adams, Henry James, Lytton Strachey and Emily Dickinson all get talked about. The talk is invariably civilized. There are no terrors. As Mr. Auchincloss tells us in "A Writer's Capital," he has always regarded it as "particularly ignominious for a New Yorker of my generation and upbringing to have failed to enjoy life." (p. 415)

"A Writer's Capital"—his childhood, of course—is a fascinating document…. Briefly, Mr. Auchincloss lets us look under his hood, then slams it shut again on our fingers.

He grew up with "a false sense of...