This section contains 309 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) |
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[The literary device of viewing a man through the use of multiple narrations] is, of course, an old one; and the use to which it is put—to show, that if one seeks to learn the truth about a dead man from his former intimates, what one will get is merely a series of distorted reflections in a Hall of Mirrors—is also old. But Mr Auchincloss uses it with freshness. Was Leitner a monster or was he a saint?…
A novelist technically more brilliant than Mr Auchincloss—[an Anthony] Burgess or a [John] Barth—would no doubt have varied the styles of the various narrations…. The reader is here obliged to accept a convention whereby each memoir might merit the description 'as told to' Louis Auchincloss.
If an aristocracy can be said to exist in the States, then Mr Auchincloss belongs to it; and his writing, like...
This section contains 309 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) |
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