SOURCE: A review of Second Chance: Tales of Two Generations, in The Saturday Review, New York, Vol. LIII, No. 35, August 29, 1970, pp. 24-25.

Weber is an American educator and critic, who has published extensively on the poet Hart Crane. In the following review, he discusses psychological and sociological identity as it is explored by Auchincloss in Second Chance.

Louis Auchincloss is an urbane, ironic, and experienced chronicler of the doings of our Anglo-Saxon, genteel wealthy in New York, familiar with their values, their modes of behavior and organization, and the extent to which they encounter and react to phenomena from the world outside their offices, apartments, and suburban estates. The stories in Second Chance, Auchincloss tells us on its jacket, have been designed as an exploration of "the identity crisis among the middle-aged and elderly in this city and its suburbs in the immediate present. They are concerned with...