SOURCE: "Louis Auchincloss: The Image of Lost Elegance and Virtue," in American Literature, Vol. XLIII, No. 4, January, 1972, pp. 616-32.

Tuttleton is an American educator and critic whose books include The Novel of Manners in America (1972). In the following excerpt, he compares Auchincloss's fiction to that of Henry James and maintains that Auchincloss's writing is as much a departure from James's work as it is influenced by it. The critic also comments on the subject matter of Auchincloss's fiction and its relationship to issues of class. Tuttleton argues that Auchincloss effectively depicts affluent New York society and that critics shouldn't dismiss his work merely because of his well-todo characters.

The simplest truths are the most consoling: one of them is that New York will always have a past, together with writers consumed with nostalgia for lost days. Henry James and Mrs. Wharton—even Washington Irving—looked back at things...