SOURCE: A review of Tales of Manhattan, in Commonweal Vol. LXXXVI, No. 13, June 16, 1967, pp. 372-73.

Tucker is an American educator and critic. In the following review, he discusses Auchincloss 's narrative technique in Tales of Manhattan and finds that the author's frequent use of passive observers to relate stories robs the works of passion.

The dominant impression a reader is likely to get from Louis Auchincloss' Tales of Manhattan is that the rich worry more about money than the poor. When threatened, they scratch and claw—some like tigers, some like kittens—but very few question the struggle in any terms but moneyed triumphs. Most of Auchincloss' characters reserve their moral complexities for questions of what things to buy with their money.

Such a theme is no more restrictive a representation of human nature than Dreiser's emphasis on the bitch-goddess of success in American society. Dreiser's characters bumbled...