[Sayre is a Bermudan-born writer and critic. Here, she uses a review of Tales of Manhattan to address two "perplexities" that appear in much of Auchincloss's work: the "drab and stunted" nature of his narrators and the "double views" that he provides of his main characters. The critic concludes that these elements ultimately hurt Auchincloss's fiction and result in a lack of variety.]

In a period which savages the tangible past, landmark preservation becomes an emotional necessity. It is not surprising that even a defective lampshade should be cherished. Louis Auchincloss's catalogues of Tiffany glass, parental portraits by Sargent, club lunches, debuts at Sherry's, façades by Richard Morris Hunt and Louis Sullivan no doubt answer a craving for civilization, a nostalgia for something slightly senior to the Green Hornet. Hence anyone who cares about an earlier America is apt to feel ungrateful on recoiling from his fiction. But one rebels at Auchincloss's own treatment of landmarks: "In Washington one dined with Henry Adams and Bessie Lodge; in Boston with Mrs. 'Jack'; in London with Ottoline Morrell and 'Emerald,' or else drove down to Rye to see poor old Henry James. In Paris, there was 'Dear Edith,' in Rapallo 'Max'; in Florence 'BB.'" Even though the tone is supposed to be ironic, the best names curdle at this treatment.

By depicting an age of infinite tassels, social prejudice, and little else, Auchincloss has done the past a disservice. In fact, he has preserved the lampshade without the bulb. His characters have none of the violence and few of the valid dilemmas bestowed by Edith Wharton and Henry James. Some of his readers even blame his flaws on the dead writers, conferring a double death. But Mrs. Wharton hated the social system that shattered her characters, whereas Auchincloss seems to share the code of his personae. This is faintly mysterious, since he has criticized Proust (and others) for being "obsessed" with social position, adding that the authors of novels about society can "become guilty of the snobbishness and triviality of which they accuse their characters." Moreover, his good essay "The Novel of Manners Today" reproves John O'Hara for stressing that "the most important thing about any character is the social niche in which he was born." Both remarks might come from churlish descriptions of Auchincloss's own work.

The perplexity of his attitude may be a stepchild of James's "operative irony"; the possibility of implying "the case rich and edifying where the actuality is pretentious and vain." (In a preface, James explained that projecting foolish characters could highlight "the superior case.") Auchincloss's ambiguities take two forms, and both seem deliberate. First, he nearly always chooses drab and stunted narrators: old women, musty bachelors, timid young men. These naturally have a walleyed view of society, or of his recurrent protagonists: the domineering fathers, disappointing sons, large, insensitive daughters, and the plain, mistreated mothers. There are also the raucous fiancées who have ferocious ambitions for their future husbands, and the intelligent upstarts with "no family" who nonetheless thrive professionally. His most sensual women are usually rapacious social hedonists: "More than ever she was like a doll in an expensive dress." Whether the narrators idolize or deplore these characters, their intonation is inevitably prim or censorious.

Auchincloss sometimes means these commentators to be laughable. But since their prejudices dominate almost all of his work, they fail as a satirical chorus, and it sounds as though the author were luxuriating behind their views. Unhorrified by chichés, he feeds them to all his characters: "My first instinct was to shoot you down like a dog." Or: "He then proceeded to drink his way through Harvard to an early grave." When the whole cast speaks or thinks in this style, it's hard to feel that the author has separated himself from their mentality. Elsewhere, he has labeled the hero of Mrs. Wharton's The Glimpses of the Moon "an unmitigated cad."

Some of Auchincloss's narrators confess that they would like to be "peacocks," but he firmly maintains them as wrens. Admittedly, it's daring to permit a narrator of The Rector of Justin to announce on page 1: "Not that my life has been an exciting one. On the contrary, it has been very dull." In contrast, how swiftly Mrs. Wharton could make a character intriguing: on page 1 of The House of Mirth, Lily Bart has "an air of irresolution which might .. . be the mask of a very definite purpose." Hence one can immediately believe that "it was characteristic of her that she always roused speculation."

While Auchincloss's characters don't excite the same speculation, he is deft at plotting. One may not care why Geraldine Brevoort leapt out of a window or why Guy Prime indulged in embezzlement, yet one is curious about the process and solution of the total scheme. He does provide what publishers wistfully call "pull," and his particular public is probably plot-starved.

The second perplexity stems from Auchincloss's pleasure in giving double views of his leading characters. Each may or may not be morally monstrous. Ida, the diffident heroine of Portrait in Brownstone, triumphantly arranges a possibly crippling marriage for her adored son; the Rector of Justin paralyzes many lives; Guy, of The Embezzler, is defended in the first half (by himself) and degraded by two sequential narratives. Auchincloss meticulously reports all aspects. His primary theme is that people can direct and govern each other's lives: he shows them devising careers, preventing or concocting marriages, and controlling one another's money. Cruelty—through such tyranny, rather than verbal cruelty—is one of his preoccupations. Hence one wants very much to know whether he considers that his dislikable protagonists are "justified" in their ruthlessness—or unforgivable, or even tolerable, or whether they were partially misunderstood by their era. Auchincloss constructs each moral dilemma skillfully, and then abandons the problem.

It would be easy to pronounce all his people abominable. But he doesn't intend that: so much space is spent on their defense. However, their most odious social values usually prevail—if only to punish them. Hence the impression that those who perpetuate their money and position are superior. A social columnist remarks, "Nobody who really counts gives a hoot about family any more." Perhaps the reason is that anyone who "really counts" in an Auchincloss novel already has copious "family." Thus, the ambiguities hang on Auchincloss's concealed point of view—instead of his characters' complexities. One doesn't ask for glaring conclusions. But since this novelist focuses on morality, his deviousness is frustrating.

The inmates of Tales of Manhattan concentrate on unveiling the sins of others. Most of the accused are decedents, not decadents. The iniquities of the dead are revealed through written memoirs, notebooks, or conversations with elderly descendants—another opportunity for peevish narration. It's a detective-story technique: many of the stories start with a mystery, which is amiable to unravel but usually disappointing when solved. The characters usually betrayed or abused one another for financial reasons, but some indulged in psychological revenge—such as a Bostonian painter who sketched his parents in "frankly pornographic" positions. The first section is narrated by a gallery auctioneer who tries to re-create personalities by studying their collections (a pleasing device); the second groups some parched lawyers' opinions of one another; the third concerns "The Matrons," a glimpse of female comptrollers which seems to suggest that money is corrupting for women.

One story has a touching validity that the rest lack: in "The Landmarker," an aged bachelor relives the past by revisiting New York's antique buildings; when his favorite is about to be demolished, he has a stroke. He recovers to find it gone. Here, Auchincloss expresses a loss that is perhaps more acute for New Yorkers than for any other city's inhabitants. Since he knows Manhattan's oldest bones so well, and since his material is delectable, it's a pity that his natives are an incapacious, whispery cluster—who, in fact, "count" only in the Social Register or in slices of cash, or by possessing "Henry Adams's own copy of Democracy and "Abraham Lincoln's bookmark." Their insignificance stimulates the memory that Sybille Bedford's A Legacy is probably the only modern novel descended from Henry James, and their bigotry can serve as an incentive to read Edith Wharton, who is (finally) rolling out of the trough. She can match all of Auchincloss's draperies, although his characters can't answer the variety of hers.