Three Lives

Each of the three stories--"The Epicurean," "The Realist," and "The Stoic"--in this collection introduces the richly satisfying and morally intriguing situations for which the author is known. 12,500 first printing. From Publishers Weekly The lives of three New York WASPs come under the scrutiny of Auchincloss's ( False Gods ) meticulous eye and deep moral vision. He examines them in his usual accomplished--if somewhat chilly--prose, laced with French phrases, references to the Great Books and acerbic, sometimes precious dialogue. Two novellas are narrated by their male protagonists, and as their titles--"The Epicurean" and "The Stoic"--indicate, they illuminate extreme approaches to life. The man of leisure at the heart of "The Epicurean" uses his family money to cushion his escapades as an artistic dilettante in Paris and a game hunter in Africa. When WW II brings an abrupt end to this pattern, the denouement seems coy rather than ordained. Related by a woman, the middle tale, a miniature novel of manners called "The Realist," has a more moderate outlook. Its story-within-a-story structure is contrived and proves frustrating. The most polished entry is the final tale, set in the early part of the 20th century, Auchincloss's favorite setting. "The Stoic" inhabits the world of finance, arranged intimacies and measured obligations to society. Harshly judgmental, he lives by his own rigid set of rules and resentments and is happy only when his hatred bears fruit. Reading about this rarefied milieu may make readers glad that they do not inhabit it. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal The writer of these stories, a former lawyer and prolific author of fiction and nonfiction, again uses his knowledge of law and upper-class New York society to present in his inimitably elegant style three sympathetic characters. Wealthy Nat Chisolm, whose remorseless grasping after pleasure illustrates the tale "The Epicurean," eventually finds life emotionally unsatisfying; Alida Vermeule, "The Realist," uses her restricted station in life to shape her husband's career; and George Manville, "The Stoic," shields himself from human contact by wrapping himself in the ascetic certainties of commerce. Challenged intellectually and morally by their dilemmas, and shaped by the demands of their society, Auchincloss's protagonists wrangle with their destiny. Recommended for public libraries. - Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. "Three Lives, more radically than any other work of the time* in English, brought the language back to life. Not the life of the peasantry or the emotions or the proletariat but life as it was lived by everybody living in the century, the average or normal life as the naturalists had seen it. Gertrude Stein in this work tried to coordinate the composition of the language with the process of consciousness, which . . . was to her a close reflex of the total living personality. . . . "Gertrude Stein uses the simplest possible words, the common words used by everybody, and a version of the most popular phrasing, to express the most complicated thing. . . . [ She] uses repetition and dislocation to make the word bear all the meaning it has . . . one has to give her work word by word the deliberate attention one gives to something written in italics." —DONALD SUTHERLAND, in Gertrude Stein: A Biography oj Her Work Ascent as a lawyer and exercises the limited power available to women of her time in remarkably unlimited ways. And in "The Stoic," George Manville takes the virtuous example of his investment-banker mentor to new levels of puritanism, living an ascetic's life governed by the stringent checks and balances of the ledger sheets he cherishes more than any human being. Indirectly governed by different schools of philosophy, each of these three characters must make his own With Three Lives, Louis Auchincloss turns in another commanding performance as our most entertaining and intelligent chronicler of monied society, a world as morally complex as it is privileged. In "The Epicurean," Nat Chisolm is a relentless seeker of pleasure, a man whose financial ease and energetic pursuit of enjoyable diversions only make him more aware of his emotional bankruptcy. Alida Vermeule is "The Realist," an ambitious woman who engineers her husband's Concrete, irrevocable decisions - and accept the consequences. Auchincloss balances piercing shrewdness with a deep sympathy for his characters. Three Lives confirms his place in the landscape as one of America's most elegant and entertaining writers