In The Headmaster's Dilemma, Louis Auchincloss revisits the prep school world of his most famous novel. That book, The Rector of Justin, published in 1964, took the form of a fictional biography, giving the reader the full life story of a much beloved and revered, if also feared, headmaster of an exclusive New England prep school. In The Headmaster's Dilemma, we see up close what happens when a school's ideals and founding principles collide with the exigencies of change. The Headmaster's Dilemma is the story of Michael Sayre, the handsome, avant-garde headmaster of Averhill, the great New England prep school as he is faced with a school administrator's worst nightmare: a lawsuit brought by fervent parents in response to an incident involving their son and an upperclassman. To make matters worse, Michael is losing support from both the board of trustees -- led by the conniving Donald Spencer -- and senior faculty members. With the help of his supportive wife, Michael attempts to right these wrongs, while keeping Averhill's best interests in mind.

The Headmaster's Dilemma

A cat may look at a king, says an old proverb. The king is the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, whose fabled court at Versailles was the wonder of Europe; the cat is the watchful chronicler, Louis de Rouvroy, second duc de Saint-Simon, author of the famous Memoirs which are the definitive record of Louis' reign.   Auchincloss has conceived his novel as an extension of the Memoirs, in which Saint-Simon reveals his own story-as well as a great deal about the private lives of the great and near-great that did not find its way into the published record. With his inimitable gift for characterization, Auchincloss portrays Saint-Simon, the meticulous, proud aristocrat of the old school who is at once fascinated and threatened by the powerful centralized monarchy Louis is building and by the king's plot to bolster his position by marrying off his illegitimate children to princes of the blood.   Elegant, crisp, and abounding in authentic detail, The Cat and the King shows us the factions, liaisons, intrigues and dalliances that made up daily life at Versailles as they might have been seen from Saint-Simon's highly critical perspective. Auchincloss imagines the dominant figures of this greatest period in French history-the aging Louis; his pious morganatic spouse, Madame de Maintenon; Monsieur, the king's homosexual brother; the great warrior and ladies' man Conti; and many others-as wholly believable individuals with peculiar tics and foibles of their own; but none is stranger, more fascinating, or more believable than Saint-Simon himself.   A remarkable portrait of a quintessential man of his time, a discerning study of the use and abuse of power, and an utterly convincing recreation of a turbulent age that bears no small resemblance to our own, The Cat and the King is a many-faceted jewel that represents a new dimension of achievement in Louis Auchincloss' distinguished career as a novelist.

The Cat And The King

From one of America's greatest men of letters, our sublime master of manners, comes his novel, Her Infinite Variety. Louis Auchincloss has been called "our most astute observer of moral paradox among the affluent" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.), and his fiction described as that which "has always examined what makes life worth living" (Washington Post Book World). Now he brings us the rollicking tale of an unforgettable woman of mid-twentieth century America: the devilish, forever plotting, yet wholly beguiling Clara Hoyt. A romantic early in life, Clara gets engaged-much to her mother's horror-to the lackluster Bobbie Lester. Soon after her Vassar graduation, however, Clara sees the error of her ways, spurns Bobbie, and slyly enthralls the well-bred and fabulously wealthy Trevor Hoyt, the first of her husbands. Soon she lands a job at a tony magazine, and so begins her wildly entertaining course to the inner sanctum of New York's aristocracy and into the boardrooms of the publishing world. In a world where women still had to wield the weapons of allure and charm, above all else, to secure positions of power, Clara, one of the last of her kind, succeeds marvelously. Auchincloss gives us, in Clara, an irresistible Cleopatra, lovely, wily, and mercurial. As Shakespeare wrote of that feminine creation, "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety."

Her Infinite Variety - A Novel

?"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 .

Three Lives

Like Francis Prescott in The Rector of Justin, Guy Prime enjoyed the distinction of having become a legend in his lifetime. But in Guy's case, the legend is one of betrayal and infamy. For the scandal of his embezzlement brought down the delicately balanced structure of the Stock Exchange. The long-honored system of self-government by mutual trust among gentlemen came to an end with the default of one of its brightest stars. The story of Guy's fall is told by the three persons most intimately concerned: Guy himself, Rex Geer, his closest friend, and Angelica, his wife. We see him first through his own eyes - embittered, oddly proud of his peculiar distinction, and entirely unrepentant - the golden boy, the Wall Street manipulator, and finally the old man determined to justify himself to the grandchildren he will never see. Rex and Angelica in turn pick up the same threads of the story, but the threads change color subtly as they pass through different hands. In the end, the reader must decide for himself which is the real Guy Prime. Louis Auchincloss brings to the financial world the same authority and understanding he brought to the worlds of the law (Powers of Attorney), the private school (The Rector of Justin), and the old families of New York (Portrait in Brownstone). Virgilia Peterson, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called The Rector of Justin "not only a passionately interesting, but a spiritually important study of the American character of, and for our time." Her words hold true for The Embezzler.

The Embezzler

Au coeur de la Nouvelle-Angleterre se dresse le collège de Justin Martyr, où des générations de jeunes aristocrates ont reçu l'éducation qui est censée leur ouvrir les portes de la réussite sociale. Son directeur et fondateur, le pasteur Francis Prescott, va prendre sa retraite, suivant le conseil de son ami, Horace Havistock. Un jeune homme, Brian, y occupe la chaire de littérature anglaise, et raconte dans son journal ses premières impressions de Justin Martyr : la chapelle, les sombres bâtiments, les terrains de sport, le parc, tout porte la marque du pasteur Prescott. Tour à tour Horace Havistock, le plus cher ami du recteur, Cordelia sa fille, Charley Strong un élève, ainsi que d'autres personnages se confient à Brian et donnent de Francis Prescott, qui tint dans leur vie un rôle principal, des opinions diverses et passionnées. Sa longue vie nous est ainsi contée dans un savant agencement d'épisodes qui se déroulent à Oxford au siècle dernier, à Paris dans les années 20, à New York au début de ce siècle et de nos jours. L'habileté de l'auteur a été de donner un ton différent à ces témoignages d'où se dégage peu à peu la personnalité du recteur. C'est à la fin de sa vie, alors qu'il commence à douter de lui-même (il a formé d'excellents avocats, d'excellents agents, d'excellents hommes d'affaires, mais après ?), qu'apparaît sa victoire. Et le lecteur, comme tous ceux qui l'ont approché, ne peut oublier le recteur de Justin.

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