Customer Reviews

The Headmaster's Dilemma

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Louis Auchincloss has been chronicling the antics of wealthy, perpetually dissatisfied WASPs for longer than my mother has been alive.

But it seems that he's running out of steam in "The Headmaster's Dilemma," a flaccid novella full of flat, interchangeable characters -- including the titular headmaster. Auchincloss's formal prose is still striking, but it's draped around a thin and aimless little plot that never really gets wrapped up.

Michael Sayre is the headmaster of the WASPy prep school, Averhill -- only white Protestant males allowed. But Sayre is pretty clearly (um, yeah) a radical personality, allowing girls and Jews into the school, and allowing his wife to teach a class. Much, I might add, to the chagrin of the devious trustee Donald Spencer, who hates all these changes.

Then a student is raped by another student -- until doubt is cast on whether it was consensual or not. Sayre is left teetering between the shadowy truth and the school's reputation, with Donald ready to pounce. Between the displeased trustees and the victim's bombastic mother, he might be driven out of a job.

Louis Auchincloss has made a career out of old-styled, mid-twentieth-century novels about the wealthy and aristocratic, sort of like a 20th-century Henry James (minus the clever social commentary). "The Headmaster's Dilemma" seems to be Louis Auchincloss's stab at a "modern" novel -- too bad it's a complete disaster as a novel.

The idea of a prep school rape and its possible ramifications is good, and if it were really explored it would be a brilliant one. But Auchincloss just sort of ambles around aimlessly, cramming in character backstory instead of a real plot. And to modernize his distant, formal style, he tries to toss in condoms and raunchy class banter. It's like watching a dignified matron wearing a chartreuse mini.

Worst of all, Auchincloss apparently gets tired of the story about a hundred-fifty pages in. So he whips out a quick fix from his literary hat, slaps it onto the story, and dashes off a brief epilogue. It's one of the sloppiest wrap-ups I've ever seen outside of a Laurell K. Hamilton novel.

The characters don't help matters either. Auchincloss tries hard to make Sayre an edgy, cool, radical (yet kindly) headmaster -- but frankly it's hard to tell him apart from Donald. Despite their opposing views, they're both stuffy, old-fashioned and have the charisma of a dead crab. Only the louche, aging boytoy Elias actually seems like a real person.

"The Headmaster's Dilemma" is one of those novels that seem to have been dashed off during the author's lunch hour. Limp, weak, and wrapped up on a sour note.

A trivialization of an interesting subject. Not sure why it was written. Diminished a great writer's stature. No depth of characters, superficial dilemmas. Ken and Barbie as headmaster and wife.

Louis Auchincloss has rightly over the last 60 years assumed a primary position in American letters. The author of non-fiction books, he has become particularly known for his 46 volumes of fiction (including short story collections). Auchincloss has created a unique niche in that his fiction centers on the wealthy New Yorkers of the upper East Side, the powerful law firms of New York, and on occasion (such as his justly renown "The Rector of Justin") on the educational institutions upon which these upper class New Yorkers rely. Since Auchincloss himself has an impeccable pedigree of upper class distinction, his stories manifest a remarkable degree of authenticity. That is, Auchincloss is writing largely about "his own."

This novel is set in a New England boarding school much patronized by the wealthy. Auchincloss does not develop elaborate plots for the most part; his genius lies in how his characters interact when faced with various crisis situations. Here the story involves allegations of sexual impropriety between male students. This intersects with a continuing conflict between the school's wealthy board chair, dedicated to keeping things the same as when he attended, and the headmaster who is an engine for change. There is also a dimension added by the unhappiness of the headmaster's wife. But the most interesting facet is how the parents of the two boys, the board chair, the lawyers, and the headmaster all react to this extremely explosive situation. These upper class folks react in ways a bit different than the rest of us--so the author gives us a peek into the folkways of this elite and reclusive group. While one can wonder if people really speak the kind of dialogue that the author puts into his characters' mouths, this does not detract from the enjoyment of the novel. As Auchincloss approches 90 this year, one can only hope that he continues to write and give us more insight into this interesting segment of New York life.

I've only heard of Auchincloss recently, and the good reviews made me wish I'd read something of his.
Having read Headmaster's Dilemma, I can't imagine why.
I'm not a professional reviewer, and usually read books for the fun, not to pen reviews. But some things just scream at you when you read this book.
First, the characters are flat and are divided into two clear groups, the good progressives, and the evil conservatives. The progressive ones not only hold correct views about social order and personal morality, they are also at peace with themselves, kind to others, endlessly open-minded, and so on.
The conservative types, besides being wrong on everything, are miserable, scheming [...]. Naturally, they resent the success fortune rightly bestowed on the liberals.
Usually, half a chapter is consumed on introducing a character. LA subtly lets us know that Harry Hartford lives in New York, on Fifth Avenue. But in case we didn't get the message, he describes the wealth and splendor of the apartment, the character's father - almost always a Titan of Wall Street. Are there no middle managers on Park Avenue?

The dialog and interactions are not believable. When the main female character finds out that her mother actively shares her father's taste in young men, she is appalled for a moment. But after hearing the mother explain how there is actually nothing wrong with that, she agrees: "You make me feel I've been presumptuous and even impertinent, Mommy." Show me the girl who would say that five minutes from learning those young boys her father brought home weren't actually for her, and I'll probably come up with something interesting to sell you.

And I'm sorry to be a stickler, but can someone tell me how a guy who writes like this gets to be published : "Michael himself has spent two years in an English public school when his father had accepted an invitation to teach philosophy for that period at Oxford".

This sentence is twice to three times the length it should be, and has enough pomp to sustain a small kingdom, a medium principality, or Louis Auchincloss.

They always say not to do business with friends. Seeing that the authoer dedicates the book to his "Friend and Editor" you know why.

I've never read Auchincloss, so I don't know his writing style, but if this awful book is any indication, I won't be reading him again. Who speaks the way his characters do? Perhaps if they lived in 19th-century Victorian England, not in the U.S. in the 1970s.

The characters are dull, one-note cut-outs. Michael is the most perfect, most wonderful man ever. He's smart, well-dressed, handsome, well-built. He protested the war in Vietnam, but served his country too. He has the "right" ideas, caring for truth, justice, and the American Way. Donald Spencer is an awful, evil man who looks like a toad. He does everything but twirl his handlebar moustache. I presume Ione is supposed to be a feminist, yet she's as simpering as the worst Stepford wife. Except, of course, for her Very Important Work at Legal Aid.

Auchincloss also plays fast and loose with the times. If Michael is 40 in 1975, he was born in 1935, a little old to be a protester and to be drafted in the 1960s. It might have read better had he been a civil rights protester. Fifty years after women got the right to vote, Donald rants that they should never have been allowed that right.

Most disturbing is Auchincloss's belief that homosexuality comes from an overbearing, domineering mother and ineffectual father, and his blaming the rape on the victim (who was obviously asking for it by looking at the torsos of the "real" men).

Don't waste your time with this waste of a book.

About the third time Mr. Auchincloss describes a character not of a certain New York City social class as "dreary", I realized this was not going to be one of those sweet little gems introducing a new generation to a beloved writer. This novel is one of those curious little exercises wherein one turns the final page and wonders, What was that all about?

While so many modern bestsellers are overwritten short stories, The Headmaster's Dilemma has the distinction of being underwritten. Potentially fascinating characters are set up, with complete biographies, and then it all more or less just fades away. Is this a comic novel? No, the author is too deadly serious about just how dislikable anyone not of the "beautiful people" are. Is it a sharp little morality tale? No, since the central moral dilemma is simply wiped away. Bizarrely, the central issue-- the handling of a potential rape between an older and younger student-- seems superfluous and distracting while we wait for the central issue between the headmaster and his unhappy wife to resolve. And resolve it does, as everyone realizes that being a Stepford Wife really is the true way to happiness...wait, I don't think that's what Louis Auchincloss meant his reader to walk away with. What I did come away wondering was why the author hadn't kept to Manhattan's upper class and stayed in the city. I think he, and his readers, would have gotten much more enjoyment.

I've read many of Auchincloss's novels and collections of short stories and enjoyed most of them. This short novel (or long short story) is mostly disappointing and puzzling. There are the usual Auchincloss upper-class New York characters and settings, but the heart of the plot is an unbelievable and sordid tale revolving around boys dalliances with each other at an exclusive New England private school. This could be an interesting and edgy topic but Auchincloss makes it all seem so sorry and sordid that the novel is basically just icky. Auchincloss is not comfortable with this material, and he makes the reader just as uncomfortable. This is not a constructive broadening type of discomfort, but the kind of squirmy discomfort one experiences at a bad performance of a play.

As usual with Auchincloss's writing, the dialogues are unrealistic and the characters a bit too one-sided. Auchincloss's ability to make the typical struggles of modern life interesting and to give them moral weight often makes his tales worth reading. Unfortunately he's failed with The Headmaster's Dilemma to make anything either interesting or morally grave.

The Headmaster's Dilemma is also something of what I call a "BS" novel--one that enables the author to air half-baked ideas about any subject that interests them. The best aspect of The Headmaster's Dilemma is Auchincloss's BS'ing. Actually he airs some insightful opinions about athletics at schools and post-impressionist art. I'll quote one passage I found particularly interesting. The idea is that sports are inconsistent with academic and scholarly ideals. "A worship of sports can be a challenge to the basic aims of academe. Instead of individual thinking, instead of fearless questioning of even the most accepted principles, the cult of the muscle and competitive games looks to robotlike teamwork and subservience to a leader."

This is the only interesting passage in the book unless you are keen on post-impressionist art. Even if you are this novel is not worth reading.

I set about reading this novel with high hopes, as I enjoy novels in school or academic settings and had read something by Auchincloss in the distant past. Distant, indeed, as his writing seems in this novel to be a combination of the worst of Wharton and Marquand--no one speaks in the curious locutions Auchincloss puts in the mouths of his characters (save, perhaps, those in the author's own rarefied circle). The narrative itself is quite weak and the comparative brevity suggests, to put it unkindly, a novelist who no longer has the steam to develop and sustain characters or plot. Even its social and sexual politics seem from another century (and I don't mean the 20th). The deus ex machina by which the plot is resolved seems particularly lazy and "purple" in its lack of believability. Avoid this book--if you want a book on the hermetic worlds of private schools as symptoms of cultural malaise, I suggest going back to Muriel Spark's "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" or even John Knowles' chestnut "A Separate Peace."

This is little more than an outline of a plot for a novel and sketches of the characters.

Auchincloss again wrestles with Groton's heavy influence. Here the novel begins brilliantly, with fascinating characterizations, but then fades into a fairly boring latter two thirds or so, for lack of real plot tension. Auchincloss is a GREAT writer and it is worthwhile to search out some of the short story collections, or, my favorite, "Love Without Wings", which is a non-fiction collection of literary friendships/associations. The incisive mini-biographies are wonderful.