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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Creative and Clever, But With Unresolved Tension, November 3, 2005
Louis Auchincloss recommended The Rector of Justin to me as a starting point, as I was unfamiliar with his writing. Then he chuckled and said that he doesn't claim that it's his best, only that it has enduring popularity and is the most commercially successful of his novels. The story portrays the fictional biography of an exclusive New England prep school's willful headmaster, Francis Prescott, and it portrays, too, the characters who "live under the shadow of the Prescott legend." The story is related through six persons in that shadow. They are a former student, Brian Aspinwall, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, David Griscam, an old friend, Horace Havistock, his youngest daughter, Cordelia Turnbull, her common law husband, Charlie Strong, and another student, Jules Griscam, son of the above-mentioned trustee. Each relays impressions of the great man which derive from their own association with him. These glimses portray Prescott's multifaceted character, yet the portrait which emerges leaves the reader unsatisfied, as with a puzzle in which there are not only missing pieces, but also duplicate pieces. Auchincloss' writing is creative, and very clever, and there are hundreds of sentences which beg to be re-read, and which are every bit as fresh on the return leg. Another characteristic of the author's prose is numerous references. He invokes authors, their characters, and countless others: Omar Khayyam, King Lear, Meissonier, Parsifal, Steinbeck, Tom Brown and Arnold, Marlowe and Webster, the Count of Monte Cristo, Anne Boleyn, Rupert Brooke, Mrs. Browning, Billy Budd, Walter Gay, Tannhauser, Freud, Molvina Hoffman, Plantaganet Palliser and Lady Cora, Joseph Andrews, Henry Thoreau... And here are a few examples of the author's craft: "I am the youngest child of a marriage of June and January, and, alas, I cost June her life." "He had all the jauntiness, guile, and charm of a papal bastard in the Renaissance." "We became well-known hosts to the floating expatriate world that made a fetish of disillusionment." "I had not expected that so little oil would settle such troubled waters." "He was uneasy with children, for like a dictator visiting a free country, he knew that his power was suspended." "He knew that his God was as mean as himself, and would never let him get away with anything as easy as that." Unfortunately, though, the story's denouement fails to resolve its creative tension. The eclipse of Prescott's power, in his old age, is portrayed as dramatic and illuminating, but it is neither. Prior to the conclusion our protagonist is a self-absorbed demigod. In that conclusion he becomes yet more self-absorbed, though mortal, and simply fades away. A God as mean as himself, however, would not have let him get away with anything as easy as that.
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35 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A minor modern classic, September 9, 2002
If you're going to read only one novel by the prolific American writer Louis Auchincloss, this is the one to read. It is a minor modern classic and represents Auchincloss's best work during what I regard as his prime period. The Rector of Justin tells the life story, from schoolboy to death at age 85, of Frank Prescott (Dr. Francis Prescott), rector/headmaster/founder of the exclusive New England Episcopalian boys' school Justin Martyr (a famous prep school), by means of six narrators, male and female, whose attitudes toward their subject range from veneration to hatred. It's an effective method of "surrounding" the elusive, somewhat larger-than-life central character, and the book is well written, the right length, and compulsively readable. I first read it when it came out in 1964, have just re-read it, and find that it holds up quite well. Auchincloss's main fault is his glib facility: writing is too easy for him; he was written too much; and too much of it, smoothly ushered in on its cushion of graceful, well-oiled prose, is pallid, thin, brittle, superficial; too much of it is engaging enough while you're reading it, but forgettable, leaving no lasting imprint. This fault is minimized but not absent here. This is not a profound or searching book, but an excellent, enjoyable read, and a fine introduction to a worthwhile if over-productive modern author.
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26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Major news:Rector of Jusin newly available!, February 21, 2001
This review is from: The Rector of Justin (Modern Library) (Hardcover)
THE RECTOR OF JUSTIN is for my money the greatest of all"school novels" of the 20th century, and one of the great novels ever. Louis Auchincloss has an extraordinary collectioon of novels and non-fiction, and I hope more and more will appear in Modern Library's editions. Nobody now livng writes with the grace, richness of apirit and wit that Achincloss has, sentence by sentence. You care about hio people, and in all the novels there is a procession of fascinating, articulate characters, vividly alive and engaging,struggling, triumphing, wrestling with the complexities and hopes of their lives.. I must have read this novel ten times by now, across several decades. I have been handing out my own collected copies right and left. Nos it is newly published in a sparkling edition, and it stands with the world 's best fiction where it most certainly belongs.
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