Customer Reviews

The Rector of Justin: A Novel

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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.

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.

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.

Louis Auchincloss is always dead-on in his fine wrought character portraits throughout his prolific oeuvre. Here, in what is likely his finest work, that, along with all his other formidable storytelling gifts, the characterization is at its lofty apex. He also experiments a bit with form, going beyond the usual fictional biography techniques by including pertinent conversations and writings by former students (a brilliant few chapters!), family, and associates. Indeed, there is a certain irony in his biographer's comments late in the book: "But my trouble is precisely that I am not interested in writing a biography. I am interested in inspiring my reader, and I am much at odds with my century in believing that to demonstrate the best by itself is more inspiring than the best with the worst." We get an entirely balanced portrait of a great man of ideas who, joyously, is ultimately as human and full of foibles as the boys he so carefully nurtures. This is awesome, hopeful, faith-inducing, awesomely inspiring and fun read.

Auchincloss writes about the world of upper-class privilege in New England, a world he knows well, having been a Groton and Yale man himself. His stories often are set in the recent past, giving them a somewhat old-fashioned feel. This one, regarded as one of his best works (it's certainly the one everybody recommends), is an extended portrait of Dr. Frank Prescott, born at the end of the Civil War to an old Boston family with broad connections, taking Harvard and Oxford almost for granted, assuming he can do pretty much whatever he wants in life. And so he does, becoming first a minister and then a schoolmaster. Almost everything to do with religion in this book, by the way, even the word "church," should be understood to mean "American Episcopal," though that's never explicitly stated. After all, in Boston, there is no other denomination worth mentioning, not among the upper class. Dr. Prescott builds a Groton-like institution called Justin Martyr and serves as its only headmaster into his 80s, which means until World War II. We experience the history of both the school and the man through the eyes of a number of other people, including a young teacher who comes in almost at the end and who idolizes Prescott -- until he discovers why he shouldn't. Other viewpoints include Prescott's oldest friend, from their own school days, and the chairman of Justin's board of trustees, and his youngest daughter (a Bohemian rebel), and the chairman's son, and so on. Every POV but Prescott's own, in fact. This gives the reader a variety of takes on the man, whom Auchincloss develops in many dimensions, and whom the reader is encouraged to both admire and dislike, depending on the circumstances. The style is very readable, very un-stilted, and there are a great many highly quotable lines because the author is a master of descriptive metaphor and wry observation. Auchincloss is still writing (his first novel was published in 1947 and his most recent in 2007), though he seems to have receded into the background of the literary world somewhat. But this is an excellent place to begin and I recommend it highly.

Boarding school novels are a genre of their own, and the Rector of Justin feels like an essential part of it: the description of the charismatic overarching headmaster, the Leitfigur -- a theme that Rowling draws on with Dumbledore. For anyone interested in exploring that theme, this is an extraordinary book.

The writing is a little mannered, almost hankering after the 19th century, and, at the risk of seeming too critical, Auchincloss on occasions struggles to carry it off. The narrator is overdoing meekness, and getting in the way of it all.

Nevertheless, this book does open up a lot of questions about what education really is, how to carry it off, how authoritarian it can be and what damage charisma (and boarding schools) end up doing. It's also an endearing defence of a vanishing world. Somewhere else (1980) Auchincloss said that the "tragedy of American civilization is that it has swept away WASP morality and put nothing in its place". That isn't my view, but this book makes a case that deserves its hearing.

It's a very good read, exactly what literature should be.

This is #6 on the bestsellers list in 1964, the year I was born. I had a hard time at first getting into the story but it was magnificent! Auchincloss is a tremendous writer and probably, in my humble opinion, one of the best writers in the 20th century. He has a unique writing style. This book is unusual in the fact that it is told by 6 different individuals. This is the story of a man from schoolboy age to his death at age 85.

Frank Prescott was a man of God and of honor. His calling to be a minister and of a teacher was fulfilled and he was very successful in building his dream of a Christian boy's school, although it was not exclusive to that religion. Dr. Prescott had respect for any boy of any religion. He was diligent, proud, and yet humble. He was willing to admit his faults and apologize for his mistakes. A respected man like this is very hard to find in this day and age. Dr. Frank Prescott was revered by any who met him, even if they disliked him.

This was my favorite line & one of the last: "Dr. Prescott was greater than the school which he created and by which he was ultimately disillusioned, and it is my ambition to distill for future generations of Justin boys some bit of the essence of that greatness."

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has lost someone in their lives they truly admired; it will open your heart to the sentiment of greatly appreciating those who have gone before us to set a pure example of respect & honesty.

This is writing at its most elegant. It has everything: poise, lucidity and an outstanding ability to create athmosphere.

This book surprised me by having a lot of substance. This multiple-narrator novel provides a shifting portrait of a fictional New England Episcopal boarding school headmaster - a legend in his time. It's like a Tom Brown's School Days for early 20th century New England, from the point of view of the headmaster. There is no TGI whatsoever, but the book provides an interesting contrast to the English Public School novel. Among its questions: what does it mean to be a church school? How should we educate boys into men, and what is a man? Ultimately, it examines the uneasy tension between the idealistic, fervently faithful (and rather Puritanical) founder and the materialistic boys, parents, and board that make up the school.

Although _The Rector of Justin_ is considered by many as Auchincloss' best novel, I didn't like it as much as some of his other books. It uses six narrators to tell the story of the Reverend Francis Prescott, D.D. -- founder and rector (headmaster) of Justin Martyr, a fictional school for boys in Massachusetts. The narrative structure seems contrived to me; Auchincloss used it better in later books like _The House of the Prophet_. You never get to know Prescott well enough to decide whether you like or dislike him, although maybe it is Auchincloss' intention to create the uncertainty. None of the narrators arouses your sympathy (the main one is just plain annoying), and the book has no trace of sentimentality in it. In Auchincloss' autobiography, _A Writer's Capital_, he says the character of Prescott is based more on Judge Learned Hand than on Endicott Peabody, the headmaster of Groton where Auchincloss went to school.