East Side Story.(Louis Auchincloss)(Biography)

It was November on Park Avenue, two in the afternoon, a little brisk, a little damp, the sky the color of gray stone. A car drew up at a building on the east side of the street to collect Louis Auchincloss for an appointment. Auchincloss--novelist, essayist, retired trusts-and-estates lawyer, nonagenarian--ventured carefully onto the sidewalk, his overcoat buttoned, cane in hand, hat in place. His agent, Mitchell Waters, who was to accompany him, opened the back door of the car, and Auchincloss, prudently grasping the top of the door, gradually installed himself. He was off to record an interview for Barnes & Noble about his oeuvre--at least, the fiction part of it, the stories of striving and money and families and idealism and decline, set in the milieu in which he was reared, the Upper East Side and Wall Street (with summertime forays to Newport and Bar Harbor). Auchincloss doesn't usually bother with promotion these days; he published a book last year, but, since he has published sixty-four since 1947, this was not as interesting an event for him as it might be for the next man. One loves all one's children, but there are limits. He sat up very straight in the back seat, gripping his cane, unblinking, magnificent Auchincloss nose aloft.

"You haven't had any more luck with that Thackeray thing, have you?" he inquired of Waters, as the car drove westward through the Park. Auchincloss had written a monograph on Thackeray.

"No," Waters said apologetically, twisting to face him.

"I think you can give that up, don't you? You must have sent it everywhere."

"I sent it to all the places I thought would do that kind of thing," Waters admitted.

"Oh, you've done more than you need, thank you for your efforts," Auchincloss said cheerfully. "Your predecessor, James Oliver Brown, said once that he was accused by a lady author of neglecting her work. He gave her a list of the publishers who had turned it down, and there were thirty-seven. And then she got mad at him again and said, 'You've disgraced me all over New York!' "

The car emerged from the Park and threaded through side streets toward the Hudson.