The Lawyer Who Wrote Novels in Court

Like J. D. Salinger, wills and estates lawyer Louis Auchincloss lived ninety years and more. Unlike the reclusive Salinger, Auchincloss, who died Tuesday night, never stopped writing – novels, stories, biography and more – even as he continued to wrestle with trusts and codicils. “I think my secret is to use bits and fractions of time. I trained myself to do that. Anybody can do it. I could write sitting in surrogate’s court …."

In his novels Auchincloss sketched a vanishing world of privilege, a world of prep schools, town houses and the use and misuse of wealth.

Except, he said, that world did not vanish after all:

“I grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in a nouveau riche world, where money was spent wildly, and I’m still living in one!,” [Auchincloss] told The Financial Times in 2007. “The private schools are all jammed with long waiting lists; the clubs — all the old clubs — are jammed with long waiting lists today; the harbors are clogged with yachts; there has never been a more material society than the one we live in today.”