I Come As a Thief

by Louis Auchincloss

This is a story of guilt and expiation by one of the modern American masters of the novel. The time is right now and the place is Manhattan, with an occasional trip to the country where the rich and those on the way up repair for weekends and holidays. Tony Lowder is the able and good-looking grandson of an Irish immigrant who prospered as a contractor and left behind a family that has been running downhill. Except Tony, who has a promising future in politics. He has married the only child of an old, correct New York family, he and Lee have two normally difficult children, and she tolerates her husband's continuing affair with wealthy Joan Conway, who was Tony's mistress before his marriage. There is always pressure for more money, and it has become acute with a drop in the market. The novel is a brilliant exploration of what happens to the inner experience as well as the surface relationships of these sophisticated and intelligent people when the agony of temptation, not resisted, makes its way into the center of their lives. The temptation emerges from a brokerage house under investigation and some Mafia figures ready to pay for a slight change in timing that may rescue the firm. What follows shocks the city and drives these people against each other even as it involves them more deeply. Behind his intimate knowledge of the world of lofty social position and power, Louis Auchincloss's basic concern is with the human being shaped through problems of moral choice. He follows the intricate paths that his characters must trace with the skillful ease that makes an absorbing story. All the while he is reaching toward a fundamental question of what happens to people when their loyalties are put under unexpected acute pressure, particularly to the man who loves everyone the same.

Genres: Leadership, Fiction

231 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Louis Stanton Auchincloss was an American novelist, historian, and essayist.

Among Auchincloss's best-known books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents, Portrait in Brownstone, and East Side Story. Other well-known novels include The Rector of Justin, the tale of a renowned headmaster of a school like Groton trying to deal with changing times, and The Embezzler, a look at white-collar crime. Auchincloss is known for his closely observed portraits of old New York and New England society.

Reviews

[Charles Moody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Louis Auchincloss wrote dozens of novels and short story collections about moneyed Manhattan and New England society of the mid-20th century. He considered Edith Wharton, who was the subject of one of his nonfiction books, his greatest influence, and his novels have much in common with hers. As characters test the boundaries of their upbringing in their professional and romantic lives, their social circle’s enforcement devices – often previously latent – spring into subtle operation. For Wharton, writing a half-century earlier, being dropped by decent New York society was itself frightful enough to provide tension that sustained her stories. Auchincloss is more concerned with capturing and exploring the psychology of these confrontations with rules, whether the rules are unwritten social ones, murky moral boundaries, or actual written laws. We may not care as much whether the protagonists are able to realize the brownstone and country-club life that their parents and grandparents raised them for, but we care deeply whether they emerge without having betrayed their deepest morals, and with hopes of a life of purpose.

I Come As a Thief centers around Tony Lowder, a capable young lawyer of working-class background who seems to be on track for a conventionally bright future. He has married the daughter of a proper New York family, has a happy home life with two children, and has good political prospects. Trouble, and temptation, come when he and his law partner face ruin from financial speculation, and Tony can save them by failing to enforce the securities laws against a company with mob ties. Tony is drawn to the chance, as much as an intellectual exercise as anything. Can he commit this one victimless illegality without its having a deepening corrupting effect? Is the loss of honor fatal and irreversible, or do we remain in charge of our own destinies? As Auchincloss weaves in episodes from Tony’s past, we gradually see that these questions have been lurking behind other decisive moments in his life as well. Eventually, Tony must decide whether he is more afraid of losing the future he has worked for, or living in a world without a moral structure.

Unfortunately, by the latter half of his career Auchincloss seemed at odds with popular tastes and literary standards. His novels were sometimes dismissed as dealing with a narrow sliver of society irrelevant to most people, or were criticized as being too polished and sophisticated, without the gritty realism demanded by contemporary readers. His persona was also all wrong for the era; when we envision a novelist, we picture Hemingway or Faulkner wrestling with their demons and pouring their very blood into their writing. Auchincloss was a practicing Wall Street attorney who jotted down chapters while in court waiting for his cases to be called, or else wrote them in leisure moments from his Park Avenue apartment.

I think I Come As a Thief is a good example of why these criticisms are misplaced. Auchincloss’s writing is graceful, engaging, and wise. His novels seem effortless in part because he was such a skilled writer, but they are far from shallow; in I Come As a Thief he delves into some timeless and universal questions in a memorable way.

[Mary Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting. Everyone is so self-absorbed and want Tony all to themselves and he is so much to so many people that he is nothing to himself. He destroys his life in order to remake it but has no idea how he wants to live or even really of what he is doing. It is really kind of sad in an absent sort of way. This book will definitely make you think.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read many of Auchincloss' books, with almost equal admiration and dismay. His is a very specific world - moneyed Old New York, resentful of arrivistes and those clambering their way up the social ladder. Every salutary figure in his books is inevitably listed in the Social Register. The anti-heroes are most always those who have married slightly above their station, and typically pay a price for their social aspirations.

Auchincloss was without doubt the last great novelist focused on this world; only playwright A.R. Gurney similarly probes into the depleted WASP aristocracy, and his works are generally much more forgiving of their failed subjects.

At his most judgmental, in this novel and similarly in DIARY OF A YUPPIE, Auchincloss can come across as a terrible scold and an unrepentant snob. ALL of that being said, he is never less than a wonderful portrait painter. His subject this time is Tony Lowder, up from a big Irish family, who has married a nice girl from a prominent Manhattan family, and has conducted a not-so-discreet affair with a much wealthier woman, one whom he could never have afforded as wife. When his business threatens to smash, he and his partner Max Leonard (who worships Tony) resort to several ethical violations. The Irishman and the Jew - there is a troubling sense that the author thinks they can scarcely help themselves, being of lesser cloth than their betters.

There are much better books in Auchincloss' canon. I particularly advise the New York stories collections, and his best novel, THE RECTOR OF JUSTIN. If this was you first of his works, it would likely be your last, and he deserves better attention than that.