Trevor Butterworth talks with Louis Auchincloss. An excerpt:
“I had a happy childhood until I went to Groton,” says Auchincloss, “and then I had two years of festering misery.” He knuckled down, studied hard and did well, but 70 years on still finds the experience unresolved. “I don’t know,” he muses, “which did me more harm, doing badly – or doing well.”
The idea that prep school (like public school in Britain) is a mixed blessing – an experience which the rest of one’s life is spent trying to decipher – has been a boon for those who went on to become writers, and a vicarious thrill of loathing and envy for readers.
[HT: Arts & Letters Daily ]
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