Louis Auchincloss
Second Chance: Tales of Two Generations.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970. First printing. 262 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.25" x 9", is bound in black cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine and blind-stamped title to front cover. Book, with top edge of text block tinted red, is in fine condition. Price-clipped dust jacket shows light shelfwear. Jacket, with design by Adele Auchincloss, is preserved in mylar cover.
"This new volume of short stories by Louis Achincloss has perhaps a richer variety of character and setting than any of his previous books. Yet there is an underlying unity which is rare in any such collection. These stories are not only memorable in themselves; they are also -- in the contemporary jargon -- relevant. "They have been consciously written about a central theme," says the author. "They deal with what I like to think of as the identity crisis among the middle-aged and elderly in this city and its suburbs in the immediate present. They are concerned with the bewilderment in people from forty to ninety at finding themselves living in a world in which there is no general agreement not only as to what is a good life, but what is an amusing one.""