Books: A Case of Forced Faith

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Is Prescott's Justin a "Garden of Eden," as one student believes, or a place of "little shrill idealism," as another thinks? The reader can take his choice though Auchincloss, who apparently enjoyed his own tutelage at Groton, emphasizes the shrillness. Auchincloss is careful to disassociate his hero-headmaster from any real-life counterpart like Groton's Endicott Peabody, but Old Boys everywhere will nevertheless recognize the rector as a familiar enough type. Auchincloss may seem to have expended too much sound and fury over something so small in the universe as a prep school; a crazed old man like Lear (upon whom Prescott was obviously modeled) was at least a king. But Auchincloss writes in the manner of Henry James, finding great moral dilemmas in small events. Ever since James, novelists have delighted in exposing the ambiguities in the most high-minded behavior, and Prescott is the latest in a long line of puritans to take a beating.