There may come a time when the “great awokening” subsides, one when the social justice warriors are driven out of the cultural elite. In such a case, later generations may want to understand the world before “woke,” just as scholars today sift through the literary remains of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans to see what life in the ancient world was really like. The novels of Louis Auchincloss may show us what American life—or at least an important elite slice of it—was like and chronicle America’s golden age as it turned to dross. As Auchincloss wrote:

The real and formidable influence of society was, fittingly, social. Those inside society’s ranks controlled the private schools, the clubs, the country clubs, the subscription dances for the young, the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, as well as the larger banks and law firms. It is commonly said that they have been relegated to the past. That is not so. They have simply lost their monopoly; they have had to move over and share their once closely guarded powers with the new rich, who are quite willing to spare the older generation so long as they are allowed to copy, and perhaps enhance, their style.

Generally, there were two kinds of reaction to Auchincloss’s work. In the 1960s, when he first started to rise in literary prominence, other authors of his generation such as Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal thought that his fictional engagement with law, industry, and the rich was