September 28, 1992
Douglas's ruthlessly candid history of his parents is a significant sociological study as well as a wrenching memoir of great poignancy, for Archibald and Eleanor Douglas were members of the highest stratum of American society, made up of people who had inherited money and who viewed themselves as the nation's aristocrats. They felt no need to accomplish anything to prove themselves because they had been given high status by birth. Archie was a handsome, charming, intelligent bon vivant whom a psychiatrist also found to be shrewd and aggressive; although a poor student, he became a stockbroker through contacts he made at Yale and also served five terms in the New York State Assembly. Eleanor was beautiful enough to be a model, a vivacious and charming debutante when the two were married in 1940. Leaving their children to the care of nannies and other servants, the two devoted their lives to parties, to liquor and to pills--two vacuous individuals filling up their time. Eleanor killed herself in 1953. Archie presumably died in late 1962. His son, who is now a freelance writer, visited his drunken, maudlin father that Christmas at his Tuxedo Park, N.Y., mansion. Two days later, he went into the hospital with stomach pains. I never saw him again. A friend summed up the lives of this couple aptly: They could have been anything. It was such a waste. Photos.
March 24, 2008
In his autobiographical Class: The Wreckage of an American Family
, Douglas shed light on the dysfunctions of class in America. Returning again to his own story in this book, Douglas explores the experiences of his high school cohort at St. Paul's School, class of 1962. Forty years back, when Douglas attended this preppy boarding school, it was not only all male, but “a hard place... meant to harden and deprive.” The snobbish, Brooks Brothers–clad “Regs” (for regular guys) routinely humiliated the boys who didn't fit in; teachers freely abused students as well. For many, coming from generations of successful alums, St. Paul's was an “expectations mill,” the pressure to succeed relentless. The last classmate Douglas visited, former presidential candidate John Kerry, was one of the few unscarred by St. Paul's, although he's also the one interviewee Douglas couldn't connect with: their interview boiled down to “a senator not known for his looseness being solicited by an old classmate he only vaguely remembered who wanted to talk about old times... a bad script.”