March 1st, 2008

“Naturally Unpopular”

“Auchincloss was a disaster from the start. He had no friends. He was a failure both as an athlete and a scholar, but, more than that, he was, as he later put it, ‘naturally unpopular,’ possessing that indefinable but unmistakable quality that signals to his peers that a boy is to be ostracized and tormented. He was sneered at, called Rebecca for the Jewish appearance of his nose, kicked and shoved.”
–From “East Side Story” by Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker February 25, 2008