A Wolff in Chic Clothing

The Duke of Deception By Geoffrey Wolff Random House, 288 pp., $12.95 Duke Wolff drove expensive cars with impressive and unfamiliar names. He dressed elaborately, in the casual pseudo-English style affected on Eastern campuses. He resided at grand hotels. He dropped references to an education that took him from Groton to Yale (Bones, of course) and then to the Sorbonne, with a degree from the Sorbonne’s school of aeronautics. He had lived long enough in England, during the war, to make a noise which many Americans took for an English accent, unless they had lived in England themselves. He did not pay for his cars, his clothes, his houses, or his suites. He did not attend Groton or Yale or the Sorbonne, which does not grant engineering degrees from its school of aeronautics, which does not exist.

Readers of this magazine, if they see many periodicals, will have seen numerous notices of The Duke of Deception. Most reviewers have praised it, and it is an excellent book—but if reviewers had not liked it at all, they would have reviewed it anyway. Its subject matter guarantees attention: Duke Wolff is a liar, cheater,braggart, phony, and would-be con-man.

DH

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The Duke of Deception By Geoffrey Wolff Random House, 288 pp., $12.95 Duke Wolff drove expensive cars with impressive and unfamiliar names. He dressed elaborately, in the casual pseudo-English style affected on Eastern campuses. He resided at grand hotels. He dropped references to an education that took him from Groton to Yale (Bones, of course) and then to the Sorbonne, with a degree from the Sorbonne’s school of aeronautics. He had lived long enough in England, during the war, to make a noise which many Americans took for an English accent, unless they had lived in England themselves. He did not pay for his cars, his clothes, his houses, or his suites. He did not attend Groton or Yale or the Sorbonne, which does not grant engineering degrees from its school of aeronautics, which does not exist.

Readers of this magazine, if they see many periodicals, will have seen numerous notices of The Duke of Deception. Most reviewers have praised it, and it is an excellent book—but if reviewers had not liked it at all, they would have reviewed it anyway. Its subject matter guarantees attention: Duke Wolff is a liar, cheater,braggart, phony, and would-be con-man.