Just when I was feeling overwhelmed by the modern world’s frenetic pace, I relieved my frustrations with technology by reading A VOICE FROM OLD NEW YORK (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25), Louis Auchincloss’s nostalgic, almost other-worldly, recollections of an elegant life in a simpler time. Born into a family in which all eight grandparents were natives of Manhattan, his parents were members of a group defined by their inclusion in the Social Register, commonly known as “society.”   As such, Auchincloss grew up on the east side of Manhattan, summered at Bar Harbor, graduated  from Groton and Yale, and went on to a career in law, but he could never escape the itch of fiction and drama.  He eventually wrote numerous critically acclaimed novels and stories and, after he retired from the law at the age of 69, taught Shakespeare at NYU.