Boarding school novels, from John Knowles’s execrable “A Separate Peace” to Curtis Sittenfeld’s excellent “Prep,” have long been a staple of American popular literature, even though almost no one in America goes to boarding school. Readers simply have a persistent interest in the ribald and bittersweet experiences of young people away from home for the first time. But while Louis Auchincloss’s affected but engaging new novel “The Headmaster’s Dilemma” (Houghton Mifflin, 177 pages, $25) takes place at a boarding school, the students are a virtual afterthought — it’s the administrators who get all the attention.

The year is 1975, and New England’s august Averhill prep school has recently rescinded its Latin requirement, increased its numbers of (as one unhappy trustee puts it) “Jewish and Oriental boys,” and even gone so far as to admit a few girls. The credit for these progressive strides goes to the headmaster, Michael Sayre, a man to whom Mr. Auchincloss has given the soul of Billy Budd, the mind of Atticus Finch, and the Vietnam-service-then-protest credentials of John Kerry. This is a man of such hideous probity that he demurs from using “the fword” because, he says, “I heard it so overused in my naval years that I resolved never to say it except in the very rare cases when it meets the bill.” Considering the impression a swear word made on the man, I’m guessing he didn’t see much action over there.

I’m happy to say, however, that “The Headmaster’s Dilemma” shifts frequently — and deftly — from character to character, so that after its protagonist’s worshipful introduction (“a brilliant record … possessed of striking good looks … women were apt to call him beautiful”), the pages that require a reader to be in his company are relatively few. This is good; I was willing to admire him when he wasn’t actually around. Among many others, the supporting cast of characters includes Michael’s wife Ione (“beautiful, charming”) and his conservative, millionaire nemesis on the board of trustees, Donald Spencer (“an egg-shaped, balding head … a smaller than usual penis”), for whom Mr. Auchincloss has created clever, convincing histories.

Donald is the novel’s scheming villain — he resents and reviles Michael but, though he tries gamely, cannot find a wedge sturdy enough to force him out of Averhill. But wait! An evening of semi-consensual sodomy between two adolescent boys has resulted in a lawsuit against the school and rape accusations in the news. What better time to mount a careful smear campaign against the liberal headmaster? The efforts of Donald and his coconspirators to oust Michael from Averhill comprise much of the novel’s generally very interesting narrative, as Mr. Auchincloss introduces the reader to a series of characters who each contribute some crucial piece of the action.

In sketching out the lives and motives of these characters, Mr. Auchincloss from time to time throws down an astonishingly brazen cliché. Take, for example, Elihu Castor, alleged victim of the dorm room rape. Elihu is described as having grown up in the care of a weak, acquiescent father and a grotesquely doting mother (“Oh, my poor darling ravished child! … Tell me, tell me, my sweety boy, what can Mama do to console you and make you happy again and safe again and her own lovey-dovey innocent babe?”) who fostered in her son a fondness for “fabulous” dollhouses. And then, sure enough: “Members of the football team in the gymnasium showers struck him as splendid creatures, and he liked to imagine them in erotic poses or engaged in erotic acts.”

Mr. Auchincloss’s dialogue is a little troublesome, too. He seems utterly disinterested in colloquial speech, and that’s fair enough, but did anybody really say things like, “He told me he had sold the pornographia collection … for a cracking sum” in 1975? The book is more entertaining to read if you pretend, as I did, that everyone is talking in a British accent.

But while some characters are quick sketches and the dialogue is amusingly odd, the fundamental architecture of the novel is solid. Obviously a shrewd and confident storyteller, Mr. Auchincloss also has an enviable facility with what might be called the substructure of the narrative — the seamless integration of an overarching theme (in this case, the struggle of honesty and progressive ideas against connivance and stifling moral conservatism) into an illustrative fiction. It bears noting that his most famous boarding school novel, “The Rector of Justin,” came out in 1964, and he’s been writing steadily since then. “The Headmaster’s Dilemma” is the work of an author who is at once both prone to anachronism and irreproachably proficient at fitting together the most fundamental elements of a novel.

Mr. Antosca last wrote for these pages on the novelist Sebastian Faulks. His first novel, “Fires,” was published by Impetus Press.