Littlewoods LXdirect About Schmidt Author: Louis Begley Trade Paperback Usually ships in 24 hours Delivery is subject to warehouse availability. Shipping delays may occur if we receive more orders than stock. Our Price: $21.00 You could save $2.10 (10%) with our iREWARDS Program Ordering is 100% secure . Spend $39 or more at chapters.indigo.ca and your order ships free!. ( Details ) Dimensions: 304 Pages | ISBN: 0449911160 Published: September 1997 | Published by Fawcett Book Group chapters.indigo Review Proud, traditional and impeccably organized, Albert Schmidt is a button-down lawyer of the old school. But now, after years of careful management, his life is slowly unraveling. As he gropes for resolutions to his problems, he finds unexpected hope in an intense passion that comes out of the blue From the Publisher "A fine new novel... The great pleasure of reading Louis Begley [is] his exceptional literary intelligence." The New York Times Book Review "Begley again demonstrates that he can reveal the complexities of society and personality with a clear eye and graceful style... Morethan meets the requirements of graceful fiction." Time Proud, traditional, and impeccably organized, Albert Schmidt is a button-down lawyer of the old school. But now, after years of carefulmanagement, his life is slowly unraveling. His beloved wife has recently died. He stumbles--or is he being pushed?--into earlyretirement. And his daughter, his only child, is planning to marry a man Schmidt cannot approve of, for reasons he can scarcely admit, even to himself. As Schmidt gropes for resolutions, he finds unexpected hope in an intense passion that comes out of the blue. Set in the Hamptons and Manhattan, infused with black humor and startling eroticism, About Schmidt is both a meditation on lonelinessand on the power of romance to unlock the most impenetrable recesses of the heart. "Comical, tough, unsparing; it is as if Louis Auchincloss had exchanged the kid gloves for brass knuckles... Interesting and nervy." The Washington Post Book World "A powerful story of a man’s fall from grace... The Remains of the Day come[s] to mind." Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Stunning." Los Angeles Times Book Review About the Author Louis Begley is the author of four novels. Wartime Lies , which was written when he was in his mid-fifties, was followed by The Man Who Was Late, As Max Saw It , and About Schmidt . He is currently finishing a fifth novel. Begley has another life, that of a lawyer. He is a senior partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, one of America’s most prestigious firms, and is the head of its international practice. Wartime Lies was the winner of the PEN Hemingway Award, The Irish Times Aer Lingus International Prize, and the Prix Medicis Etranger, France’s most coveted prize for fiction in translation. It was a National Book Award, Los Angeles Times Book Award, and National Book Critics’ Circle Award finalist. About Schmidt was likewise a National Book Critics’ Circle Award and Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist. Begley has received the American Academy of Letters prize for literature and numerous other awards. Begley was born in Stryj, a town that was Polish and is now part of Ukraine, in 1933. Being Jewish, he survived the German occupation by pretending, with the help of false identification papers, to be a Catholic Pole. Begley and his parents left Poland in 1946 and settled in New York in 1947. Begley graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and after having served in the U.S. army, from Harvard Law School in 1959. Since 1974, Begley has been married to Anka Muhlstein, a prize-winning French author of biographies and other historical works. The combined family includes five grown children. His are a painter and sculptor, a book critic, and an art historian. Hers are a foreign relations specialist and a television journalist. Tips for your Reading Group A Conversation with Louis Begley Q: You grew up with fear, danger, and deception. Has your success in life changed your outlook on mankind? Are you fully able to enjoy your successes, or are they tinged with other emotions? A: I can’t give you a yes or no answer. I’m a complicated person, and my responses to things that happen to me are seldom simple. I certainly enjoy doing well and being told that I have done well, but I am always conscious of what seems the fundamental futility of work, efforts, successes, and failures. Q: Have you always had the desire to write? What really kept you from starting earlier? I know you have said you’ve been busy creating a life. A: I think it’s really quite simple. I used to write short stories whenI was in high school, and in college I also wrote occasional poems. But toward the end of my junior year in college I came to the conclusion that I didn’t have anything in particular to say and that it was better that I stop writing. Q: In Dangling Man Saul Bellow writes about how overwhelming it is to face one’s inadequacies; to discover whether one has any talent or ability. Were you afraid to sit down and start writing? A: I don’t think that I was "afraid" to start writing. At the time I decided I had nothing to say I was, unlike Saul Bellow, someone without a "current milieu." I did not think I wanted to write about a "milieu" or a history I believed I had left behind me in Poland. I realized that I knew nothing about this country. Perhaps if I had been more imaginative, I would have realized that one could write about being nowhere, and knowing nothing, and being in a state of confusion. Perhaps someone could have suggested it to me. But, as it turned out, I did not think of it myself, and no one told me that one could write about being lost in a fog. Q: How did you get out of that fog? A: The fog lifted. I began to understand this country. And, I also began to understand better the past. Perhaps in that respect, I was slow to mature. That’s very possible. Q: What triggered About Schmidt ? Is it at all autobiographical? A: Of course not. Q: Is there any significance in your having chosen the word "about" for the title? I’ve read a reviewer mention that "re" or "about" is a legal term that "would invite us to treat Schmidt as a case for judgment or prosecution." A: The title means what it says. Q: I also found it very interesting that you write narrative without using quotation marks. Where does that particular technique come from? A: It comes from my particular dislike of the way quotation marks look on a page. I think they look like little bugs. Q: What sort of pressure have you felt from receiving such good reviews on your first novel and your subsequent ones? Have you felt any pressure from yourself or from others expecting you to continue writing? A: When I wrote my first novel, I came to the conclusion immediately that I needed to write another one so that no one would be able to say that I was a one-book writer. Then I found that I liked writing. Q: Was it difficult for you to write about anti-Semitism? A: No, I found it amusing. Q: What’s next? A: I am finishing another novel. Review Quotes "Novels are supposed to tell something about the real world, but in most novels about the upper classes money figures only in the decor, the things that money can buy. Begley’s books have the great virtue of knowing about money itself, how it’s acquired and kept.... Begley’s previous books gravitated rather anxiously toward Europe, which was seen as the source both of any satisfactory culture and of appalling historical and personal tragedy. About Schmidt turns toward America and the present, exchanging an interest in suffering and failure, with its dangerous possibilities of self-magnification, for comic romance, with its emphasis not on finality but on life going on anyway." -- The New York Review of Books "Albert Schmidt is another of Begley’s brilliant impostors, though this time an impostor unaware of his charade. He is the cultivated man--out of Harvard, no less--unable to acknowledge his subtle strain of Jew-hating.... About Schmidt amounts to an intriguing about-face for Begley.... By blinding his flawed hero, Begley has painted an indelible portrait of a man with a hole where his soul should be." -- Newsday "What emerges... is a poignant study of aging centered on a man whose flaws become both sinister and sympathetic. In an era of encroaching coarseness, where civility dissolves... Schmidt summons in us remembrance of elegance past.... Is he a cultured patrician, a supercilious snob or both? Whichever he is, Begley succeeds wonderfully in making us care." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Consistently subtle and intelligent, this novel ends by getting under your skin despite the unlikability of its protagonist. You are left with the feeling of having found out the complex truth behind the impeccable facade of someone you might never notice if you met him at a party." -- The New York Times Book Review "If the sorrows of old ’Schmidtie’ strike us as somewhat short of fully tragic, less than deeply moving, it’s clearly intentional; Begley means for us to keep our distance--to withhold our sympathies--from his smug, officious hero.... It’s this that makes Begley’s novel most interesting and nervy." -- Washington Post/Book World "In the end, Begley has created a terribly funny, touching, infuriating and complex character in Schmidt, whose self-deceptions and imprisonment by his own world-view stand not only as a devastating portrait of a disappearing world but also sound a strangely evocative cautionary tale." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review "In what could be called a novel of bad manners, Begley again demonstrates that he can reveal the complexities of society and personality with a clear eye and graceful style. Schmidt may not live up to today’s strict standards of political correctness, but he more than meets the requirements of convincing fiction." -- Time Info Desk iREWARDS Program About Our Company Affiliate Opportunities Careers Contact Us Corporate Sales Gift Certificates Privacy Policy Shipping Rates Store Locations Wish List chapters.indigo.ca: books Shopping Bag | Account Centre | Wish List | Help iREWARDS Program | Corporate Sales | Store Locations All Products Books DVD Video Gifts Books Advanced Search Search Tips About this Book chapters.indigo Review From the Publisher About the Author Read from the Book Tips for your Reading Group Review Quotes Fiction Action Suspense Anthologies Classics Erotica Fairy Tales and Folklore Family Sagas Gay Ghost Graphic Novels Historical Horror Humorous Legal Lesbian Literary Medical Movie and Television Tie-Ins Religious Short Stories War Westerns Browse Books View all Categories . 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