About Schmidt by Louis Begley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I guess it’s my own fault. Shipwreck was not the sort of book I would have picked up on my own, but I was in a beggars can’t be choosers situation, and it turned out to be a good read. So I was eager to try more by Louis Begley. And I had seen the film version of About Schmidt, and all of the reviews said it was nothing like the book at all. So much potential, right? Guess I got my hopes up too high.
I don’t have a problem with books about old people. I actually kind of like them. And yes, I’m a middle-class mid-western kid who has an irrationally bias against the comfortably well-off living in New England—but I’m fine reading books about them. But this, this just smacked of self-indulgence. In Shipwreck an old man lays a young girl, and since it was so integral to the plot, I accepted it. But in About Schmidt, how am I supposed to believe it at all?
Because that’s what About Schmidt comes down to, for me. A retired lawyer finds himself discommoded by women (they’re either shrewish or slutty) and Jews. So, what, I’m supposed to dislike this Schmidt, therefore? Then why is every other character in the novel so unlikable too? And why (spoiler alert) is Schmidt rewarded so well in the end?
I’m hesitant to read more by Begley simply because, in the two books I’ve read by him so far, About Schmidt (1996) and Shipwreck (2003) are more or less the same (and in that respect, alas, About Schmidt has diminished my former praise for Shipwreck). At least in his later work the writing’s better. The dialogue not so amateurish, so flat, so peppered with exclamation marks.
Maybe I was just unlucky, maybe I just happened on the two books where the main character has his cake and eats it too. Maybe I should try one more Begley and see if all of his stuff isn’t just a lot of self-indulgent masturbation.