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Title: About Schmidt (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Louis Begley ISBN: 0-449-91116-0 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.44 (27 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Ah, loverly, loverly
Comment: By now you've probably seen the movie, and read reviews that say movie and book are quite different. 'S true. But they are at heart the same...gently exploring a prickly yet subtle man, leading a life of quiet desperation, less tears than wistful sighs, less chest-pounding than weary acceptance. The movie pokes you a little bit more, but I guess it has to. Plot is not the deal here, nor is dialogue, even. It's all character. Schmidt is in a period of great loss, his catastrophic losses (retirement, wife's death) ill preparation for the smaller, more damaging ones (daughter patronizes him, he realizes the relationship was based on the mother and he was just an extra). This book reminded me of Updike's 'Rabbit' series, though this one is a more pleasant read. I was glad to find this author and will read more of his. Highly, highly recommended.
Rating: 4
Summary: it is the book that has the Hollywood ending!
Comment: The differences between the book and the movie are remarkable as other reviewers have noted but if you liked the movie that makes the book all the more interesting.
The book is set in the Hamptons and New York. The protagonist, Schmidt, is a 60-year-old WASP lawyer who retires from his law firm partnership when his wife becomes terminally ill. The wife is from an old rich WASP family and works as a literary fiction editor. Schmidt's daughter, a Harvard-educated yuppie who does PR for a tobacco company, is planning to marry a junior partner at Schmidt's old firm. This horrifies Schmidt partly because his future son-in-law doesn't read books or appreciate culture but mostly because the young lawyer is Jewish. Much of the book centers on Schmidt's horror at a formerly genteel world of New York law firms and Long Island beaches, now despoiled by an influx of Jews. The last half of the book is devoted to a romance between Schmidt and a 20-year-old half-Puerto Rican waitress, complete with a Hollywood happy ending.
The screenplay transplants the action to Omaha, Nebraska. Schmidt and his wife are middle class salt-of-the-earth types. There are no Jews in evidence. The daughter is living 1000 miles away and her future husband is objectionable to Schmidt because he's a "nincompoop" and his family, rather than being successful happily married Jewish psychiatrists, consists of divorced white trash-y New Age-y folks. The movie Schmidt, played by Jack Nicholson, is unrelievedly sad and pathetic. There are no romances with young women for movie Schmidt (no romances with any women, actually).
Maybe we should give Hollywood for making a movie that is substantially darker than an already fairly dark novel.
Rating: 3
Summary: Addictive...Strange
Comment: I picked up this book because I was so struck off by the Mothman Prophecies which in my opinion was hardly worth the time. Anyway...The initial pages of this novel was hard to comprehend. Perhaps it was the fabulous literary descriptions or his fascination with the financial transactions(or was it the lack of quotation marks and my utter lack of focus sometimes?) which made it difficult to enjoy the first 50 pages of the book. But after reading more and getting acquinted with the character Shmidt, I was hooked. He seemed generally sincere if not a little reclusive. Maybe it was the times he was brought up in, maybe it was the lack of his parent's affections(as he so tried to avoid his mother's incessant disregard for this privacy, that would make anyone cuckoo too). His need for propreity and his sandwhiched alternation between visiting the diner and his palatial mansion is a treat. Fantastic stuff. Why am I so darn protective of him? Cause I think he is so much like me. I read with disbelief...
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Title: Schmidt Delivered (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Louis Begley ISBN: 0345440838 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 30 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Man Who Was Late by Louis Begley ISBN: 0449909115 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Mistler's Exit (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Louis Begley ISBN: 0449004228 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Wartime Lies by Louis Begley ISBN: 0804109907 Publisher: Ivy Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 1992 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: Shipwreck by Louis Begley ISBN: 1400040981 Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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