About Schmidt

Rating:
Summary: Terrific!
Review: "About Schmidt" is a fun and spellbinding book. I say fun because I truly enjoyed getting to know the terse and depressed Albert Schmidt, as Begley shows him coping with his wife's death, consenting to his greedy and insensitive daughter's engagement, and searching for a role after his premature retirement. And, I say spellbinding because I found the book's improbable but delightful ending plausible, at least when I was still under the spell of Begley's insightful writing. But, I know some of these Park Avenue/house-in-Bridgehampton lawyers, who are Schmidt's sort. And on reflection, I'd say, "Naahh, it would never happen." And, I'm not talking about the money.

Certainly, one of the greatest compliments a reader can render a novelist is to buy another of the novelist's books. I report that I just ordered "Mistler's Exit", which the reviews on Amazon.com describe as a worthy sequel.

Still, I have one question: What is the incident between Schmidt and his sleeping wife supposed to mean?

Rating:
Summary: a mesmerizing read
Review: About Schmidt is an absolutely mesmerizing read. I had previously read Mistler's Exit and eagerly looked forward to reading this book. It did not disappoint.

The character of Schmidt is not a likeable one but fascinating none the less. Still coming to terms with the death of his wife he doesn't know quite how to react to his daughters love for a partner in his old firm. The fact that the boyfriend is jewish does not help matters. He manages to maintain a distant relationship with her but realizes that she is repudiating her past in order to become part of his family and after marriage she will convert to Judaism.

The emotional turmoil that pervades this book is as heartrending as it is self inflicted. The moral if there is one is that one must come to terms with ones past. With the death of his wife and the loss of his daughter Schmidt's journey to self awareness and acceptance is compelling reading. If you seek a story about the soul of a man then this book is for you, warts and all.

Rating:
Summary: About Schmidt - Take me to the movie - PLEASE
Review: 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:
Summary: Old man fantasy camp.
Review: I originally bought this book almost two years ago after enjoying the movie; after attempting to start it twice, I gave up on it. Recently, I had some extra time and needed a book to read.

Why didn't I learn my lesson?

About Schmidt is the story of a recently widowed and lonely retired man with very few links left to the outside world, and who is about to lose his daughter to a Jewish man(Schmidt is mildly anti-semitic). While this could have been an interesting character study, Schmidt is fiercely unlikable character who doesn't do much and whose problems are solved in an unrealistic manner.

This lack of realism also carries over into the dialogue, with every character being able to pull these highly intellectual and rehearsed speeches out of absolutely nowhere at a moment's notice. Long-winded and hard to follow, Begley has chosen to write his dialogue without quotation marks, making things even tougher for the reader.

Begley's ego can be seen in the novel in more than just the lack of quotation marks. What begins as a rough but slightly interesting look at loneliness soon evolves into absurdity as Schmidt begins to have a relationship with a woman 40 years his junior. After the halfway point of About Schmidt, the book just turns into Schmidt being irresistible to this woman(for no apparent reason), and constant sex between the two with absolutely no tension. What little danger Schmidt could possible be in is quickly resolved, and awkwardly tied into the main story. Nothing important or interesting in About Schmidt is really resolved. Schmidt just has a lot of sex with a younger woman and he(and the book) forgets about everything else. What could have been interesting(Schmidt's 2-page visit to South America) is never explored.

I have the itching feeling that About Schmidt is just some kind of strange Louis Begley fantasy. My dislike of the author grew as I read the interview section in the back of my book; all of Begley's answers are curt and give absolutely no interesting information. Also, I just discovered that the further adventures of Schmidt can be read in the sequel to this book. Come on! Reading the synopsis of the sequel made me realize how much of an old man fantasy the Schmidt character is.

About Schmidt the movie is a wonderful and observational look at loneliness and relationships. About Schmidt the novel is garbage. Honestly, the two are not the same in even the most basic ways; you can possibly compare three IDEAS between the two works. However, don't let this book keep you from seeing the film.

Rating:
Summary: Addictive...Strange
Review: 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...

Rating:
Summary: "Was this a moment for altruism?"
Review: I recently saw the film "About Schmidt" and although I found the film only mildly interesting, I was curious enough to seek out the book. I'd never read any Louis Begley books before, but his name was not unknown to me.

I should make it perfectly clear that the book "About Schmidt" isn't much like the film--the main character, Schmidt, is a retired widower who has a rather bad relationship with his daughter, but there the similarities end. In the book, Albert Schmidt is a retired lawyer living in the Hamptons. His wife, Mary, has been dead for six months, and although, Albert and Mary did not have the perfect marriage, nonetheless, Albert is still recuperating and adjusting to retirement life alone.

To outsiders, Albert seems to have the perfect retirement. He lives in a multi-million dollar mansion (that belonged to his wife's family), doesn't appear to have any money worries, and his only daughter, Charlotte has just announced her engagement to the young dedicated lawyer, Jon Riker. Unfortunately, while Schmidt appears to lead an envious life, in reality, things are not that simple. The house is a chain around Schmidt's neck, his pension is in jeopardy, and he can't stand his future son-in-law. Plus Schmidt is lonely, but without Mary's stabilizing force, Charlotte is hostile and distant. Charlotte, who is now the only person in Schmidt's life, withdraws physically and emotionally, and she dangles herself in front of him until he agrees to Thanksgiving at the house of Jon Riker's parents. Thanksgiving with the Rikers proves to be a major turning point for Schmidt. Will Schmidt accept the role given to him? Will Schmidt begin begging for crumbs of attention from the daughter who wants to punish him, or will he forge a new, happy life for himself?

Once I started this book, I was reluctant to put it down--this is due, in part, to my rage against Charlotte and her awful in-laws, the Rikers. Schmidt is handed a scripted role "tyrannical father," and he seems powerless to act against it. Charlotte assumes the victim role and enlists the Rikers as accomplices. And their collective behaviour disgusted me beyond belief. In my opinion, Charlotte is a spoiled brat who can't wait for her dad to die so she can get the family silver. Charlotte isn't even a nasty character--she's just mealy-mouthed.

The book is not without flaws. I found Schmidt's impressive virility extremely implausible, and the author does not use quotation marks. I found it difficult at times to distinguish between a character's thoughts and spoken words. Neither of these flaws, however, were serious enough for me to give this book anything less than 5 well-deserved stars. It's been a long time since I've actually wanted to argue with fictional characters, but Begley's nauseating Charlotte and domineering self-righteous, therapist, Renata Riker pushed me to the limits. I wanted to smack the pair of them-displacedhuman.

Rating:
Summary: Book 4, movie 2
Review: Nicholson's version of Scmidt would indicate that Jack never read the book, nor did the producer or director who optioned it. The book's title, the title character and the underlying theme are all of the book that survived the transition. The Hamptons' Albert Schmidt would have spilled his entrails before ever buying a motor home. The cinematic Alfred had no life beyond his job and wife (and daughter) but the print version has a Hollywood/college friend, acquaintances from his law firm and his protege/son-in-law...and Carrie.
In print, Albert comes alive, human in all that term implies..Where the film slogged along, the book has life, sometimes tragic, sometimes giddy, but always dynamic, despite the odd cadence of run-on sentences and lack of quotation marks. I'm in the midst of the sequel now.

Rating:
Summary: An attaching character, but the story has flaws
Review: Schmidt is a grouchy old man, retired from his law practice, living in an expensive house on Long Island. He's an attaching character, and the story is interesting and compelling, but finally it is flawed. Schmidt is almost too cut and dried, and the plot is too simplistic - as he comes to terms with his daughter's impending marriage, he meets and falls in love with a twenty-something waitress.

But above all, the story ends abruptly, as if the author didn't want to finish it, and rather make another book out of it. I'll probably read the sequel, but with some trepidation.

Rating:
Summary: it is the book that has the Hollywood ending!
Review: 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.