Louis Begley

Last updated
Louis Begley
Louis Begley 001.jpg
Begley in 2003
Born
Ludwik Begleiter

October 6, 1933 (1933-10-06) (age 89)
Spouses
Sally Higginson
(m. 1956;div. 1970)
(m. 1974)
Children3 (including Adam Begley)
Website https://www.louisbegley.com

Louis Begley (born Ludwik Begleiter; October 6, 1933) is a Jewish American Polish-born novelist. He is best known for writing the semi-autobiographical Holocaust novel Wartime Lies (1991) and the Schmidt trilogy: About Schmidt (1996), Schmidt Delivered (2000) and Schmidt Steps Back (2012).

Contents

Life

Early life

Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in Stryi, then part of the Polish Republic and now in Ukraine, the only child of a physician. [1] Using forged identity papers that enabled them to pretend to be Polish Catholics, he and his mother survived the Nazi occupation in which many Polish Jews were killed.

He lived with his mother at first in Lwów, and then in Warsaw until the end of the August 1944 Warsaw Uprising. By the time World War II ended, they were in Kraków, where they were reunited with Begley’s father.

During the school year 1945/46, Begley attended the Jan Sobieski school in Kraków. It was his first experience of formal instruction since kindergarten during the Soviet occupation of Stryi, which followed the German invasion of western Poland in 1939.

The family left Poland in the fall of 1946 for Paris and, in late February 1947, left Paris for New York City, arriving on March 3. Shortly afterward, the family name was changed from Begleiter to Begley. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, Begley studied English literature at Harvard College (AB '54, summa cum laude), where he worked at The Advocate , an undergraduate literary magazine. [1] Service in the United States Army followed, the last 18 months of it in Göppingen, Germany, with the 9th Division.

Family

In 1956, Begley married Sally Higginson (1928-2017). They divorced in May 1970. In March 1974, Begley married his present wife, Anka Muhlstein, a historian and biographer born in Paris. Begley has three children: painter and sculptor Peter Begley, writer Adam Begley, and novelist and art historian Amey Larmore (who writes under the pen name Laura Moore) [2] [3] He also has two stepsons from Muhlstein’s previous marriage: Robert Dujarric, the director of the Institute for Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University Japan Campus in Tokyo, and Stéphane Dujarric, the chief spokesman for United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

Career

Lawyer

In 1956 Begley entered Harvard Law School. Upon his graduation in 1959 (LL.B. magna cum laude), he joined the New York firm now known as Debevoise & Plimpton as an associate. He became a partner January 1, 1968, while serving at the newly established Paris office. Upon his return to New York, Begley headed the firm’s international practice for many years, his work being concentrated on large projects in Australia, Algeria, Latin America, Canada and Europe, for Japanese, European and Brazilian as well as American clients. He retired from the firm on January 1, 2004.

Novels

Begley's first novel, Wartime Lies , was based on his childhood as a Polish Jew who escaped the Nazi death camps. It won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award in 1991 and the Prix Médicis étranger in 1992. There have been attempts to adapt it into a film by Stanley Kubrick and William Monahan, but this has not come to fruition to date. [4]

Begley's 1996 novel About Schmidt was the basis for the eponymous 2002 film by Alexander Payne. Payne made many changes from the book, though Begley commented in an essay in The New York Times that "my most important themes were treated with great intelligence and sensitivity" and felt the movie was "a gem of original filmmaking." [5]

Begley’s first nine novels have been published by Alfred A. Knopf, and republished by Ballantine Publishing Company. His most recent works have been published as hardcover by Nan A. Talese and reissued as paperback by Ballantine Publishing Company. His novels have been translated into fifteen languages.

Non-fiction

In 2001, a selection of Begley's essays and journalistic pieces was published by Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt) under the title Das Gelobte Land.

Venedig Unter Vier Augen, a book on Venetian themes by Anka Muhlstein and Louis Begley, was published in 2003 by Marebuch Verlag (Hamburg). It was also published in English in 2005 by Haus Publishing under the title Venice for Lovers , and reissued under the same title by Grove Press in the U.S..

Zwischen Fakten und Fiktionen, the text of Begley's lectures given as part of Poetik Dozentur at Heidelberg University in November 2006, was published by Suhrkamp in January 2008.

The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head, Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay was published by Atlas & Co. in 2008.

Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters was published by Yale University Press in 2009.

Awards

Prizes and awards include: The Irish Times-Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize, National Book Award Finalist, National Book Critics’ Circle Finalist, PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award, Prix Médicis Étranger, Jeanette-Schocken-Pries, Bremerhavener Bürgerpreis für Literatur, American Academy of Letters Award in Literature, and Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung Literaturpreis.

Other distinctions

From 1993 to 1995, Begley was president of PEN American Center. He served on PEN's board of directors from 1992-2001.

He is a member of the American Philosophical Society [6] and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He is a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et Lettres Philosophical Society, and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The University of Heidelberg conferred on him in 2008 the degree of D. Phil., honoris causa.

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernest Hemingway</span> American author and journalist (1899–1961)

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which included his iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">T. C. Boyle</span> American novelist and short-story writer

Thomas Coraghessan Boyle is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published nineteen novels and more than 150 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988, for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ha Jin</span> Chinese-American writer

Jin Xuefei is a Chinese-American poet and novelist using the pen name Ha Jin (哈金). Ha comes from his favorite city, Harbin. His poetry is associated with the Misty Poetry movement.

<i>A Moveable Feast</i> 1964 memoir by Ernest Hemingway

A Moveable Feast is a 1964 memoir and belles-lettres by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling expat journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s. It was published posthumously. The book details Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson and his associations with other cultural figures of the Lost Generation in Interwar France.

<i>The Sun Also Rises</i> 1926 novel by Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, his first, that portrays American and British expatriates who travel along the Camino de Santiago from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona and watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work" and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by Scribner's. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marquis de Custine</span> French aristocrat and writer (1790–1857)

Astolphe-Louis-Léonor, Marquis de Custine was a French aristocrat and writer who is best known for his travel writing, in particular his account of his visit to Russia, La Russie en 1839. This work documents not only Custine's travels through the Russian Empire, but also the social fabric, economy and way of life during the reign of Nicholas I.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Victor, baron de Besenval de Brünstatt</span>

Pierre Victor, baron de Besenval de Brünstatt was Swiss military officer in French service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hadley Richardson</span> First wife of Ernest Hemingway

Elizabeth Hadley Richardson was the first wife of American author Ernest Hemingway. The two married in 1921 after a courtship of less than a year, and moved to Paris within months of being married. In Paris, Hemingway pursued a writing career, and through him Richardson met other expatriate American and British writers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suhrkamp Verlag</span> German publishing house

Suhrkamp Verlag is a German publishing house, established in 1950 and generally acknowledged as one of the leading European publishers of fine literature. Its roots go back to the "arianized" part of the S. Fischer Verlag. In January 2010 the headquarters of the company moved from Frankfurt to Berlin. Suhrkamp declared bankruptcy in 2013, following a longstanding legal conflict between its owners. In 2015, economist Jonathan Landgrebe was announced as director.

Charles Henry Whiting, was a British writer and military historian and with some 350 books of fiction and non-fiction to his credit, under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms including Duncan Harding, Ian Harding, John Kerrigan, Leo Kessler, Klaus Konrad, K.N. Kostov, and Duncan Stirling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Hemingway</span> American writer, son of Ernest Hemingway

John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway was a Canadian-American fly fisherman, conservationist, and writer. He was the son of American novelist and Nobel Prize-laureate Ernest Hemingway.

<i>Wartime Lies</i> 1991 novel by Louis Begley

Wartime Lies is a semi-autobiographical novel by Louis Begley first published in 1991. Set in Poland during the years of the Nazi occupation, it is about two members of an upper middle class Jewish family, a young woman and her nephew, who avoid persecution as Jews by assuming Catholic identities. Time and again the boy, who narrates the story from some remote point in time, reminisces about how he learned at an early age to lie in order to survive. Thus, his whole adult life is founded on the "wartime lies" of his childhood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Krüger (writer)</span> German writer, publisher and translator (born 1943)

Michael Krüger is a German writer, publisher and translator.

Adriana Hunter is a British translator of French literature. She is known for translating over 60 French novels, such as Fear and Trembling by Amélie Nothomb or The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa. She has been short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize twice. In 2011 she won the Scott Moncrieff Prize for her translation of Véronique Olmi's Beside the Sea. In 2013, she won the 27th Annual Translation Prize founded by the French-American Foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation for her translation of Electrico W by Hervé Le Tellier (2013). She is also a contributor to Words Without Borders. She lives in Kent, England. In 2017, she became the English translator for new comic albums in the Asterix series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adèle d'Osmond</span> French aristocrat and writer

Adèle d'Osmond, Comtesse de Boigne was a French aristocrat and writer. She was born and raised at the Palace of Versailles before her family went into exile in 1790 during the French Revolution. She returned to Paris in 1804 during the reign of Napoleon, and became prominent in society after the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814. She kept a brilliant salon in Paris in the 1830s and 1840s, and was later known for her memoirs describing life under the July Monarchy.

Anka Muhlstein is a historian and biographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alain Claude Sulzer</span> Swiss writer and translator (born 1953)

Alain Claude Sulzer is a Swiss writer and translator. He was born in Riehen, near Basel. Sulzer became a librarian, but also translated from French, for example parts of Julien Green's diaries. As a journalist he wrote for various newspapers and magazines, including the NZZ. He has published more than ten books and has won a number of literary awards in the process, such as the Rauris Literature Prize (1984), or the Hermann-Hesse-Preis (2009).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anatol Mühlstein</span> Polish diplomat (1889-1957)

Anatol Mühlstein was a Polish diplomat and writer. He served as Chargé d'affaires for the Polish embassy in Brussels in 1927, and as Minister Plenipotentiary for the Polish embassy in Paris 1930–36.

Marc Cholodenko, is a French novelist, translator, poet, screenwriter and dialoguist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antoni Chołoniewski</span> Polish journalist, national activist.(1872-1924)

Antoni Chołoniewski-Myszka (1872-1924), was a Polish journalist, publicist and a national activist.

References

  1. 1 2 James Atlas (June 2002). "Louis Begley, The Art of Fiction No. 172". The Paris Review .
  2. Peter Begley's website
  3. Laura Moore's website
  4. Claude Brodesser (2005-05-10). "WIP a 'Wartime' recruit: Warner catches WWII 'Lies'". Variety . Retrieved 2007-01-06.
  5. Begley, Louis (January 19, 2003). "My Novel, the Movie: My Baby Reborn; 'About Schmidt' Was Changed, But Not Its Core". The New York Times.
  6. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-11-30.