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As Max Saw It
"[A] perfectly constructed novel.... The time is 1974, and Max, who is fleeing from the wreckage of his first marriage, is a summer-house guest on Lake Como, where he encounters the two characters who will shape his life over the next 20 Charlie Swan, a Harvard classmate from the 1950s turned famous architect...and Toby, a poised and polymorphous teenager who is soon to become Charlie's protege and lover." -- Time
This edition includes an excerpt from Louis Begley's Memories of a Marriage.
This edition includes an excerpt from Louis Begley's Memories of a Marriage.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
2 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Louis Begley
44 books85 followersLouis Begley is an American novelist.
Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in Stryi at the time part of Poland and now in Ukraine, as the only child of a physician. He is a survivor of the Holocaust due to the multiple purchases of Aryan papers by his mother and constant evasion of the Nazis. They survived by pretending to be Polish Catholic. The family left Poland in the fall of 1946 and settled in New York in March 1947. Begley studied English Literature at Harvard College (AB '54, summa cum laude), and published in the Harvard Advocate. Service in the United States Army followed. In 1956 Begley entered Harvard Law School and graduated in 1959 (LL.B. magna cum laude).
Upon graduation from Law School, Begley joined the New York firm of Debevoise & Plimpton as an associate; became a partner in January 1968; became of counsel in January 2004; and retired in January 2007. From 1993 to 1995, Begley was also president of PEN American Center. He remains a member of PEN's board of directors, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
His wife of 30 years, Anka Muhlstein, was honoured by the French Academy for her work on La Salle, and received critical acclaim for her book A Taste for Freedom: The Life of Astolphe de Custine.
His first novel, Wartime Lies, was written in 1989. It won the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first work of fiction in 1991. The French version, Une éducation polonaise, won the Prix Médicis International in 1992. He has also won several German literature prizes, including the Jeanette Schocken Prize in 1995 and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Literature Prize in 2000.
His novel About Schmidt was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jack Nicholson.
Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in Stryi at the time part of Poland and now in Ukraine, as the only child of a physician. He is a survivor of the Holocaust due to the multiple purchases of Aryan papers by his mother and constant evasion of the Nazis. They survived by pretending to be Polish Catholic. The family left Poland in the fall of 1946 and settled in New York in March 1947. Begley studied English Literature at Harvard College (AB '54, summa cum laude), and published in the Harvard Advocate. Service in the United States Army followed. In 1956 Begley entered Harvard Law School and graduated in 1959 (LL.B. magna cum laude).
Upon graduation from Law School, Begley joined the New York firm of Debevoise & Plimpton as an associate; became a partner in January 1968; became of counsel in January 2004; and retired in January 2007. From 1993 to 1995, Begley was also president of PEN American Center. He remains a member of PEN's board of directors, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
His wife of 30 years, Anka Muhlstein, was honoured by the French Academy for her work on La Salle, and received critical acclaim for her book A Taste for Freedom: The Life of Astolphe de Custine.
His first novel, Wartime Lies, was written in 1989. It won the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first work of fiction in 1991. The French version, Une éducation polonaise, won the Prix Médicis International in 1992. He has also won several German literature prizes, including the Jeanette Schocken Prize in 1995 and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Literature Prize in 2000.
His novel About Schmidt was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jack Nicholson.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 21, 2015
I've read Begley's Memories of a Marriage a couple of years ago and it made enough of a good impression to try another one of his. Had the situation been reversed, I definitely don't think I would have chosen to read more of an author based on this one. Begley has a way with words, an ability to turn out a nice phrase and his succinct storytelling is most admirable, but here it just wasn't enough to save the book and it made for a weirdly reader's digest like version of this tale of love and friendship of a bunch of not particularly likeable, opulent, pretentious, fairly stereotypical gay and gayish characters. The tone vacillated between dispassionate and homoerotic and there were simply not enough pages or emotions on pages to really care or want to. The book's best feature might be its brevity, after all two hours isn't that much of a commitment. But it wasn't really worth the time either.
September 8, 2017
This is some of the most painful and excruciatingly long 146 pages I've ever read!
Here's a little background about how I became familiar with this title. When spree killer Andrew Cunanan was on his 1997 rampage, after murdering Gianni Versace, police located his hotel room at the Normandy Hotel in Miami Beach where they found, among other things, a copy of either this novel or Begley's other tome "About Schmidt." "As Max Saw It" seems like a book Cunanan would have read as it begins at a fashionable soiree on Lake Como, Italy, the exact place where rumor had it that Cunanan had first possibly met Versace.
I ran across a copy of the book at my mother's senior living facility's library and asked to borrow it. I was quite surprised to find this book there. Anyway, on to my review!
****SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON****
"As Max Saw It" describes the love affair between an older gay architect named Charlie and his young lover, Toby, who is dying of AIDS, although the disease is NEVER mentioned by name...WHY NOT? This part of the book is occurring in 1989, well into the age of AIDS. And nobody seems to even make the connection of what is ailing the boy. Perhaps this was an attempt to illustrate the deliberate blind eye and denial that many gay men continued to show toward AIDS. I may be giving the author too much credit here. And his illness is really the only major event in the book and it doesn't even occur until about page 100. Related to this, the most disturbing incident in the book occurs in its final scene, when Charlie bloodies the inside of his mouth with a file before per- forming oral sex on his dying lover. It is an act of self-sacrifice that binds them to the same horrible fate. Absolutely appalling! It's good that it occurs literally on the third to last page, otherwise I probably would have given up, despite the book's short length.
Other issues I had with the book, include a cast of very unlikable, pretentious and privileged characters. The book is written in the first person, that being Max, EXCEPT for Chapter 4 when for some reason after the second paragraph, Max begins to tell us about himself in the third person, for 25 PAGES! To me this was confusing and pointless. However, if not for that, I would know almost nothing about Max, although little insight into his character is gained from these tedious 25 pages. Oh, another big problem I had is that nowhere did Begley use quotation marks. All dialogue is embedded in narrative which makes it difficult at times to determine who is speaking. You have to pay extra close attention to the content to know this. Sometimes speakers can even change within the same paragraph. Okay, I'll admit I'm a slow reader and I have a touch of ADD, but this was a major challenge for me. The only reason I even finished this book was because of the short length and of course to write a scathing review of it. I hope you enjoy reading my review as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Here's a little background about how I became familiar with this title. When spree killer Andrew Cunanan was on his 1997 rampage, after murdering Gianni Versace, police located his hotel room at the Normandy Hotel in Miami Beach where they found, among other things, a copy of either this novel or Begley's other tome "About Schmidt." "As Max Saw It" seems like a book Cunanan would have read as it begins at a fashionable soiree on Lake Como, Italy, the exact place where rumor had it that Cunanan had first possibly met Versace.
I ran across a copy of the book at my mother's senior living facility's library and asked to borrow it. I was quite surprised to find this book there. Anyway, on to my review!
****SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON****
"As Max Saw It" describes the love affair between an older gay architect named Charlie and his young lover, Toby, who is dying of AIDS, although the disease is NEVER mentioned by name...WHY NOT? This part of the book is occurring in 1989, well into the age of AIDS. And nobody seems to even make the connection of what is ailing the boy. Perhaps this was an attempt to illustrate the deliberate blind eye and denial that many gay men continued to show toward AIDS. I may be giving the author too much credit here. And his illness is really the only major event in the book and it doesn't even occur until about page 100. Related to this, the most disturbing incident in the book occurs in its final scene, when Charlie bloodies the inside of his mouth with a file before per- forming oral sex on his dying lover. It is an act of self-sacrifice that binds them to the same horrible fate. Absolutely appalling! It's good that it occurs literally on the third to last page, otherwise I probably would have given up, despite the book's short length.
Other issues I had with the book, include a cast of very unlikable, pretentious and privileged characters. The book is written in the first person, that being Max, EXCEPT for Chapter 4 when for some reason after the second paragraph, Max begins to tell us about himself in the third person, for 25 PAGES! To me this was confusing and pointless. However, if not for that, I would know almost nothing about Max, although little insight into his character is gained from these tedious 25 pages. Oh, another big problem I had is that nowhere did Begley use quotation marks. All dialogue is embedded in narrative which makes it difficult at times to determine who is speaking. You have to pay extra close attention to the content to know this. Sometimes speakers can even change within the same paragraph. Okay, I'll admit I'm a slow reader and I have a touch of ADD, but this was a major challenge for me. The only reason I even finished this book was because of the short length and of course to write a scathing review of it. I hope you enjoy reading my review as much as I enjoyed writing it!
March 5, 2017
A story of little substance and over zealously presented. One star from me is generous.
November 5, 2023
Not sure I got the point here. Based on the title, I imagined this would be a book in which the narrator has a tangential relationship to the events he observes, while experiencing some understated but powerful emotions of his own, à la "Great Gatsby". If that's indeed what Begley was aiming for, in my view, he failed. Max is not an interesting character, and nor are any of the other protagonists. After one failed marriage, Harvard law professor Max Strong accepts an invitation at a dream villa on Lake Como where he is reunited, not entirely happily, with former Cambridge fellow student Charlie, now a famous architect. Charlie is also divorced and in a relationship with a beautiful ephebe called Toby. During this holiday, Max sleeps with Laura, whom he will happily marry many years later after yet another failed marriage with Camilla, who not only cuckolds him with their mutual friend Roland, but also has an affair with the promiscuous Toby. None of this hanky-panky is described with the flair of, say, John Updike, and I just couldn't bring myself to care. At the end of the day, Toby dies of AIDS, surrounded to the last by Charlie and Max. There was potential in this odd triangle, but this over plotted novella (Max also inherits a unexpected fortune from a distance cousin, travels to China, has an affair with a Chinese student etc) fails to capitalize on it.
May 24, 2020
Louis Begley writes with such an elegant style that, even when the themes can seem a little grotesque, it's still beautiful. I liked the complete omission of quotation marks, although at the start a little confusing, it encouraged me to be focusing more closely on the flow of the narrative. Packs a punch at the end and I enjoyed how everything was not tied up with a nice bow, there are still assumptions left to be made and questions left unanswered.
March 6, 2023
This was Begley's third book. I loved "Wartime Lies," the Schmidt books, "Memories of a Marriage," and "Hugo Gardner." But I was mostly confused when reading this one. Sentences seemed very long and convoluted. Often I was not sure who was speaking, no quotation marks were used. (I don't remember that if he used them in his other books). So although I found the book somewhat interesting, it just left me cold.
September 3, 2024
It was quite interesting to read this book because of the coincidence that it’s about someone called Max that has been to a town under Bellagio in Como area because I just came from there the week before. After that the story felt pretty boring and random. I couldn’t keep track of where in the world Max was and what I was reading. In the end it grew a little more interesting with Toby’s condition and Charlie was an interesting character but overall I would not read this again
July 16, 2018
It was good. A take on the latter part of the 20th century in the style of the lost generation.
June 5, 2024
It was fine, I didn’t love the lack of quotation marks, and the switch from first person to third person confused me. I did enjoy the historical commentary.
February 2, 2013
The lives of two very different men - former classmates at Harvard - converge during a summer reunion at a villa on the shores of Lake Como. Max, a law professor, is fleeing the collapse of his first marriage and has become the ultimate spectator of life. Charlie, a famous architect, is a high-living man of extremes. Max's meeting with Charlie brings him into contact with Toby, Charlie's startlingly beautiful male companion. Both Charlie's and Toby's relationship will ultimately shape Max's life for years to come.
I have to say that while I found As Max Saw It by Louis Begley to be very well-written, I honestly couldn't follow the plot very well. I did enjoy parts of the story however I ultimately found that this book just didn't grab my attention as much as other books that I've read. I give this book a B+!
I have to say that while I found As Max Saw It by Louis Begley to be very well-written, I honestly couldn't follow the plot very well. I did enjoy parts of the story however I ultimately found that this book just didn't grab my attention as much as other books that I've read. I give this book a B+!
July 17, 2009
Intriguing mix of characters in this one, and it took me a while to get into it, but eventually won me over. Max is an art queen who's hugely jaded, and the opening scene reminded me in a bad way of all those insufferable rich Manhattanites that Woody Allen is so fond of. Stick with it, as the story becomes better and better. Max is cruel and petty and addicted to beauty. He's fascinating, and the narrator's observation of him, particularly in the framework of AIDS in the 80s, is acute and powerful.
March 15, 2014
As Max Saw It by Louis Begley is a careful and skillful reworking of Mann’s Death in Venice. I have always liked Begley’s works, and this is no exception. He is kind of a Marquand with verve. A John Cheever with more attention to details. Read this one when you want a brief, good work that will crawl into your brain spaces and search the crevices.
August 9, 2007
parts of it are rough going, but lovely style, similar to mcewan
January 8, 2009
Suspect I ready this in response to a NYTBR review. Remember liking it enough but don't remember anything more.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews