About Schmidt

by Louis Begley

After years of careful management, the life of Albert Schmidt - proud, traditional gentleman and lawyer of the old school - lies about him in shambles. The wife he adored is recently dead. The clients he has served superbly and devotedly throughout his long career are turning to his firm's aggressive young comers as Schmidt stumbles into early retirement. And relations with his only child are going from bad to worse. Charlotte, once the flower of all her father's hopes, and the sole beneficiary of the best of everything he could provide, has matured into a banal yuppie, only too willing to apply her peerless education to work in public relations. And now a desperate quarrel divides them: Charlotte announces her intention to marry a man Schmidt cannot approve of, for reasons he can scarcely admit - even to himself. As the beleaguered father gropes his way out of the corners he is forever backing himself into, he finds the possibility of regeneration, perhaps even happiness, in a new lov