Schmidt's probation

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Schmidt's Probation (English original title: Schmidt Delivered ) is a novel by the American writer Louis Begley . It was published in 2000 by the New York publishing house Alfred A. Knopf . The German translation by Christa Krüger was published by Suhrkamp Verlag the following year. In Schmidt's probation , Begley continues the story of the retired lawyer Albert Schmidt from the novel Schmidt (original title: About Schmidt , 1996).

content

Two years after his wife's death and his retirement as a lawyer, Albert Schmidt still lives in his large house in the Hamptons with his young lover, Carrie . Carrie quit her job as a waitress and, with Schmidt's support, started studying at college. However, she regularly rejects his marriage proposals. Apart from dealing with the much younger woman and his old friend Gil Blackman, a well-known film director, the aging Schmidt hardly has any social contacts. So he feels flattered when Blackman's producer Michael Mansour, an Egyptian-born Jew and self-made billionaire with great self-confidence and artistic ambitions, tries to make his acquaintance, even if his interest is at least as much in the attractive Carrie as he is.

Schmidt notices with satisfaction that the marriage of his ungrateful daughter Charlotte to Jon Riker, the loathed partner from Schmidt's former law firm Wood & King, is in pieces. Both spouses cheat, and to make matters worse, Jon Riker has passed confidential legal documents on to his lover, whereupon he is flung out of the office. When Renata Riker, Jon's mother as well as a skilled psychotherapist, tries to soften Schmidt's abrupt rejection of her son and to save the children's marriage, she asks him whether he has never been guilty of anything. Although Schmidt immediately remembers a number of misconducts in his life, he denies any misstep, since, unlike his son-in-law, he never got caught.

He is more concerned that Mansour is blatantly stalking his girlfriend and even offers a million dollars for sexual intercourse. Schmidt holds against it and offers her the same amount if she stays away from the billionaire. In truth, however, it is not Mansour who steals Schmidt from his young lover, but his bodyguard Jason. He is a man of Carrie's age and from Carrie's milieu, and with him, unlike old Schmidtie, she seems to have a lasting future. When Schmidt realizes that he has lost his girlfriend, he is ready to make any concessions in order to keep her around. So Jason and Carrie move into his pool house, and even with their planned boat rental, in which Carrie's ex-boyfriend Bryan is involved again, he supports them financially. Eventually Carrie becomes pregnant and Jason looks forward to his fatherhood, although Schmidt could also be considered as father of the child.

Carrie's last gift to her former lover is a Siamese cat, with whom Schmidt now lives alone in his house. Mansour offers him the urgently needed life's work when he appoints him as managing director of his foundation, an institution that cleverly combines social support with market-based lobbying in post-communist countries. On a trip to Europe on behalf of Mansour, an unexpected encounter occurs with Charlotte, who has made it up with her husband and reports about his new job. In a clarifying conversation, father and daughter agree to take each other for who they are. After the encounter, Schmidt paused indecisively in front of the door of a woman with whom he had an appointment.

interpretation

According to Janet Maslin, Schmidt's probation is not a book in which a lot happens. It describes meticulously the everyday life of the retired lawyer Alfred Schmidt, who is so poor in outstanding events that the acquisition of a kitten becomes an emotional climax. The book follows on from its predecessor Schmidt , published four years earlier, and provides the characters with a receipt for their actions at the time. At the beginning everything developed in Schmidt's favor: after he got rid of his two rivals for Carrie's favor at the end of the previous novel, the unequal couple lived in carefree happiness for two years. The marriage of his ungrateful daughter, however, threatens to fail and her husband Jon Riker has confirmed all of Schmidt's prejudices by betraying his wife and law firm. But soon there is a shadow over Schmidt's relationship with Carrie, and he doubts that he will be able to hold onto it permanently. According to Hubert Spiegel , it seems that Schmidt himself can no longer believe in the fairytale development of his life.

The first to sow doubt is Michael Mansour. The figure of the nouveau riche billionaire belongs to a social class that Begley has so far left out of his novels and which, with its sentimentality and her awareness of power, seems as funny as it is threatening to Christa Krüger. Janet Maslin describes him as a deus ex machina in Schmidt's obsessed with social status. He is eager to train the retiree to be his pet, and Schmidt realizes that he amuses the billionaire in the same way that dwarfs amuse the Spanish court in Velázquez's time . Elmar Krekeler formulates: “Mansour manipulates Schmidt's life until it and he turn out for the better.” Schmidt, who has not been able to cope with the independence of his retirement, ends up doing what he does best , according to Günter Ohnemus can: he works. "Although it is particularly ironic that he does this for a philanthropic foundation: Without close social ties, in philanthropy he has " at least eye contact with the rest of humanity. "

Schmidt's friend Gil Blackman said at one point that the American upper class had lost the talent to raise children. According to Krekeler, Schmidt's daughter Charlotte is a prime example of this. Like a “human boomerang”, the egoism with which her father raised her returns in her. After all, at the end of the novel there is a kind of deal between father and daughter, a handshake contract to take each other as you are. The relationship with his lover Carrie also turns into a paternal one, and Schmidt, who as a former lawyer cannot get out of his skin, also concludes a contract with her. Mansour and Schmidt have bid for the young woman, but the contract is awarded to a third party with whom she wants to live permanently. However, she does not want to share the million Schmidt pays her even though he could not keep it with her future husband. After all, according to Martin Lüdke , she learned one thing from Schmidt: to think of herself.

Daphne Merkin sees Schmidt's probation as a modern moral novel in the tradition of Jane Austen or Elizabeth Bowen , at the end of which one cannot say whether it will end well or whether the thin ice under Schmidt's feet will break in the future. Lüdke puts it: “One can read Schmidt's probation with pleasure without noticing the horror that hides behind every line.” Ohnemus sees in the coldness and detachment that surround Schmidt, his style and his demeanor, a “mask that puts you in front of you preserves that one becomes a victim again. ”And so the German name of the figure is not a coincidence, but refers to Begley's own past as a persecuted Jew in the German-occupied Poland. Christa Krüger also sees Louis Begley and his wife Anka Muhlstein reflected in the characters of the writer couple Canning, whom Mansour invites to dinner . The end, when Schmidt stands indecisively at a woman's door, is an allusion to Edith Wharton's novel Time of Innocence . As in the predecessor, it is an open ending , suggesting another sequel that was also released a decade later with Schmidt's insight ( Schmidt Steps Back , 2012).

expenditure

  • Louis Begley: Schmidt Delivered . Alfred Knopf, New York 2000, ISBN 0-375-41088-0 .
  • Louis Begley: Schmidt's probation . From the American by Christa Krüger. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-41227-2 .

literature

  • Christa Krüger: Louis Begley. Life work effect . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-18236-9 , pp. 92-99.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Janet Maslin : The Geezer Has a Kitten (A Young Girlfriend, Too) . In: The New York Times, December 14, 2000.
  2. ↑ Christa Krüger: Louis Begley. Life work effect . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-18236-9 , p. 92.
  3. ↑ Hubert Spiegel : A turtle from the world . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 28, 2001.
  4. ↑ a b Christa Krüger: Louis Begley. Life work effect . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-18236-9 , p. 93.
  5. ↑ a b Elmar Krekeler: Do it again, Schmidtie! . In: Die Welt of March 31, 2001.
  6. ^ A b Günter Ohnemus : Begley's masks . In: Die Zeit of March 15, 2001.
  7. ↑ a b Martin Lüdke : Schmidt proves himself ( memento of the original from March 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lyrikwelt.de archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Originally in: Frankfurter Rundschau of March 21, 2001. Reprinted on lyrikwelt.de.
  8. ^ Daphne Merkin: Retirement Benefits . In: The New York Times Book Review, December 17, 2000.
  9. ↑ Christa Krüger: Louis Begley. Life work effect . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-18236-9 , pp. 94, 98-99.