What do you think?
Rate this book
The Man Who Was Late
"Begley writes with a contemplative wisdom that permeates his work....[He] has captured some of the wispy melancholy of midcentury fiction, and this feat in itself is mellifluous to both ear and spirit."
THE BOSTON GLOBE
A man without a country or family, a Holocaust survivor, Ben long ago left the wreckage of Europe and recreated himself as a brilliant financier. He rejects the comforts of love and is shocked to discover Veronique—beautiful, unwisely married, and all that Ben suddenly knows he has always needed. In their stolen hours and weekends, their deep commitment to one another fills their lives as nothing ever has. But the question remains: Can Ben finally take what he has always denied himself...?
From the author of WARTIME LIES.
THE BOSTON GLOBE
A man without a country or family, a Holocaust survivor, Ben long ago left the wreckage of Europe and recreated himself as a brilliant financier. He rejects the comforts of love and is shocked to discover Veronique—beautiful, unwisely married, and all that Ben suddenly knows he has always needed. In their stolen hours and weekends, their deep commitment to one another fills their lives as nothing ever has. But the question remains: Can Ben finally take what he has always denied himself...?
From the author of WARTIME LIES.
243 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
8 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Louis Begley
46 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 21, 2016
So I've read Begley's Memories of a Marriage, which was quite good and I've read As Max Saw it, which I didn't care for at all. Naturally a third book was in order to make up my mind about the author and this book has certainly done that. it reaffirmed all I thought of Begley's last read and even managed to bring that fairly low opinion down a few levels. Man Who Was Late is a drag of a book and it drags itself in a manner so insipid, tedious and unengaging, it's almost an art in itself. It's a story of a man (yes, an unpunctual one) and his uninspiring love affairs as observed by a friend, told through recollections, correspondences (old fashioned letters) and the protagonist's own diary entries. Told virtually dialogue free through dense descriptive narratives and starring a cast of impressively unlikable and unsympathetic upper class moneyed intelligentsia or, more colloquially, bourgies, there is virtually nothing to enjoy in this book. The only redeeming quality I can think of is some nice multisyllabics for a vocabulary builder. The only mercy is the book's length, but even at 253 pages or so, it's still an utter waste of three hours. Begley threw in ton of sex (the gloriously free loving late 1960s), but the effect is similar to perfuming a turd, it's unnecessary and doesn't really improve a thing. From a man who can write and quite decently so, this is inexplicable. Unless Memories of a Marriage was a one off and this is his standard fare. Notably uninteresting, unexciting, impotent(ironically enough) story telling, this one really is the aforementioned fecal matter.
June 10, 2017
Begley writes with a beautiful prose and there is depth to his primary character. Ben is a tragic and multi-faceted protagonist. I appreciated Begley's in-depth look into Ben and the society he pushes himself into. But, this book dragged for me. I found myself reading on but glad when it was over. I am tempted to read Begley's Wartime Lies because it has received much praise but if it is not revving up more by page 50, I'm done!
November 2, 2025
i picked up this book from old books in hudson, ny because i like the first page.
"it was a paradox, of which ben over the years became fond, that he, ostensibly, the most punctual and reliable of men, should have been late in the most matters of existence, that he always somehow missed his train."
which slowly, then suddenly devolved into a novel about the upper echelons of society, incest and adultery, the sneakiest sort of voyeurism. terrible people, funny one liners, and a call out to le veau d'or, which i still can't get a reservation at. go crimson!
"it was a paradox, of which ben over the years became fond, that he, ostensibly, the most punctual and reliable of men, should have been late in the most matters of existence, that he always somehow missed his train."
which slowly, then suddenly devolved into a novel about the upper echelons of society, incest and adultery, the sneakiest sort of voyeurism. terrible people, funny one liners, and a call out to le veau d'or, which i still can't get a reservation at. go crimson!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 3, 2023
An interesting book about really rich people involved in high finance and marital discord. Lots of eating very good food, drinking very good wine, staying in wonderful hotels and having a lot of sex. Seems like the participants would be fairly satisfied with their live. But they ae not.
Only 243 pages so an easy read and you can know all the details.
Only 243 pages so an easy read and you can know all the details.
December 26, 2022
I waited and waited for the pages that would spark an interest in me, but they never came.
July 3, 2007
Misogynistic.
March 13, 2023
The author can write, but the story dragged on and on. I’m not quite sure if anything of significance really happened other than one rich man talking of his other rich friend’s business and relationship choices.
June 20, 2023
If every sentence in this book was half the length, it would have been excellent. Generally well written and interesting to read, but the extensive sentences and use of brackets, hyphens, and semicolons made it tricky to understand/grasp without reading each sentence twice. Great last two chapters.
August 18, 2016
This was, without doubt, the most annoying book I've ever tried to read. The author can write, but what he chose to write was so creepy that I only kept reading because I couldn't believe it was for real. I thought that he must have been showing us, through the characters’ words and actions, how pretentious, materialistic, shallow, condescending, and completely boring they were. And I was hoping we would soon meet a real human being who would confront these awful people with the meaninglessness of their lives and then maybe it would be a story. But I'm telling you now (I wish someone had told me), that never happens. As this book drags on, page after truly painful page . . . well, I probably read a third or a half of it, and up to then, no one said or even thought one thing that I found slightly interesting--and I am interested in almost everything except contact sports.
An arrogant, privileged, WASP, golden-boy narrates the book, and he is talking about his equally pretentious, equally elevated best friend. He is either impressed or surprised (hard to say, maybe both) that his dear friend has managed to infiltrate his ranks so successfully, considering his Jewish Eastern-European background. Apparently, to people like this, being from a non-WASP, non-wealthy background makes life barely worth living. These people might be understandable (though, still not likable) in Imperial Rome or possibly even England, when it was an Empire. However, these days, people like this are not interesting to anyone except themselves. They are too removed from modern day reality to realize that they only impress each other.
Of course, the narrator’s friend went to an Ivy League school and married a rich bitch WASP (who treated him like a manny). I can't remember if he thought he loved her or not, but I don’t think these people marry for love anyway. They were both so unattractive to me, in every way, that in my opinion they thoroughly deserved each other. The narrator talks a lot, and I mean a LOT, about how much his friend cares about every detail of his appearance (namely, his clothing); how he strives to meet extremely high standards in his dress, to pass the rigorous inspections of his equally obsessed associates, I suppose. The narrator is impressed that this WASP infiltrator is so well versed in such things.
I think the warped message of the book, if it has one, is that the narrator is telling us that his friend rose to those great heights (heights attained partially by knowing the sacred rules of WASP tailoring) but still is not happy. However, the irony is that he seems to be making the point that this guy SHOULD be happy, what with the money, the women he uses for sex but would never be seen with in public, the prestige, the impeccable connections, and of course, the super expensive wardrobe. The narrator thinks there is something mysteriously wrong with a man who is not happy with such a lifestyle. I think the friend ends up falling in love with some rich, elegant, married, French woman, for four obvious reasons (rich, elegant, married, French). His life’s purpose is obviously to get things that are out of his reach, and then he can’t figure out why that isn’t fulfilling. Well, of course, he’s not happy--he's a phony who has spent his life pretending to be what he is not. In the process, he never became what he could have been--a real person with an honorable heritage and real values, and maybe even a heart, some wisdom, and a sense of humor. Maybe he could have done some good things for some good people for the right reasons. Of course, the “friend” of the narrator is actually the author himself—the “friend’s” life seems to mirror the author’s own life story, and this makes it even more pathetic.
The only thing worse than reading a book about a character with no redeeming qualities, who doesn’t even have the decency to see his deficits or learn from his mistakes, is reading a book about such a character, narrated by an equally pretentious and offensive character.
An arrogant, privileged, WASP, golden-boy narrates the book, and he is talking about his equally pretentious, equally elevated best friend. He is either impressed or surprised (hard to say, maybe both) that his dear friend has managed to infiltrate his ranks so successfully, considering his Jewish Eastern-European background. Apparently, to people like this, being from a non-WASP, non-wealthy background makes life barely worth living. These people might be understandable (though, still not likable) in Imperial Rome or possibly even England, when it was an Empire. However, these days, people like this are not interesting to anyone except themselves. They are too removed from modern day reality to realize that they only impress each other.
Of course, the narrator’s friend went to an Ivy League school and married a rich bitch WASP (who treated him like a manny). I can't remember if he thought he loved her or not, but I don’t think these people marry for love anyway. They were both so unattractive to me, in every way, that in my opinion they thoroughly deserved each other. The narrator talks a lot, and I mean a LOT, about how much his friend cares about every detail of his appearance (namely, his clothing); how he strives to meet extremely high standards in his dress, to pass the rigorous inspections of his equally obsessed associates, I suppose. The narrator is impressed that this WASP infiltrator is so well versed in such things.
I think the warped message of the book, if it has one, is that the narrator is telling us that his friend rose to those great heights (heights attained partially by knowing the sacred rules of WASP tailoring) but still is not happy. However, the irony is that he seems to be making the point that this guy SHOULD be happy, what with the money, the women he uses for sex but would never be seen with in public, the prestige, the impeccable connections, and of course, the super expensive wardrobe. The narrator thinks there is something mysteriously wrong with a man who is not happy with such a lifestyle. I think the friend ends up falling in love with some rich, elegant, married, French woman, for four obvious reasons (rich, elegant, married, French). His life’s purpose is obviously to get things that are out of his reach, and then he can’t figure out why that isn’t fulfilling. Well, of course, he’s not happy--he's a phony who has spent his life pretending to be what he is not. In the process, he never became what he could have been--a real person with an honorable heritage and real values, and maybe even a heart, some wisdom, and a sense of humor. Maybe he could have done some good things for some good people for the right reasons. Of course, the “friend” of the narrator is actually the author himself—the “friend’s” life seems to mirror the author’s own life story, and this makes it even more pathetic.
The only thing worse than reading a book about a character with no redeeming qualities, who doesn’t even have the decency to see his deficits or learn from his mistakes, is reading a book about such a character, narrated by an equally pretentious and offensive character.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 16, 2015
The Man Who Was Late is an early novel by the lawyer-novelist Louis Begley. It's a story recounted through the memories, observations and conclusions of a lawyer named Jack, a New York sophisticate much like Begley, about his friend, a banker and fellow Harvard grad, named Ben.
Ben is the man who was late, the man who escaped the slaughter of the Jews in Central Europe in WWII with his parents, and arrived on U.S. shores always a touch out of sync with the society he entered the meritocratic way, not the to-the-manor-born way like Jack, and Jack's cousin, Veronique, with whom Ben conducts an affair.
The virtues of this novel are its fluid prose and knowledge of the societies in America and abroad (largely France) where Ben is successful but doesn't fit in. His marriage was ill-fated, he wanted his stepdaughters to love him, but they didn't, and despite his banking acumen and privileges, he's somewhat dark and guilt-ridden, a heavy drinker, a man with a taste for illicit sex, and generally self-castigating in the notes he leaves behind. Suicide is the climax of this novel, of course.
It could be said that another virtue of the novel is that it hews tightly to the middle-class ethos of the novel form itself. That's where it gets its strength and ethos and where Ben runs afoul. He feels judged because he wriggled his way into a world of privilege where he did not belong. Like everyone else in the book, he knows all the right wines, restaurants, resorts, and ultimately, tailors, but he has this need for bad women until he hits upon Veronique, a provocative, unhappy, but more or less good woman. And so he doesn't feel fit for decent society, and he boots his chance with Veronique away.
In one sense this is an enjoyable book to read. Begley tells the tale astutely, drawing on face-to-face encounters between Jack and Ben, Ben's helpfully left-behind notes, and even some letters and confessions to Jack by Veronique.
In another sense, these are people who are full of themselves, who do things just right, belong to the right clubs, handle multinational negotiations with consummate skill, and yet are empty. Ben, in particular, is all over the place without really exploring the source of his confounding "otherness." The fact that he is Jew has something to do with, a big something to do with it, but in the main, his Jewishness and Central European background are just statements, not developed themes. No one is actively persecuting Ben anymore. He's cleared all the hurdles. So what is the wish to be degraded, to be soiled, or defiled all about? It a way it seems to be about nothing, about too much freedom, too much money, too many opportunities to resolve a day's tensions in bed on a strictly I-come/you-come basis.
Begley himself, having escaped the Nazi's during WW II as a boy, may have felt that the mere shadow of these events was sufficient to give Ben a lasting piquancy. I should think it probably would be enough if it were not the mere shadow but the inky shadow, a shadow brought to the surface through moral self-questioning and perhaps explicit disdain for people like Jack, the erudite lawyer, well-read, well-married, pretty faithful to the interests of his tortured cousin Veronique.
So this is a kind of novel that refers to Rilke but has closer connections to Trollope or Thackeray or Henry James and Edith Wharton. It offers incidents that are more vile than anyone would find explicitly addressed by those novelists, but it holds itself together the way their novels did, and Ben finally conducts his revolution not against the status quo but himself. And one doesn't care enough for Ben to take this too hard. His pain doesn't break boundaries, only his own unresolved life.
Ben is the man who was late, the man who escaped the slaughter of the Jews in Central Europe in WWII with his parents, and arrived on U.S. shores always a touch out of sync with the society he entered the meritocratic way, not the to-the-manor-born way like Jack, and Jack's cousin, Veronique, with whom Ben conducts an affair.
The virtues of this novel are its fluid prose and knowledge of the societies in America and abroad (largely France) where Ben is successful but doesn't fit in. His marriage was ill-fated, he wanted his stepdaughters to love him, but they didn't, and despite his banking acumen and privileges, he's somewhat dark and guilt-ridden, a heavy drinker, a man with a taste for illicit sex, and generally self-castigating in the notes he leaves behind. Suicide is the climax of this novel, of course.
It could be said that another virtue of the novel is that it hews tightly to the middle-class ethos of the novel form itself. That's where it gets its strength and ethos and where Ben runs afoul. He feels judged because he wriggled his way into a world of privilege where he did not belong. Like everyone else in the book, he knows all the right wines, restaurants, resorts, and ultimately, tailors, but he has this need for bad women until he hits upon Veronique, a provocative, unhappy, but more or less good woman. And so he doesn't feel fit for decent society, and he boots his chance with Veronique away.
In one sense this is an enjoyable book to read. Begley tells the tale astutely, drawing on face-to-face encounters between Jack and Ben, Ben's helpfully left-behind notes, and even some letters and confessions to Jack by Veronique.
In another sense, these are people who are full of themselves, who do things just right, belong to the right clubs, handle multinational negotiations with consummate skill, and yet are empty. Ben, in particular, is all over the place without really exploring the source of his confounding "otherness." The fact that he is Jew has something to do with, a big something to do with it, but in the main, his Jewishness and Central European background are just statements, not developed themes. No one is actively persecuting Ben anymore. He's cleared all the hurdles. So what is the wish to be degraded, to be soiled, or defiled all about? It a way it seems to be about nothing, about too much freedom, too much money, too many opportunities to resolve a day's tensions in bed on a strictly I-come/you-come basis.
Begley himself, having escaped the Nazi's during WW II as a boy, may have felt that the mere shadow of these events was sufficient to give Ben a lasting piquancy. I should think it probably would be enough if it were not the mere shadow but the inky shadow, a shadow brought to the surface through moral self-questioning and perhaps explicit disdain for people like Jack, the erudite lawyer, well-read, well-married, pretty faithful to the interests of his tortured cousin Veronique.
So this is a kind of novel that refers to Rilke but has closer connections to Trollope or Thackeray or Henry James and Edith Wharton. It offers incidents that are more vile than anyone would find explicitly addressed by those novelists, but it holds itself together the way their novels did, and Ben finally conducts his revolution not against the status quo but himself. And one doesn't care enough for Ben to take this too hard. His pain doesn't break boundaries, only his own unresolved life.
May 7, 2016
I’ll admit: I downloaded the wrong book, just as the student in my Milton class did her research on the wrong Civil War. I mean to have a romp through Begley’s new murder mystery. Instead I wrapped myself in the existential angst of Jack and Ben, two Ivy Leaguers who are adrift in post WWII positions of international power.
It is Begley’s sophomore effort after his Wartime Lies and before About Schmidt. As one would expect the writing is fluid, the characters well drawn, the language, both in French and English interesting and poignant .
He describes the horrors that we do to those who love us and those we love. He also makes a few cogent statements about the immigrant experience and the hollowness of modern life.
The trip was “interesting.” It made me think a bit too much. I read some of it with open mouth as he described the very rich. Think Marquand (does anyone still read Marquand?) with a touch of Houellebecq, well, mabe more than a touch. I think back to that line about the rich from Fitzgerald: “They are different from you and me.” Why yes, they dress better, they know more things, they stay in better places. and they have some wonderful sexual experiences on a remote island with young whores from Rio. (This one of the more positive sections of the book.)
Oh, and if you are bored with the sex, maybe the international economics might interest you.
Begley writes a good novel. I like him very much. Even when he stumbles a bit, he does it with grace and élan as he explores the louche catena of etiolated quand même.
It is Begley’s sophomore effort after his Wartime Lies and before About Schmidt. As one would expect the writing is fluid, the characters well drawn, the language, both in French and English interesting and poignant .
He describes the horrors that we do to those who love us and those we love. He also makes a few cogent statements about the immigrant experience and the hollowness of modern life.
The trip was “interesting.” It made me think a bit too much. I read some of it with open mouth as he described the very rich. Think Marquand (does anyone still read Marquand?) with a touch of Houellebecq, well, mabe more than a touch. I think back to that line about the rich from Fitzgerald: “They are different from you and me.” Why yes, they dress better, they know more things, they stay in better places. and they have some wonderful sexual experiences on a remote island with young whores from Rio. (This one of the more positive sections of the book.)
Oh, and if you are bored with the sex, maybe the international economics might interest you.
Begley writes a good novel. I like him very much. Even when he stumbles a bit, he does it with grace and élan as he explores the louche catena of etiolated quand même.
April 9, 2024
I so wanted to sympathise with Ben - I really did.
Ben is a financier whose existence revolves around money, lots of casual sex and alcohol. Besides the hot, sweaty sex scenes (which were quite good, in my opinion), I couldn't relate to Ben as a person. I couldn't sympathise with him or his crappy love life, unsatisfactory first marriage or the fact that he had very ungrateful step-children. I turned page after page, constantly waiting for something to happen.
And then it did. But in the end, I believe Ben made his bed and, as a consequence, he had to lay in it.
A brilliant prose, nonetheless.
Ben is a financier whose existence revolves around money, lots of casual sex and alcohol. Besides the hot, sweaty sex scenes (which were quite good, in my opinion), I couldn't relate to Ben as a person. I couldn't sympathise with him or his crappy love life, unsatisfactory first marriage or the fact that he had very ungrateful step-children. I turned page after page, constantly waiting for something to happen.
And then it did. But in the end, I believe Ben made his bed and, as a consequence, he had to lay in it.
A brilliant prose, nonetheless.
September 17, 2013
very detailed story of a luxe but lacking life, didn't understand where it was going for the first half. so strange to contextualize the 70s in this affluent, mostly french way. the message was mainly lost on me though.
January 25, 2008
I liked it a lot.
December 9, 2009
One of the few books I didn't finish as I definitely could not get to grips with either the idea of a man who fails to come in time and the long-winded way to express this banal concept.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews