The California Trail: An epic with many heroes (The American Trails Series)

by Louis Begley

Book Overview

Thomas Mistler has always thought himself "a happy man, as the world goes." A scion of old money, he made his own fortune in advertising and is now poised to sell the company he founded for a fabulous... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0007DN8LI
• ISBN13: 9781299013001
• Release Date: January 1962
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Weight: 1.72 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Six Months to Live

Thomas Mistler, a very successful (but not especially ethical) CEO, learns he has terminal cancer. To cope, he takes a solitary trip to Venice, where his goal is to explore his past and to adjust to his six-months-to-live medical status. On the plus side, Begley shows how Mistler uses the art and locale of Venice, as well as the people he meets, to come to terms with his life and familial regrets, as well as the world of achievements and missed opportunities he will leave behind. From this perspective, the book describes an intriguing, albeit depressing, vacation. This is the story of a man tying together loose ends. On the other hand, I read this book as a comment ONLY on the life of Thomas Mistler who, to use Tom Wolfe's term, is a master of the universe. For me, its revelations and resolutions made sense for Mistler. But universality is absent. A good book for Louis Begley fans.

Exquisite perfection and even readable

Exquisite novel featuring an older American businessman, quite successful, an ad man actually, who receives a diagnosis of terminal cancer and repairs to Venice solo leaving behind (and uninformed) his wife and son. On my list of Best Books Read This Year.

Contemplating A Death in Venice.

Thomas Mistler, the founder and CEO of a world-renowned, New York advertising agency, is not a very likable person. A self-indulgent WASP who enjoys the high life, he is accustomed to getting his own way both in business and in his personal life. Married to an "appropriate," pedigreed wife, with whom he has an appropropriate, conventional home life, he also pursues other women attracted to his "glitz." Suddenly, Mistler discovers that he has liver cancer, too far advanced to make treatment a viable option without interfering with the quality of his remaining days. With remarkable sang-froid, Mistler decides not to tell his family, feigning a business trip to Europe so that he can have a week by himself in Venice to prepare for the inevitable. To his surprise, he discovers a young woman in his hotel room, a photographer he has just met at a dinner party who is attracted to him but also wants to work for his agency. With Lena he revisits many of his favorite places, and indulges in sensual pleasures, fine wines, and foods before his insensitivity drives her away. Alone, Mistler explores his past and contemplates his relationships with his father, his father's mistress (Tante Elizabeth, whom he adores), his wife and son (who has escaped to the West Coast to become a writer), friends from school, and ultimately, "the girl who got away," a Radcliffe classmate when he was at Harvard, who is now living in Venice. Unsentimental, Mistler makes no excuses for what he gradually begins to see as his faults. While he knows he will not change, at this point, he also knows, as an advertising man, that he has the power to affect how he himself may be viewed in the future if he acts appropriately now. The Venice setting is perfect for this book about a man contemplating death. The canals are polluted and devoid of life, and the city itself survives only through an enormous effort to hold back the sea. Resembling Hades and its series of rivers, Venice also features gondoliers in black boats who resemble Charon, the old man who ferries the dead across the River Styx to Hades, and when Mistler buys a black wherry from a boatman, all the imagery comes together. Though the main character may not be someone with whom the reader will identify, his behavior and actions are consistent with his personality. Author Begley conveys Mistler's formality and his inner feelings in elegant language, completely appropriate for Mistler, and his insights into life's big questions are thoughtful. Mary Whipple

If you're really rich, and you know you're gonna die...

what would you do? Mistler's decision is interesting: He goes to Venice. He appreciates the knowledge that he is to die because it defines the horizon of his life. This horizon is no longer receding before him. Things are set, fixed now, for eternity. He knows what is going to happen, and he knows exactly what he wants to do. And Mistler is a man who believes in remaining in control, even when that control has apparently been removed. Begley is the master of the portrayal of the east coast establishment culture of wealth and privilege, and Mistler is an unapologetic member of this tribe. He is hard to like, but difficult to ignore. Mistler may be deceiving himself, but his self-deception is a mixture of wariness, craftiness, and an almost touching transparency, especially when he is together with an old school flame. And the writing, as it always is with Louis Begley, is superb.EKW

Begley Does it Again!

Once again Louis Begley has written a beautiful, elegant and spare novel that has not one extraneous or superfluous word in it. Though a slim volume, it is dense with stunning sentences, and themes. They are like jewels, to be read and savored over and over again as were each of his previous books. I love this guy!