Beloved author Louis Begley returns to the monied halls of the Upper East Side with a sharp new comedy of manners. Divorced after decades of comfortable marriage, retired journalist Hugo Gardner sets out to explore paths not travelled. After four decades of what he believes to be a happy, healthy partnership, Hugo Gardner's world is overturned when he learns that his wife, Valerie, is not only requesting a divorce but has left him for a younger, more vital man. Hugo, an octogenarian political writer and retired journalist for Time , must rethink the way he's lived, and reassess how he'd like to spend his remaining years. Reconsidering past relationships in his mind, with years of distance, Hugo begins to see things in a new light: Valerie, whose youth and ambition eventually came between them; his children, whose support might be more financially than emotionally motivated; and his friends, who, like him are rapidly aging before his very eyes. With an ominous oncologist's report hanging over his head, Hugo decides to get away for a bit, to a conference in Paris. There, a new romance blooms and Hugo finds himself wondering if growing old in Paris might be the perfect antidote to the drama he left behind in New York. Unflinching, witty, and urbane as ever, Louis Begley delivers a spot-on satire of the world of New York's aging elite, and uncovers the unexpected delights a late-in-life change can offer.

"The ageing civil servant Eduard Saxberger has banished all hope of literary renown. His one collection of youthful verse never led to the glittering career he hoped for, and he has resigned himself to the fact that he'll live out his life as, after all, just an ordinary man. Until, that is, a young admirer seeks him out and declares his deepest admiration for his early poems. He invites Saxberger to join him and his circle of fellow writers, who regularly meet at one of Vienna's grand coffee houses: Saxberger is their model, their literary hero. Embarrassed at first, the old man eventually gives in, flattered and fascinated by the self-styled 'Enthusiasts' (not to be confused, of course, with the 'Talentless', who sit at the other tables in the café). Will Saxberger find the inspiration he needs to write a new masterpiece? Will he be able to help the Enthusiasts to attain the public recognition for which they hunger? Will he, indeed, find late love as well as late fame? Ah, but everything is not as it seems... by Arthur Schnitzler (b. 1862 in Vienna), who qualified as a doctor but was increasingly driven to a career in writing, resulting in several celebrated plays, novellas and novels which explore the great existential subjects of the modern age: relationships, love, sex, ageing and death. Because his work dealt with subjects considered taboo, he frequently attracted the hostility of the authorities, consequently losing his position as Chief Medic in the Reserve Army and being tried for disorderly conduct. Schnitzler was close friends with Stefan Zweig and Sigmund Freud, who both admired him greatly, and a member of the 'Young Vienna' circle of writers who regularly met at a café nicknamed 'Café Megalomania' - the very same clique and café he satirises so deliciously in Late Fame. Schnitzler died in 1931."-- Publisher's website.

The syndicated columnist takes a satirical look at many of the more absurd trappings of nouvelle American culture--channeling, fashion, relationships, and diet soda