Mistler’s Exit
Mistler’s Exit by Louis Begley, published by Knopf in September 1998, is a novel that explores the life of Thomas Mistler, a man who perceives himself as content until a medical diagnosis forces him to confront deeper truths. As a successful advertising executive from a wealthy background, Mistler is on the verge of selling his company when he discovers a fatal illness. This revelation leads him to experience an unexpected sense of liberation, prompting a journey of self-exploration in the enchanting city of Venice, where he seeks answers while grappling with his past and present relationships.
Throughout the narrative, readers will find Mistler navigating the complexities of his life, including his strained connections with family and the ghosts of his past. The story delves into themes of psychological introspection and the bittersweet nature of existence, as Mistler interacts with figures from his life, including his father, son, and a long-lost love. With a page count of 205, this first edition presents a blend of humor and poignancy, revealing the intricate dynamics of love, loss, and the human condition against the backdrop of Venice’s surreal beauty.
Official synopsis Publisher
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 price. But when a medical examination reveals the presence in his liver of a fatal intruder, “preposterously, unmistakably, he begins to rejoice,” with a feeling of having been set free. But free from what?
He will seek the answer surreptitiously, without revealing his illness to his family, during a last reprieve, a moment of grace in “the one place on earth where nothing irritates him.” But amidst the surreal beauties of Venice, he finds bitterness and chaos as he allows himself to drift for the first time. His halfhearted efforts to seize the day and its present pleasures–first with a striving young photographer and later with a love of his youth who never loved him–cannot compete with his need to commune with the living and the dead that crowd his life: his father and uncle, pillars of the Establishment, sources of the “genetic puritanism” he has never tried to resist; his son, Sam, whose love he has only barely salvaged; his wife, once perfectly “beautiful and suitable,” now humiliated by him and half-scorned. And the one woman who embodies everything he might have wished for, a woman he “never had and never lost.”
Deeply poignant yet mordantly funny, Mistler’s Exit brilliantly discloses the pleasures and miseries of having it all. A masterly revelation of the complexities of the heart.
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