In his 25th reunion class notes, Begley wrote that his life had taken an unusual turn.
“The professional side of my life is totally different from anything I had even remotely imagined at college. My head then was full of Yeats, Dante, Spenser and Beaudelaire, and, if I thought of any occupation at all, I suppose it was teaching and writing,” he wrote. Instead he had found his professional niche in international law—an area which he found “surprisingly exciting and satisfying.”
“On the assumption that one must work,” he wrote, “there is nothing I would rather do.”
He says today that he turned to literature not because he had become bored with law, but that he had merely revived a long-standing interest.
His colleagues say that they were not particularly surprised when his novels appeared in print. His wife, Anka, and three children have all adopted artistic careers, and he himself has pursued some pro bono projects relating to the arts.
John S. Kiernan ’76, Begley’s long-time associate, says that the senior partner’s presence around the office suggested a “formidable intellect.”
“His writing of legal prose has a clarity and spareness and precision that fit the part,” Kiernan says. “It’s not an amazing proposition that someone with that kind of writing capacity would also be able to write fiction.”
Kiernan adds that Begley became an “iconic figure” by helping the firm expand internationally, working in Paris and with clients across the globe; Kiernan says he seemed to have an “Olympian perspective” while never missing a detail in his work.
Androeu says that Begley’s career as a lawyer has made him “remarkably efficient” in his writing and revising.
“I think it comes from being a lawyer; it’s the wonderful organizing paradigm of billable hours,” he says.
The editor also credits Begley’s unusual eruditon to his late start, which afforded him time to become more widely read.
“Sometimes first-time writers, whatever their strengths, are not sufficiently well read to know against quite which predecessors they are struggling, but I think Louis knows very well,” Andreou says. “I think that it has given his writing a kind of certainty that a younger writer might not possess.”
Those predecessors, according to editor and critic alike, include Edith Wharton and Henry James—writers who, according to Andreou, similarly address the ambiguity of men and women’s relationships to both their careers and their social circles.
In the class notes to his 35th reunion, Begley wrote, “When I squint at the world I find it extraordinarily beautiful, I wish it were not so fragile.”
Last year he retired from Debevoise and Plimpton, and published his seventh novel, Shipwrecked—about the life of a writer who comes to find his art unsatisfactory.
—Staff writer Alexandra N. Atiya can be reached at atiya@fas.harvard.edu.