SOURCE: Jones-Davis, Georgia. “Passion Bubbles over in a Rarefied World.” Los Angeles Times (28 April 1994): E9.

In the following review, Jones-Davis lauds Begley's understated writing style in As Max Saw It and analyzes the dynamics of the relationships between Max, his friend Charlie, and Charlie's lover, Toby.

Louis Begley writes with intimate knowledge about patrician America—Eastern Old Money, Auchincloss country—but with a good deal less politeness or the submerged emotions of his literary upper-crust counterparts. This was true in his second novel, The Man Who Was Late, as well as in his newest, As Max Saw It.

There are terrors lurking in the paradise he evokes: Auschwitz, with its legacy of death and tormented souls; sex as a battlefield and harbinger of disaster; aching loneliness, suicide and AIDS.

Begley first hands us a passport to the peaceable kingdom of Town & Country, where we find the not-so-beautiful but...