Cleanliness

Sexual Content
Making Out/Sex - 2 Incidents: A boy, telling a sarcastic story, says he made love with a guy’s sister.
A boy tries to make a joke: “People get problems in living rooms.” “Bedrooms too.” (He then makes a slight crude comment about bathrooms being really functional.)
Miscellaneous - 10 Incidents: A boy takes off his clothes, “stripping down to his underpants.” Mentions looking at something from the “sexual point of view” and not wanting to think about his parents “sexual lives.” Mentions a boy shedding clothes to go swimming. A boy observes of another boy: “His … jacket parted slightly over his healthy rump … and it is that, … I recall as Brinker’s salient characteristic, those healthy … buttocks.” Mentions a “sexual secret.” Speaking of a locker room: “It was preeminently the smell of the human body after it had been used to the limit, such a smell as has meaning and poignance for any athlete, just as it has for any lover.” A description of “virgin slopes” and skiing. Uses the word “eunuch” in a description. A man’s advice regarding religious waverings, sexual maladjustments, etc. is to “Give it the old college try.” “The best that could be said for them physically was that they looked wiry in their startling sets of underwear” (of men in a gym).

Violence - a boy pushes another boy out of a tree - not gory or overly detailed.

Profanity
Mild Obscenities & Substitutions - 31 Incidents: h*ll, d*mn, d*mned, darn, heck
Anatomical Terms - 6 Incidents: a**, scr*wy, stupid-a**, scr*wed, F--ing (book shows dashes - once), b**b
Scatological Terms - 4 Incidents: cr*p, sh*t
Religious Profanities - 21 Incidents: God, Godd*mn, Oh my God, I swear to God, God's sakes, God d*mn it, Christ, good heavens
Derogatory Terms - 10 Incidents: son-of-a-b*tch, Kraut, Georgia cracker, b*st*rd, Negroes, Japs

Conversation Topics - 10 Incidents: The story is about a boy that gets jealous and pushes another boy out of a tree. The boy becomes a cripple. The entire story deals with this and the shame, the lies, not wanting to believe the truth, living in a delusion, altering/distorting the facts in your memory so that you remember only what you want to etc.. A group of boys form a group and decide to call it “The Suicide Society of the Summer Session.” Gaming is mentioned: cards, dice, black-jack, poker (some of the boys played at the boarding school). A number of boys at the boarding school (including the main character) smoke. They all gather in the basement and call it the Butt Room. The boys go to chapel as part of school but don’t pay attention or believe what is taught. The main characters drink a couple of times throughout the book, including drinking hard cider at a carnival they put together, where one boy forces another to gulp done a large quantity. “Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.” Mentions honky-tonks, shooting galleries and beer gardens. Two minors show false IDs and drink some beer. The boys speak about drinking and the Prohibition. Boys gather prizes for a carnival. A few of the prizes are: a dictionary with the “stimulating words marked,” Betty Grable photos, forged draft cards and a women’s lock of hair.

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This book was very boring and hard to pay attention to. It was mostly taken back in World war two. It conflicts with envy and jealously. I really didn't like this book because it was hard to get into it and the whole plot of the book was very dry and empty.

I suggest this book for people who really get into books easy and like books about childhood maturity and about stupid mistakes. This book does not have any intense parts. The climax is very weak. A very random even happens which is the climax and knowone could have guessed it was coming.

This book was a horrible book.

A Separate Peace, John Knowles
A Separate Peace is a coming-of-age novel by John Knowles, published in 1959.
Gene Forrester returns to his old prep school. 15 years after he graduated, to visit two places he regards as "fearful sites": a flight of marble stairs and a big tree by the river from which he caused his friend, Phineas, to fall. First, he examines the stairs and notices that they are made of very hard marble. He then goes to the tree, which brings back memories of his time as a student at Devon.
From this point, the novel follows Gene's description of the time from the summer of 1942, to the summer of 1943. In 1942, he is 16 and living at Devon with his best friend and roommate, Phineas (nicknamed Finny). World War II is taking place and has a prominent effect on the story. Gene and Finny, despite being opposites in personality, are close friends: Gene's quiet, introverted, intellectual personality is a character foil for Finny's extroverted, carefree athleticism. One of Finny's ideas during their "gypsy summer" of 1942 is to create a "Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session", with Gene and himself as charter members. Finny creates a rite of initiation by having members jump into the Devon River from a large, high tree. ...

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و دوم ماه نوامبر سال 2018 میلادی
عنوان: ‏‫آسوده از جنگ؛ نویسنده: جان نولز‮‬‏‫؛ مترجم: امیر رئیس‌ اوژن؛ تهران: راه معاصر‏‫، 1396؛ در 232 ص؛ شابک: 9786006585390؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20 م
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آسوده از جنگ، روایتی ست فرسنگها دور از میدان جنگ؛ فارغ از تمام کشت و کشتارهای خونین و بمبارانهای بی امان. این اثر، داستان مردی میان‌سال است که از شانزده سالگی و از خاطرات خویش در گیرودار جنگ جهانی دوم مینویسد، و با وجود آن که این رمان، پیرامون جنگ دوم جهانی میچرخد، هیچ صحنه ای از جنگ را به تصویر نمی‌کشد، و تنها حضور مداوم آن، همچون سایه ای مخوف، بر سطر سطر کتاب سایه افکنده است. بهتر است بگوییم جنگ در این کتاب، نشان از ستیزی دوگانه دارد؛ یکی جنگ بیرونی و دیگری نبردی با درون. جنگ بیرونی بر کسی پوشیده نیست؛ اما نبرد درونی، نبردی ست، که از چشم همگان پنهان است، و انسان را بر آن میدارد، تا تیغ از نیام برکشد، و به ستیز با دشمن درون خویش برود؛ دشمنی که آدمی آن را به تدریج در درون خود مییابد، آرامش را از او سلب میکند و در نتیجه، آدمی برای به چنگ آوردن آرامش ربوده شده ی خود، علیه خویشتن که عامل این بیقراری ست، قیام میکند.نقل نمونه متن: «یکم: مدتی پیش به مدرسه ­ی دوون رفتم، و دیدم که به طرز عجیبی، نسبت به پانزده سال پیش که محصلِ آنجا بودم، نوتر شده است. تا جاییکه حافظه ام یاری می­کرد، فضایش در قیاس با گذشته، آرامتر و ظاهرش استوارتر جلوه میکرد؛ انگار به دانش آموزان بیشتر از گذشته سخت گیری می­شد. پنجره ­هایش کوچک­تر از قبل به نظر میرسید، و چوب­کاری­ هایش برق می­زد؛ انگار که برای نگهداری بهتر، لایه­ ای از روغنِ جلا، بر همه­ چیز زده بودند. البته، خُب، پانزده سال پیش در بحبوحه ­ی جنگ بود، و شاید از مدرسه به این خوبی نگهداری نمی­شد؛ شاید واکس و جلا هم مثل باقی چیزها به جنگ فرستاده میشد. راستش را بخواهید، از کف صیقلی مدرسه، چندان خوشم نیامد؛ چون مدرسه، شبیه موزه شده بود. آره، آنجا برای من همینگونه به نظر میآمد؛ منتها اصلاً دلم نمی­خواست، مدرسه­ ی ما مثل موزه باشد. ته دلم، جاییکه احساسات بر منطقم غلبه می­کند، همیشه این احساس ناگفته را داشته ­ام، که نطفه ­ی مدرسه­ ی دوون، از وقتیکه پای در آن گذاشتم، در زندگیم بسته شد. سپس، طی دوران تحصیلم به واقعیتی پرشور تبدیل شد و دست آخر، همین که آنجا را ترک کردم، در چشم به هم زدنی از زندگیم محو شد. همه­ ی اینها به کنار، حالا مدرسه به دست افرادی اداره میشد که شش دنگ حواسشان، معطوف به نه داری و جلا انداختنِ آن بود. همچنین، ترسی آشنا، که سراسر روز­های جنگ را آکنده کرده بود، همانند دیگر چیز­های که به خوبی از آنها محافظت می­شد، در آنجا باقی مانده بود؛ درست شبیه هوایی خفه، توی اتاقی دم­کرده، و حالا آن حس، به قدری برایم آشنا بود، که اصلاً حضور پررنگ آن را، نمی­توانستم احساس کنم. خب، وقتی که مزه ی نترسیدن را نچشیده ­ام، یا حال و هوایش برایم غریبه است، چطور حضور صلح و آرامش را می­توانستم احساس کنم. اکنون که به پانزده سال پیش برمی­گردم، فقط ترسی را به روشنی می­بینم، که در آن زمان، همه ی زندگی­م را سرشار کرده بود، و حالا این تصور، نوید آن را می­داد، که من در آن دوره توانسته ­ام کاری را با موفقیت، به سرانجام برسانم؛ باید هرطور که شده، راه فراری از آن ترس برای خود، پیدا می­کردم. ایستاده بودم و رعشه ­های ترس را، که همراه آن شادی بی اختیار و عنان گسیخته­ ای بود، در رگ و پی خود احساس میکردم؛ دو حالت متضاد که همواره با هم، به سراغ من میآمدند. این حس شادی در آن دوران، گاهی مثل شفق قطبی، آسمان تیره را روشن می­کرد. یکی دو جا بود که حالا دلم می­خواست، به آنها سر بزنم. هر دو جا، مکانهای ترسناکی بودند، و به همین دلیل، می­خواستم آنها را ببینم. پس از اینکه در مهمانسرای «دوون» نهار خوردم، به سمت مدرسه، قدم­زنان برگشتم. آن وقت سال، هوا خشک و وصف ­ناپذیر بود؛ تقریباً چیزی به اواخر نوامبر باقی نمانده بود؛ از آن روزهای زمستانی و بارانی؛ وقتی که گِل و شُل همه ­جا را فرا میگیرد و آدم احساس بیچارگی می­کند. خوشبختانه، در «دوون» خبری از اینگونه هوا نبود - آب و هوای آنجا اغلب شامل یخ­بندانهای زمستان یا تابستان­های سوزان نیو­همپشایر میشد - اما آن روز، بادِ عجیبی می­وزید و تندباد داشت مرا با خود میبرد. در امتداد خیابان گیلمن قدم زدم؛ جاییکه بهترین خیابان شهر محسوب می­شد. تا آنجا که یادم می­آمد، مثل گذشته، خانه­ ها همچنان زیبا و غریب بودند. نوسازی­های ماهرانه ای، از خانه­ های استعماری قدیمی انجام، و اضافه­ بناهایی با چوب­­های ویکتوریایی ساخته شده بود. همچنین، معبدهای بزرگی با سبک معماری احیای یونانی بنا کرده بودند. حالا همه ­­ی آنها کنار خیابان صف کشیده بودند، و مثل همیشه هوش از سر آدم می­ربود، و ترس به جانش می­انداخت. به ندرت کسی را دیدم، که وارد یکی از این ساختمانها بشود، یا روی علف­ها بازی کند، یا حداقل پنجره­ ای را باز کند. امروز خانه ­ها با پاپیتال­های پژمرده، و درختان تن­ لخت که باد ناله ­ی آنها را بلند می­کرد، هم آنجا را زیباتر کرده بود و هم بی­روح­تر. مانند هر مدرسه­ ی باسابقه و خوبی، دوون دورافتاده بود، و پشت هیچ دیوار و دروازه­ ای بنا نشده بود. بسیار طبیعی از دل شهر سر برآورده بود. پس، با نزدیک شدنم، صحنه­ ای غافلگیرم نکرد. انگار خانه ­های امتداد خیابان گیلمن، کم کم داشتند مرا پس می­زدند؛ این بدان معنا بود که داشتم به مدرسه نزدیک می­شدم. وقتی که بیشتر از نفس افتادم، فهمیدم پا توی مدرسه گذاشته ­ام. سر ظهر بود و توی محوطه و ساختمانهای مدرسه، پرنده­­ ای پر نمی­زد؛ چرا که همه ­ی دانش ­آموزان، آنجا را برای ورزش ترک کرده بودند. حین عبور از حیاط بزرگی که معروف به محوطه­ ی دور بود، هیچ چیز حواسم را پرت نکرد. به سمت ساختمانی با آجرهای قرمز رفتم؛ یکی از همان ساختمانهای خوش­ ساخت بود؛ منتها سقفش را گنبدی شکل ساخته بودند و زنگی توی گنبدش آویخته بودند. ساعتی هم روی سر درِ آن نصب کرده و به لاتین نوشته بودند: اولین ساختمان مدرسه. از در بادبزنی که رد شدم، به یک سرسرای مرمری رسیدم. کنار پلکانی دراز و کنار اولین پله ی مرمریِ سفید ایستادم. با وجود اینکه پلکانها قدیمی بودند، هنوز رنگ و روی طرح ماهِ وسطِ هر کدام از پلکانها نرفته بود. جنس مرمر آنهم به طرزی عجیب سخت بود. بله، شاید خیلی سخت بوده، خیلی! به هر حال، با وجود اینهمه فکری که صرف سختی این پلکان کرده بودم، عجیب است که تا به حال، هیچ متوجه این موضوع نشده بودم، آنهم موضوعی به این مهمی! چیز دیگری توجهم را جلب نکرد؛ آره، قطعاً اینها همان پله ­هایی هستند که من در ایام بودنم در «دوون»، حداقل روزی یکبار از آنها بالا و پایین می­رفتم. اینها هیچ فرقی با قدیم نداشتند؛ اما خودم چی؟ خب، طبیعتاً پیرتر شده بودم - در آن لحظه احساساتم را به ورطه ­ی آزمایش قرار دادم تا ببینم چقدر تغییر کرده ام- قدم بلندتر شده و جثه ­ام نسبت به پله ­ها بزرگتر شده بود. همچنین، پول و موفقیت و امنیتِ بیشتری داشتم؛ البته در مقایسه با روزگاری که فکر و تشویش آینده، با من از همین پله­ ها بالا و پایین می­رفتند. رویم را برگرداندم و از ساختمان بیرون رفتم. محوطه ­ی دور همچنان سوت و کور بود. من هم قدم­زنان مسیر سنگفرش شده را طی می­کردم و از زیر درختان انبوه و سر به فلک کشیده، همان نارون­های قرمزِ نیوانگلند تا دور دور­های مدرسه رفتم. و...»؛ پایان نقل. ا. شربیانی

All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way- if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy.

The book cares who is watching. Gene knows you are watching. Move in for an embrace, over the shoulder a good old boy smile. You know how it is, how it was. There we all were...

Confession? I don't place a lot of value in confessionals. If you want to know a person, really know them, it means more to me to take note of what matters to them, what they don't choose to divulge.

Where was I?

I felt as if I were reading someone telling me about a book. The air was stale, the life sucked out. He wastes time foretelling of evil. If I time-traveled to fifteen years ago in Gene's past it might have felt like this. Doomed to witness the events over the shoulder of a person who wants you to believe what they want you to believe. He wastes time telling of wanting to go back. Did he wish it never happened for himself or for Phinny's sake? The self serving voice lies.

I think it was a mistake to tell the events of the story from Gene's will. The moral of the story, that you cannot forgive unless you can forgive yourself, is stated in the text. That's pretty unforgivable in my book to talk down to the reader this much. It is worse still in that it isn't earned. Everything is told, never happening, never felt. Gene doesn't have to face up to what he did, to know himself. It is given to him through another's acceptance. I didn't need Fowles to tell me that Phinny writes letters to all the king's men. I didn't need to be told that he denies there is a war because they won't accept him as a cripple. It is baffling to me that my edition brings up Fowles' William Faulkner award a few times. Faulkner didn't put it into his story that The Sound and the Fury wasn't about a slut who ruins the lives of her brothers. Sure, there are some seemingly heartless readers who take it as such. I love Faulkner for the qualities this book didn't possess. Faulkner trusts the reader. What about the story, what about knowing them, the life that allows to breathe? A Separate Peace doesn't breathe. It doesn't trust you.

There are qualities to types of confessionals that interest me. Someone will tell you what sounds like their whole life story as if there is no time. They take you by the hand. This is where I live. In my life it is this type of person who usually fucks me over after a couple of days. Someone will tell you what they consider to be important. I lived through that. Why are they telling you? Was it important you were a stranger, were they free?

Gene pushes Phineas, his gold star on the chart at the end of the day, off of a tree. His heart says do it. He doesn't know what is in his heart, not always. The ghost that repeats itself doesn't die the same death. What you think you would forgive if it was someone else who did it. Phineas is crippled. Maybe Phineas didn't want his follower to match his sports glory in the academic area. Maybe everything is as Gene says it is.

But Gene says that he feels sorry for Leper. Gene doesn't move fast enough to end the scene when he tells the school that Leper ran away from the army. Sure, Gene tells that he isn't like the average boy's academy bully. When A Separate Peace is best we get to hear Leper imply what Gene looked like when he was running with the boys. Hear Gene all for enlisting with Brinker and turning his face when Phinny doesn't like the idea. Give Brinker a nickname, what a joke. What a sissy britches. I was interested in what another character would have said about the events in their school. I was more interested in forgetting about what Gene said altogether and just watching what happened and deciding for myself. Almost, when Gene is called out on what really happened that day on the tree. I won't say fateful because I don't believe it was meant to happen. Perhaps on another day he wouldn't have wanted to stay on top. If Phinny had given him enough attention that day, made him feel special enough. Gene won't say what happened and we know that Brinker and Leper at least suspect what happens. We know that Gene brags about his clever turnaround in the smoking room to evade questions. Was this the life? Was it true that school and life was about being able to be the best without giving a shit about anything? I don't think the boy who scored lower on the most likely to succeed lists cared about looking good in a stupid yearbook photo if he was doing what he loved. Gene's confessional in A Separate Peace as this is what boys are like, this is what lies in their hearts. I don't feel it. I don't feel it just because the book tells me it is so.

I'm also perplexed why this is called a masterpiece when it is said right from the off Gene is telling about events from fifteen years past. Different chapters will contradict the previous one when shouldn't he have known this already? As it had all happened already?

My favorite part was when Leper runs away from the army because his life would be ruined with a discharge on grounds of insanity. He would never be hired for employment. This contradicts the rosy "And Stalin was great and Churchhill was great and Roosevelt was great" cheesey voice narrator from a film. I can just hear the middle-aged actor (the poor girl's Tom Hanks) narrating the events as the secondary actor from a CW tv show looks moony at the heartthrob rolling around the school grounds with his athletic body. Gene talked about his friend's body so much I was thinking I had wondered into a junior high school girl's lavatory. "You have such nice breasts!" "Shut up, you have a great butt. All the boys like your butt." I don't know anything more about those girls than they choose to subscribe to an off the surface world expectation. Blah blah blah all sixteen year old boys live the life. But what about everyone else? There were lots of boys in that school.

I didn't read A Separate Peace in high school because I was in the "dumb kid's" English class. I'm not sure if the book tells you stuff that isn't true because the author thought the readers were young and wouldn't understand unless he connected all of the dots? Or is Gene supposed to be this sociopathic and believes his audience to be suckers? But what for? The important thing, for me, about confessionals is why a person is telling you all of this to begin with. Do they want you to know them? What is being absolved if it as easy as a saint-like school chum forgiving you? I don't think you're a bad guy. Or you could live your life and just try to be human and not fuck anyone over any more than you have to. Openness is worth more to me than any confessional story about the bad thing you did or the bad thing that happened to you. That so much of everyone and everything in his life was based on the boy he thought was higher than him says more to me than the rest of it. That is what I think it would say if it didn't know I was watching. Because he's watching Phinny.

Confession? Confessions mean something to me if they are a means to relate. To be naked about what matters to you, if you care about who you are sharing it with. This book doesn't knows you are watching and it thinks it knows who you are and what you know.

Beautiful formative-years tale of friendship and enmity.

*3.5*

5 stars.

I grew up with an old, yellowed paperback copy of this book sans front cover sitting on my parents' bookshelf. I remember seeing it there on that bookshelf for a decade and thinking to myself how stuffy and boring it obviously would be. It wasn't until I was 23 or 24 visiting my parents' house, inconspicuously stealing things to take home with me, that I decided to snatch it up from that bookshelf with a handful of other books it had never occurred to me before to read.

Maybe it was just the place I was at in my life at the time and the meaningful relationships I was then engaged in but I was immediately, profoundly, tragically affected by the simple accounts of the these boys and their experiences and interactions. I didn't relate to their time in a boarding school or their anxiety about the possibilities of going to war. What I did relate to was jealousy. I did relate to Gene, always feeling second-rate in all the things that really mattered. I know what it's like to be grateful for a best friend and love him in the way that friends do and still secretly wish him failure and embarrassment.

I've since come to realize that there are far more people who see themselves as being Gene than Finny. And whenever a Gene consciously or subconsciously "shakes a tree branch" if you will, it changes them. As Gene explains:

"Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person 'the world today' or 'life' or 'reality' he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever."

Gene mentions this in reference to the war and how it will always be his reality but, given his behavior regarding that tree, one can tell that there are more specific moments we all have etched into our memories whether from joy, fear, regret or fondness. This book is one of my very favorites not because of any deep or complicated wisdom but because it's a mirror that helps me reflect on my own reality and the unconscious envies and insecurities I harbor. Who knows what other treasures have been hiding on my parents' bookshelf...

Since we have this new war in Ukraine to occupy our attention, I have been thinking of books I’ve read that speak to man’s need to kill each other, that aggressive, violent trait, and I recalled reading A Separate Peace in high school, as most people did in the USA in the sixties, as required school reading, in part because it was a coming-of-age book. There was a growing recognition in the mid- to late-sixties (the Student Revolution on college campuses was part of this movement) that books that spoke directly to adolescents might increase reading fluency and engagement, and there were few of these books to offer young people in those early days of YAL. This novel was published in 1959 and is a kind of a coming-of-age gem.

John Knowles was a 1945 graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, a prestigious East coast boys’ prep school, so he wrote a novel and called Exeter Devon in part based on his experiences there, including his own broken leg from a fall from a tree. I call this a war novel now because, though it takes place in a sheltered and privileged location it takes place as many young men (and so many others) were dying in WWII.

As happens in the US, the great geographical distance from Europe, Korea, Viet Nam, and so on make it difficult for homelanders to fully understand the nature of the day-to-day experience young people (i.e., soldiers) have of war. Also, it can take young people a long time to feel as if they are part of the global community, of course; as Gene says,

“I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.”

The key moment in the book happens in a tree; a place of macho challenges: Who will climb it and jump into the river? Only the bravest, of course. This moment--and it does just take a moment or so--happens between best friends Phineas and Gene, but invites some questions: Did Finny fall (and break his leg) or was he the victim of a moment of aggression by Gene? The shy intellectual Gene adores the confident, athletic Finny, and there are some strong homo-erotic indications in narrator Gene’s descriptions of him, though these tendencies are never named as homosexual (in part, I take it, because it was a 1959 publication; I am sure we never discussed in class the possibility of the boys being gay). Some (possible) desires, some frictions, and some ambivalence drive their relationship. Do all of these roiling emotions lead to a so-small and yet so-large moment of violence?

Gene says, about his desire to be Finny: "I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas.”

Much of the novel tries to unravel the mystery of that moment even as older boys head out to Europe to fight the Fuhrer, encouraged by patriotic fervor and naivete and patriotism. No one anticipates what happens to sweet and simple naturalist student Lepellier (also known as Leper), who is discharged from the army after a nervous breakdown from what he has seen in combat--amputated limbs, bloody massacres. When Gene goes to visit Leper, in recovery at home, Gene can’t process what Leper is going through; he yells at Leper and tells him to shut up, to stop telling him what he has experienced:

“I don’t care what happened to you! It has nothing to do with me!”

But it does have something to do with him, and he knows it:

"Fear seized my stomach like a cramp. I didn’t care what I said to him now; it was myself I was worried about. For if Leper was psycho it was the army which had done it to him, and I and all of us were on the brink of the army."

Leper asks a key question no patriotic citizen who had not served in the military would have or could have asked at the time:

“Am I crazy? Or is the army crazy? I couldn’t sleep at night and could only sleep when I wasn’t in my bed; everything was mixed up, turned upside down.”

Still, all these other boys who have not yet enlisted, all these boys still in school at Devon, who are cut off from the reality of war, are not cut off from the darker aspects of their human natures-anger, jealousy, love--as they interact with each other, and grow from boys into men in their privileged--”high IQs and expensive shoes”--Devon private boys school.

“. . . there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved.”

Eventually Gene begins to see:

“It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.”

Ultimately this is a growing-up story, and a good one:

“I did not know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.”

And it’s about war and peace:

“. . . it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory, special and separate peace.”

I read this book in school and I remember it broke my heart.

This is a book that I have read and re-read over the years. It is always a revelation to see how one's perception changes over the decades. Of course, re-reading is also a practice which can produce unexpected results.

I used to find the relationship between Gene and Finny touching; this time around I was a little bored. The odd couple of the handsome athlete and introverted bookish boy is now an M/M trope, but this is the seed crystal here. Back in the day, before there was such a thing as gay fiction, we had books like this which hinted but did not say too much. Modern readers are likely to feel frustrated, and claustrophobic.

I picked it up again because when reading about Gore Vidal there is a claim that one of the characters is based on him (Vidal did go to Exeter with John Knowles).

Wow, I was not expecting to like this book because I had to read it for school, but I surprisingly did. Gene and Finny have the most complicated, beautiful friendship. Phineas,Finny, was my absolute favorite. He cracked me up so many times, and he was just such a complex, imaginative character. He has all of these big ideas/thoughts and almost an innocence about him. While, Gene was such a raw character, and it was so interesting reading about the Devon school through his eyes. I definitely thought Finny used Gene sometimes. I was so sad when Finny died! I almost cried. Finny was my favorite and without him this book wouldn’t be the same.

The usual dilemma with any kind of classic novel: what to say about this that hasn’t already been said? A Separate Peace is told almost entirely from the perspective of a teenage boy at a New England boarding school during the Second World War (there’s also a brief – powerfully evocative – introductory section in which the narrator returns to his old school as an adult). Concentrating on the friendship between the narrator, Gene, and his best friend, Phineas, it’s a story of how these children of privilege navigate the effects of war as well as the paradox in which they are now contained: they will imminently join the fight, so they’re expected to grow up fast, but adults also treat them as paragons of precious innocence, to be indulged and coddled. The writing is so clean and smooth and lucid. It rolls along wonderfully; it’s emotionally resonant. I found it beautiful, and well deserving of its status.

Two favourite passages:

‘... One summer day after another broke with a cool effulgence over us, and there was a breath of widening life in the morning air—something hard to describe—an oxygen intoxicant, a shining northern paganism, some odor, some feeling so hopelessly promising that I would fall back in my bed on guard against it. I forgot whom I hated and who hated me. I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because these mornings were too full of beauty for me, because I knew of too much hate to be contained in a world like this.’

‘Here the road turned to the left and became dirt. It proceeded along the lower end of the playing fields, and under the pale night glow the playing fields swept away from me in slight frosty undulations which bespoke meanings upon meanings, levels of reality I had never suspected before, a kind of thronging and epic grandeur which my superficial eyes and cluttered mind had been blind to before. They unrolled away impervious to me as though I were a roaming ghost, not only tonight but always, as though I had never played on them a hundred times, as though my feet had never touched them, as though my whole life at Devon had been a dream, or rather that everything at Devon, the playing fields, the gym, the water hole, and all the other buildings and all the people there were intensely real, wildly alive and totally meaningful, and I alone was a dream, a figment which had never really touched anything. I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.’

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