A Separate Peace :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

Schoolbook

2008-08-18
You can see this title on the required summer reading tables in bookstores, and I guess schools have been assigning it for almost fifty years. It is easy to see why. Its characters are all adolescents, engaged in the usual struggle for self-definition, subject to sudden mood-swings between intense affection and crippling self-doubt. And being set in 1942-43, the years following America's entry into the War, it offers a new and valuable perspective on this important period in the nation's history. It is, in short, a teachable text.

But it is a text that requires teaching. For one thing, I am not sure how easily most young people can relate to the hermetic world of a single-sex boarding school, let alone an elite New England prep school (the Dover School of the book is surely modeled after Philips Exeter, which the author attended). Although there is no hint of the homoerotic attractions that were a significant issue at the similar English school I attended a decade later, the book demands some understanding of the emotional impact of a closed world, where one's friends are everything, and every feeling is intensified. The central character, Gene Forrester, though physically no slouch, is primarily a scholar; he is drawn into the magnetic ambience of his roommate Phineas (Finny), a natural athlete for whom no feat is impossible and no scheme too audacious. The plot turns on Gene's inability to discern his own motives, or even to work out whether Finny is his best friend or most jealous rival. A moment of ambiguity early in the novel triggers an event which, though apparently soon laid to rest, will resonate throughout the book, leading to much more serious consequences. A good teacher might profitably discuss questions of truth and perception, motive and blame, on a chapter-by-chapter basis, but Knowles is a subtle and balanced writer who avoids primary colors. The lone reader who does not stop to question the text might well be left with the impression that this is merely an elegant memoir in which little of consequence happens.

The title phrase occurs about two-thirds of the way through the book during an unofficial Winter Carnival that Finny has organized in the snowy fields: "It wasn't the cider that made me surpass myself, 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." The peace really is momentary; the very next paragraph introduces the first Devon casualty of the war, not fatal but nearly as devastating. Indeed, the war has been almost imperceptibly in the background for some time, but it now moves to the foreground, as the members of the graduating class move to enlist in one of the services. In the epilogue, Knowles has Gene take the war as a metaphor for the psychological battles fought at school over the past year. I am not certain that this works. But the brief moment when the two worlds, school and war, are temporarily balanced against one another is very poignant indeed.

The Nihilist Proposition: Negative & Repugnant

2008-08-08
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"A Separate Peace" by John Knowles is a confusing book, which is why it is endorsed for popular consumption.

The reason is that when values are confused, people are far more readily manipulated; moreso, than if they were presented with a story whose propositions by way of story line were more explicit and unconfusing. The novel has nothing at all to do with PEACE, but a lot to do with ANGST, which the author offers as a desireable personality trait.

The first element in the story is its SELF-ABSORBED tone. The random presentation of events, and the fact that the actions of the characters are not founded upon human IDEATION, creates a perfect scenario for an elaborate HALF-TRUTH to be imposed upon the reader. The characters wander through a labyrinth of activities which are meaningless, purposeless, and thoughtless. It's a social engineer's paradise.

In this labyrinth of literary devices Knowle's presents a camouflaged ideation, which is incomplete of course, because the author is offering characters that are conveniently unhinged from reality.

This disconnection permits the dialogue to float adrift on a sea of uncertainty. Unfortunately, the uncertainty is presented as an invariable, and certitude simply isn't there.

What remains is a nihilistic proposition in which people navigate a foggy landscape, with no place to go, and nothing particular to do but wallow around in a teleological No Man's land.

The novel has appeal to people who endorse such propositions, finding fuzzy meanings and messages in the vaccuous verbiage; but that is precisely the author's intention.

There is virtually no value in reading such literature, unless one is merely curious about how nihilistic messages are implanted in the collective psyche, and how human Egotism and self-centeredness become a general proposal as a basis upon which to found a life.

In all, it is literary nonsense, whose potential damage to the human psyche is evident to anyone with an ability to sort through the author's manipulations of logic in storyline and dialogue. It's rather like a "code" in scripted form, with no benefit, unless the reader views as a benefit, fictionalized melodrama and fictionalized crises.

As the proverbialism goes, John Knowles doesn't have anything I want.

--Bruce R. Bain

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Great Buy

2008-07-29
I'm usually concerned about purchasing items on line, especially books. I can honestly say that this experience was worth it. I would recommend this seller to anyone interested in purchasing good quality books at extremely reasonable prices.

Buy with confidence, I did!

A great seller

2008-06-02
Product is exactly as described, shipping just took a little longer than anticipated. Otherwise a wonderful buying experience!

Great book!

2008-06-01
Needed book for required reading for school. Really enjoyed the read. Would recommend for anyone.

"In our free democracy, even fighting for its life, the truth will out"'

2008-05-27
Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowles's crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic.

From The Marrow of His Bones: Brillantly Written But Slightly Flawed Portrait of Friendship and Rivalry 2008-05-15
Published in 1959, John Knowles' A SEPARATE PEACE is loosely based on the author's experiences while a student at Exter Academy during the 1940s--and tells the story of two students, Phineas and Gene, who strike up an unlikely but intense friendship that leads unexpectedly to tragedy and untimely death. It was extremely well-received by critics and public alike and is considered a minor classic of modern American literature, a frequent fixture on high school and university must-read lit studies lists.

A fairly short work, A SEPARATE PEACE can be easily read from cover to cover in the course of two or three hours--but I wouldn't recommend doing so. Some novels should not be rushed, and this is one of them; Knowles' lyric style requires a certain patience to develop fully in the reader's mind and the almost ghostly manner in which he handles the novel's themes of friendship, rivalry, ethics, and morality requires a fair amount of thought.

Gene, the novel's narrator, returns to Devon Academy, a private school he attended as a teenager during World War II. He hopes the visit will allow him to face the truth of and find meaning in the past--and he vividly recalls his relationship with school friend and roommate Phineas, a gifted athlete and charismatic eccentric whose charm encouraged his fellow students to numerous risky activities. Chief among these are a dangerous dive from a tree branch into the river, a dive that gradually acquires a ritualistic nature and ultimate gives rise to tragedy.

The nature of the tragedy involved drives the action of the novel. Who is morally weak and who is morally strong? How much can Gene--and we--ascribe to accident and circumstance and impulse and how much arises from free will? Who is actually responsible? There are no easy answers.

In both tone and story A SEPARATE PEACE seems to draw from three earlier masterpieces: F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1920 THIS SIDE OF PARADISE and 1925 THE GREAT GATSBY and Evelyn Waugh's 1945 BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. All three of these are lyical in tone; both PARADISE and BRIDESHEAD present young men in academic settings; and PEACE is quite similar in conclusion to GATSBY, both novels ending without a clear moral center and leaving the reader to sort of the meaning of the story in much the same way the characters must.

This was Knowles' first novel, and in some respects his inexperience shows: at certain points, most notably Gene's visit to Leper's Vermont home and the impromptu student court, the construction feels forced and artificial, as if Knowles recognized these moments had to occur for the sake of the story but didn't quite know how to go about writing them. That aside, however, the style of writing is remarkable eloquent, the prose possessing a poetic quality that is remarkably fine. The conclusion never fully resolves the relationship between Gene and Phineas, never fully answers the questions it raises, and as such has a remarkably haunting quality.

I personally A SEPARATE PEACE an often-brilliant piece of writing; I also suspect it is a novel that holds up extremely well to re-reading. At the same time, however, I confess I also found it slightly over-rated. There is a very fine line between narrative vagueness that inspires thought and narrative vagueness that is simply vague, and Knowles too often edges into the latter. Recommended, but perhaps best regarded as a slightly flawed "art" novel.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

caught my attention right from the first chapter 2008-05-13
A Separate Peace caught my attention right from the first chapter. John Knowles uses simple and clean language that makes reading this novel easy. It is a short novel with an interestingly simple plot that could have been developed into any ending.

The two main characters, Gene and Finny, are opposite in what they do but are attracted by the same excitement. Gene is very involved in his schoolwork and academically gifted. Finny is very involved in sports and physical activity. The story revolves around the lives of Gene and Finny and their path through school, life, and the war.

The differences these boys appear to have creates a competitiveness that's very prevalent in most parts of the novel, creating tensions that pull the reader in. Adding the war into the story makes it different from other tension filled novels in the sense that there is an additional fear. The fear of war becomes a reality for the boys when their friend Leper Lepellier gets drafted and sent to war. Knowles helps create a gloomy mood at select times by using dark and sharp words. But when there are happy moments he is very good at creating an ambiance that's warm and heart felt. Heart felt words are mostly used when Finny and Gene are together, like at the beach or when they make up a new game. It is a story that explores the launch into manhood and the difficulties boys deal with during war times. The novel is very realistic and offers a sense into their experiences.

I would recommend this book because you don't have to look deep into the story to find the meaning behind it all. The length is perfect for anyone. The ending was strange in that it didn't feel like it should have been over - there seemed to be an emptiness that never got filled.

Brideshead Revisited again 2008-03-25
"A Separate Peace" is considered to be an American classic, and I cannot deny the fact that it is extremely well written, but the simple truth remains that I just didn't enjoy it. In fact, it reminded me very much of Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited", another book which I feel more or less the same about.

Both "Brideshead Revisited" and "A Separate Peace" are told from the point of view of a character revisiting a location (Brideshead, in the case of "Brideshead Revisited" and the Devon School, in the case of "A Separate Peace") years after his first visit there and reflecting on his time there; in both cases the main character (Charles in "Brideshead" and Gene in "Peace") had an intense friendship with a unique character (Sebastian/Phinneas) who was "not meant for the real world"; and both books detail the decline of the unique friend, while the more serious protagonist moves on with his life.

Both books begin with several chapters detailing the best parts of the friendship between these characters, and I enjoyed both of these sections immensely. While reading the first 70 pages of "A Separate Peace", I thought this was going to become one of my favourite books of all time. I really wish that Waugh and Knowles had continued these "fun" sections for the entire duration of their books. Unfortunately, in both cases, events transpire to change things (Sebastian's expulsion from Oxford, and Phinneas's accident), and after that, the books are just dreary and depressing. I can understand that both authors had messages to put forward through these depressing scenes, but they are just not the sort of things that I enjoy reading. I won't spoil the ending of either book, but I will say that I found the ending of "A Separate Peace" to be very contrived and after reading it, I just wanted to throw my copy of the book at the wall.

Overall, I give "A Separate Peace" 4 stars for the quality of the writing (minus one star for the convenient ending), but 2 stars for my personal entertainment value. This gives an average rating of 3 stars.

Rereading a novel 20 years later 2008-03-24
When I first read this book in high school, I "got" some of it, and liked it a great deal. I loved the quote at the end, about imagined Maginaw (did I spell that right?) lines, enemies we imagine, fights that are all in our heads. Wow, high school and even college age is full of these complex relationships. Not like now (haha)...

What I got re-reading this last year was the richness and intricacies of our relationships with key people in our lives. I thought that the question was not did he/didn't he, clearly he did, but are all of these confusing relationships with others so entirely meshed with our own view and relationship with ourselves? I thought the relationship between the boys was as complex, rich, multifaceted, and many-at-once as you could hope for.

I have also noted that at times of political unrest, authors turn to the setting of boarding school as a microcosm of innocence and fraternaty; I can't remember it now, but there was a similarly set book on the best seller list late last year, and many others. I had missed, on first reading, the import of the war as backdrop in A Separate Peace, with war the mover of lives and the ender of innocence. As a separte theme, an interesting one. Care to plot novels set at boarding school against periods of unrest? Me either.

That said, I still really love how the book makes me think about things, and how it so simply paints intricate relationships that we all recognize and experience but could never describe so eloquently as we are shown here.

And, I'm still trying to talk my kids into naming our next pet Phineas.