Just Finished Reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles

When I recently bought John Knowles' novel A Separate Peace (for 25 cents) at a local used book sale, I didn't recall that I had actually read it before. But as I went through it, the text seemed more and more familiar...making me conclude that it was probably one of those high school English class reading assignments that I had stashed away in the deep, dark recesses of my memory.  It's a story about two boys attending a private prep school in New Hampshire in 1942 as World War II raged in the news and shortages and restrictions made themselves more and more felt around them, and with military service looming ahead of them upon graduation.  Gene, the first-person narrator, is the more introverted and cautious while "Finny" (from Phineas) is extroverted and impulsive.  The story quickly evolves as an examination of their friendship and its nature: Gene finds himself a follower of Finny's exploits, eventually feeling resentment at the latter's apparent view of him as being little more than just an extension of his own dominating personality.  The rift between the two is kept hidden and unexpressed until...well, here's where I let you, the potential reader of this novel, find out for yourself what happens...

It is that determination that some have to dominate and submerge others in their relationships...and the other party's unhappy and irrational acquiescence to such an inequitable and demeaning arrangement, that impressed me the most with A Separate Peace.  All throughout my life I have experienced people who, like Finny, seem to think that there's only one narrative to display interest in: their own, and that it is supposedly up to me to simply lay down my own sense of identity, interests, and values and follow them in everything they say and do.  To which I say: screw that!  If you haven't read this 1959 book by John Knowles, I recommend it to you. But why not save the quarter I spent on it and just check it out for free from the library?  One warning, though: although it is a short novel, it is also pretty disturbing...