Peace Breaks Out by John Knowles

(Book Review)

Like most people, I read “A Separate Peace” back in high school English class. And like many people, I didn’t really care for it at the time, but in re-reading it in the years since I have come to appreciate it. (I never reviewed it on this site because I try not to review books I re-read. The book reviews are getting cluttered enough as it is. But I have referenced it when comparing it to other books, such as here and here.)

"A Separate Peace” is the best description I have read of dormitory tensions and school life. (The book takes place in a high school, but unless you attend a prep boarding school I think most people need to experience the college dorm life first in order to truly appreciate the book.)

When in Japan, I was talking to someone else who also enjoyed “A Separate Peace” and she mentioned there was a sequel. “A sequel?” I said.
“Well, sort of,” she said. “It takes place in the same school a couple years later. None of the characters are the same, but there are a few passing references to the first book.” Personally I would have been a lot more excited about following the further adventures of Gene Forrester, Brinker, Leper, and the other surviving members of the first book. But any chance to return to the world of Devon High School was welcome, so now that I’m back in the U.S., I got this book out through inter-library loan.

It’s well known in the movie world that sequels always disappoint. I think literary sequels have a slightly higher success rate, but it is still difficult to pull off. The author has to capture enough of the original feeling without retelling the same story twice; a difficult tight rope to manage. This is easier with some books than others. With a fantasy book, you can just take the same characters and send them out on another adventure. Which is why so many fantasy books are part of a series. (Have you ever gone into a bookstore and tried to find a nice fantasy book that didn’t commit you to reading a whole series? It can’t be done, I swear).

But with a tragic story like “A Separate Peace”, how do you follow that up? I guess that’s why John Knowles made a fresh start with a new group of students. But even with this, he’s obviously struggling. In my opinion, he ends up with the worst of both worlds. He repeats enough of the story to give this book a “been there/ done that” feel, but he fails to re-capture the beautiful subtlety of the original.

There are only two brief references to the events of the original “A Separate Peace”, and a few of the faculty are the same (like Dr. Stanton), but other than that this is a completely new story. A completely new story which reads remarkable like the old one. Once again a school-boy rivalry that ends in tragedy, once again an accidental death resulting from pent-up aggression, once again a injured leg from a fool-hardy sporting attempt that turns into a major plot point, and once again a death scene in the infirmary with Dr. Stanton uttering his same shocked mumblings.

As with the first book, the war is a big back-drop. But unlike the first book, this is the class of 1946, not 1944. They have just barely escaped being sent into the war they had spent the bulk of their lives preparing for, and are not sure whether they should be relieved or disappointed. And like the first book, parallels are made between the death on campus and the destruction of the war.

But the magic touch is gone. Unlike the original, I didn’t get the feeling that these boys were people I actually knew. Perhaps because Knowles waited until 1981 to write the second book, he had lost the ability to accurately recreate school life. The Butt room conversations, which in the original sounded just like any group of boys trading jokes at Calvin, now sound stilted and too literary.

The main plot in “Peace Breaks Out” is the rivalry between Hochschwender, a Nazi admirer, and Wexford, a kind of young Joseph McCarthy/ evil genius. This in itself should be a good sign that all subtlety is out the window. In the original the rivalry is over nothing essentially.

After living through the dorms, I always thought the original “A Separate Peace” did a great job of recreating the natural tension between two roommates who have spent too much time together. Friendship turns into jealous rivalries, and innocent words are subverted in the mind of Gene Forrester until he is ruled by his own paranoia. Even the climatic moment on the tree top is such a subtle thing that afterwards Gene isn’t sure if it was a conscious action or not.

And now we trade that in for a Nazi admirer and an evil genius. I have a hard time believing that in 1946 it would be possible to walk around school openly praising Adolf Hitler. Wouldn’t he have gotten his ass kicked? During that time, didn’t everyone know someone who died in the war. But not until events have forced a crisis does violence actually occur. I would have thought it would have happened on the first day of school. But then, John Knowles actually lived through the period, I didn’t. Maybe people back then were a lot more diverse and tolerant than we give them credit for.

In short, I was disappointed by this book, but it obviously suffers from the problem of high expectation. If it had been any other book besides a sequel to “A Separate Peace” it would not be judged so harshly. It really wasn’t a bad little book by any means. And it was still fun to go back to Devon High School.

Like the original, this book is very short, and can easily be read in a couple days. So if you enjoyed the original, and this sounds slightly interesting to you, you can’t really lose anything by checking it out.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
The Roman Emperor Claudius introduced 3 new letters to the alphabet (a reversed C, a turned F and a half H). These letters did not survive after his death.
Support for the letters was added in the most recent version of Unicode, version 5.0.0

Link of the Day
Here's something for you history buffs: footage of the assassination of the head of the Japanese Socialist party in 1960.
In Japan, as in parts of Europe, Socialist party represents the head opposition party, and not some crazy leftist group. This was in the days before live TV, but the assassination of the Socialist Party Chairmen in front of TV cameras was still a shocking event.
The first wave of Japan's student movement was in full swing by 1960, but the youth who committed the assassination was a rightest, and so this is not properly part of the leftist student movement. It did however increase polarization in Japan, and add to the leftist protests, similar perhaps to the assassination of RFK or MLK in the US.
(Warning: Graphic scene, contains a real person getting stabbed, etc)

Peace Breaks Out by John Knowles: Book Review (Scripted)