The Classmates: Privilege, Chaos, and the End of an Era

By Geoffrey Douglas

Book Overview

Fifty years ago, in the fall of 1957, two thirteen-year-old boys were enrolled at an elite, boys-only New England boarding school. One of them, descended from wealth and eminence, would go on to Yale, then to a career as a navy officer and Vietnam war hero, and finally to the U.S. Senate, from where he would fall just short of the White House. The other was a scholarship student, a misfit giant of a boy from a Pennsylvania farm town who would suffer shameful debasements at the hands of his classmates, then go on to a solitary and largely anonymous life as a salesman of encyclopedias and trailer parts--before dying, alone, twelve months after his classmate's narrow loss on Election Day 2004. It is around these two figures, John Kerry and a boy known here only as Arthur, the bookends of a class of one hundred boys, that Geoffrey Douglas--himself a member of that boarding-school class--builds this remarkable memoir. His portrait of their lives and the lives of five others in that class--two more Vietnam veterans with vastly divergent stories, a federal judge, a gay New York artist who struggled for years to find his place in the world, and Douglas himself--offers a memorable look back to a generation caught between the expectations of their fathers and the sometimes terrifying pulls of a society driven by war, defiance, and self-doubt. The class of 1962 was not so different from any other, with its share of swaggerers and shining stars, outcasts and scholarship students. Its distinction was in its timing: at the precise threshold of the cultural and political upheavals of the late 1960s. The world these boys had been trained to enter and to lead, a world very similar to their fathers', would be exploded and recast almost at the moment of their entrance--forcing choices whose consequences were sometimes lifelong. Douglas's chronicle of those times and choices is both a capsule history of an era and a literary tour de force.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1401301967
• ISBN13: 9781401301965
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Popularity--perception vs. reality

While the link to John Kerry is what attracted me to this book, I soon learned that Kerry is a relatively minor story, just as he was in the author's class at St. Paul's school. This book really is about the struggle for popularity and acceptance that boys faced at his school and still face even today. Douglas always considered himself an outsider, but he discovers upon reconnecting with many old classmates that his perception of some of them as popular, with-it boys clashed with the reality--at least the reality of how many of those boys saw themselves. St. Paul's of the sixties is portrayed as an unpleasant experience for many of the boys, including the author. But we also see some boys (now grown men), who considered it the shaping influence of their lives. This is a glimpse back at a time that has ceased to exist in many ways today. In the final chapter, the author revisits today's St. Paul's and finds a far different place than that of his boyhood. As for Kerry, he comes across as a driven induvidual who "never got it" then and still doesn't "get it." Overall a quick and stimulating read that made me think about what makes one boy popular and the other an outcast.

What is a St. Paul's boy?

The Classmates opens with a scene of cruelty as sport hatched by classmates at St. Paul's, a school for boys. A scholarship student, always short of money and willing to earn it sits on a toilet in an open field mid winter as his classmates walk by and laugh. In the fall of 1957 the new class of boys entered St. Paul's, and elite New England boarding school. Geoffrey Douglas was the son and brother of a St. Paul boy and started his St. Paul's education that year... When John Kerry announced his bid for the presidency in 2000, boys of St. Paul's began to talk to each other....John Kerry had once been one of them. The letters, e-mails, phone calls and visits piqued Douglas's curiosity. How did being a St. Paul's boy shape the men they became? What ever happened to the young man perched on the toilet, subjected to his classmate's stares and scorn? Geoffrey Douglas focuses on several classmates and the varied paths they took once leaving the school. Almost to a man, they talked of the loneliness and sense of being an outsider among their peers.....even those seemingly seemed secure in their positions in school society. Shaped by the school, family expectations, Vietnam, drugs, college, divorce and failures among other things, these men talk about the events and choices in their lives whose consequences sometime lasted a lifetime. Most fascinating is the attempt to talk to John Kerry, himself, and the traits that colored his school career and seem to last to this day. Douglas is forthright and candid about his struggles. The trust some of his classmates put in his abilities to fairly and humanly portray their stories was well placed. This is a small snapshot of a time and place long gone.

An Inside Look

An exceptional look at a prestigious American prep school where wealth, Christianity and high moral values co-existed with adolescent cruelties and life-altering snobbery. Filled with rich and candid autobiographical detail. Better than fiction!

The Classmates by Geoffrey Douglas

Classmates, The: Privilege, Chaos, and the End of an Era Interesting & well written look at the lives of "privileged" boys starting in their private school days.

John and Arthur

Douglas, Geoffrey. "Classmates", Hyperion, 2008. John and Arthur Amos Lassen It is the fall of 1957 and John and Arthur, two fifteen year old boys, are at an exclusive New England boarding school. This is the setting of Geoffrey Douglas' new book, "Classmates". John came from a wealthy family and his future was filled with promise. Arthur was a scholarship student from a Pennsylvania farming family whose future was shaky at best. The boys' class was made up of one hundred boys and it is the student population that Douglas uses as the source of his memoir. The boys were divided---their fathers expected success but the guys lived in a society that was in the middle of a disastrous war in Vietnam, a sexual revolution at home and an age when people were filled with questions and doubt. I remember those years all too well as this is my generation. We were interested politically, we experimented sexually, we were afraid of being drafted and we tuned in and dropped out. Here we stood at the door waiting to move from the 50's to the 60's and we hoped for a better world. We, as did the classmates of Douglas' book, were witness to both the political and social changes and upheavals of the late 60's and we watched the world change drastically. The decade of the 60's was to change the world forever and we still feel the results today. Douglas has written a compelling book that looks at the changes that America and the world went through and he uses the characters of John and Arthur as our guides. John is John Kerry who went on to college at Yale, became a war hero in Vietnam and was later elected to the Senate of the United States and then attempts a bid at the Presidency. Quite the opposite is Arthur (whose surname is not given, perhaps to emphasize that his life was as anonymous as he was) who went on to nothingness, a life of little meaning and ultimately a salesman who died alone a year after his classmate loss the election. Peppered through the book are other classmates which reflect the diversity of American life. There are two other war veterans, a federal judge, a gay artist and the author himself. Together these classmates watched as a new world was created and worked to find their place in it. "Classmates" is a short book but one that is powerful. It reopens those old wounds that many of us have carried and it explains a period of time that almost defies explanation. It reminded me so much of the time I spent trying to come to terms with who I was and where I fit. "Classmates" is a remarkable study and my generation should welcome it into their minds and libraries.