One of his first published short stories, “Phineas,” appeared in Cosmopolitan in 1956 and contained the narrative seeds of A Separate Peace. THE BOOK HAD AN EARLIER EXISTENCE AS A SHORT STORY.Īfter graduating from Yale, Knowles worked as a drama critic at the Hartford (Conn.) Courant and as a freelance writer. "The summer of 1943 at Exeter was as happy a time as I ever had in my life … Yale was a distinct letdown afterward." 2. Classroom windows were open the aroma of flowers and shrubbery floated in," he wrote. "The great trees, the thick clinging ivy, the expanses of playing fields, the winding black-water river, the pure air all began to sort of intoxicate me. The West Virginian Knowles later wrote that despite the culture clash (and the cold) he fell in love with the school. He then served in the military for a short time before graduating from Yale in 1949. Like his protagonists Gene and Finny, who are students at the elite Devon School during World War II, Knowles attended the exclusive Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire in the early 1940s. KNOWLES BASED A SEPARATE PEACE ON HIS OWN EXPERIENCE. John Knowles’s 1959 novel about a conflicted prep school friendship has become a coming-of-age classic.
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