THE CLASS

Ever realized what we talk, we argue, we watch (well, p*** most of the time), we listen, whatever we do, we are becoming a part of a generation, we are creating a generation, call it X, Y or Z - we are different. We are experiencing and doing things as noone, nowhere ever did or will ever do. Still, in the fast pace of our life how many of us get time to think about such things?
Let's take for example our university life. Not many of us take it as seriously as it should be taken (some take it too seriously, some not at all seriously) and we don't really realize that having left our school days behind, these are the days we will fondly (or otherwise) remember the rest of our lives. We might reach great heights, travel great distances, drag ourselves as far as possible from our roots but our university will always have a shadow on us. You can never escape it. Still you don't care about it now.
These are a few things that this thought-provoking novel by Erich W. Segal makes you think about. The story revolves around five batchmates (with extraordinary qualities as expected of any Harvard man), their love lives, their careers, etc. Each of them is totally different from the others with a totally different background, ambitions, interests, choices, even the majors. The novel tracks their lives from their matriculation day (orientation time) to their 25th batch reunion (from "a time of innocence to a dramatic twenty-fifth reunion at which they confront their classmates and the balance sheet of their own lives"). The heroes of the story are:

1. Danny Rossi: This is one guy I didn't like throughout the novel, except the beginning part. However, a musical prodigy. A perfect example of what too much fame and success can make of a man. As Segal put it, "Yet his real problems are too much fame too soon - too many women".
   
2. Ted Lambros: A nice guy to begin with but screwing up things big time in the end. Managed to achieve the ambition of his life but with no one to celebrate it with.
   
3. Jason Gilbert: The Golden Boy, the hero of the story, never did anything wrong in his life, ended up in a graceful way. Someone so perfect can't really fascinate me. There have to be some imperfections.
   
4. Andrew Eliot: The Man of The Class. Someone who realizes his true worth only during his 25th Reunion. Otherwise he always considered himself as a "successful failure". Always weighed down by the achievements of the great lineage of his ancestors (all of whom being Harvard people), he used to put in a self-deprecating manner about his admission to Harvard "They let me in because my name was Eliot and I could spell it." A guy I really admired for being a real man though always dipped in mediocracy, setting an example for all mediocres (like me). However, he was different. As Segal put it, "Andrew Eliot'58 had a quality that set him apart from every other member of his Harvard class. He was not ambitious."
   
5. George Keller: An epitome of hard work and ruthless determination. Got all the success in the world but paid the highest price for that. As he himself put in the end, "I have a talent for success maybe, but not for friendship."
   

Thing to note is that they are all human characters, they made as many mistakes in their lives as probably any Harvard man would ever make. The novel teaches many lessons. One of those is that nobody (however powerful, hard-working, resourceful, talented he might be) is bigger than his own destiny or this world. People come and go, the only thing that remains there always is the world with its changing faces.
Secondly, as Andrew put in his diary, "everybody pays a price for his success." He says so at the fate of Danny Rossi, whose career is cut short by a tragic (or not really so tragic, I never really sympathized with him) incident, but it is evident in the lives of all of his friends (not his own as he wasn't in anyway 'that' successful) be it Jason (he was successful just for his looks, rest of the qualities may wait), Keller (a guy from a communist country making it to the highest office of US, wat else do u want), Ted (on his way to be President of Harvard) or Danny (musical sensation of the era). As you go through the novel, you realize what each of them looses to attain what his ambition in life was.
Thirdly, it tells that if you are not happy in whatever situation you are, there's noone else to be blamed for. As Andrew put it in his diary at the sad fate that one of his friends met, "I guess he just didn't know how to be happy. That's the one thing they can't teach you at Harvard."
The way Segal has portrayed each and every moment of not just the university life but actually the whole of everyone's life is just so realistic that you can connect to it so easily. If you do, you love it. If you don't, you don't. Like in my case, Jason Gilbert has been portrayed as the hero of The Class - the Golden Boy, a tall blond apollo with the kind of magnetism women loved and men admired, that rare young man whom every parent dreams of as a son and every woman as a lover and so on, but though I love this portrayal of his, I can't really connect to his part of the story because I am not a Jew, nor do I belong to a hated community or anything similar. I never have to worry about my identity. That's the reason I guess I couldn't connect with him. I know some people would love him more than I do.
Describing a thing which is anyhow even remotely connected to Harvard like the commencement, or the orientation or especially the 25th batch reunion is definitely Segal's forte. I guess that's because these are the things he himself has experienced first hand. The way he described the feelings of the youngsters during their matriculation and of the veteran warriors during their 25th reunion, meeting for probably the last time in their lives, is too touching. I can't resist but quote the ending lines here "They would spend the next decades reading obituaries of the men who had started out in 1954 as rivals and today were leaving Harvard as brothers. This was the beginning of the end."
I guess it's a must read for everyone who is in university or has ever been to one. It really makes me think our NUS class of 2009. Well, it seems there are people around me very similar to each one of these characters. Now, I will definitely observe more carefully for sure.
Well, having finished this novel now, I guess I can now move on to read 'Freakonomics', so lovingly gifted to me by Tian Hong.