The Class (Erich Segal)

The Class is a bittersweet and engaging, if not profound, coming-of-age story of five Harvard students, class of 1958: Danny is an introverted piano phenom. Jason is a gregarious jock in denial of his Judaism. Andrew is a quintessential nice guy and gifted wordsmith. Ted, a comparatively underprivileged scholar, is passionately in love with his soulmate and his classical studies. And George, an intense Hungarian refugee, is on a mission to master American culture. The story begins in their freshman year and follows them through the mid-1980s to some expected - and some unexpected - outcomes.

Segal, a real-life member of the class of ’58, sprinkles the text with quaint Harvard lingo and liberally employs his own Ivy League lexicon.  (I tapped more words into my dictionary app than I’m comfortable admitting.)  His characters are adequately distinctive and appreciable on their own merits, and his narrative is lovely.  Segal is obviously a skilled writer.  Unfortunately, he has one annoying habit:  He uses sentence fragments for emphasis. Overuses them, really.  To the point where I got exasperated.  Like you probably are with these fragments.  Just plain tired of them.  Despite this, his storytelling is effective and intelligent.

Eliot House, Harvard University

The novel starts happily enough, with charming and promising young men navigating an iconic collegiate universe.  But the world gets darker as the pages turn.  Segal takes on such unpleasantries as anti-Semitism, family dysfunction, infidelity, divorce, estrangement, drug abuse, and suicide.  He also deals with the bleaker repercussions of extreme ambition.  But because he discusses these issues rather superficially, the story isn’t overly oppressive.

Like Ragtime, The Class incorporates real historical figures and events.  Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon are significant players, as is Israel’s military hero, Yoni Netanyahu.  The book covers a fair amount of the era’s American political drama and branches into some Hungarian and Israeli affairs as well.  In fact, Jason’s heart-wrenching storyline is strongly pro-Israel and even stirred up a little latent Zionism in my true red-white-and-blue spirit.

Erich Segal

Overall, The Class is a worthwhile read even though Segal handles the rich subject matter too cursorily.  I would have prefered a more intense discussion, but it was still a respectable diversion.

Check it out on Amazon!