John Knowles '' A Separate Peace'

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John Knowles is an American Author who was born in Fairmont, West Virginia on September 16, 1926. He left West Virginia at age fifteen to attend Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire when World War II was going on. Once he graduated in 1945, he enlisted in “the U.S. Army Air Force Aviation Cadet Program. He eventually became a pilot but was discharged after eight months” (“John Knowles”). He attended Yale and worked on the alumni magazine once he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in 1949. He was then a reporter for Hartford Courant from 1950-1952. He wrote a novel entitled Descent into Proselito, which he did not publish because his close friend, Thornton Wilder, advised him not to. He then toured Italy and Southern France from 1952 to 1956. When he moved back to the United States in 1955, he wrote a short story entitled Phineas, which was published in Cosmopolitan 1956, and was the main idea for the character Phineas from A Separate Peace. He Wrote A Separate Peace in 1959, “which is his most …show more content…
Those books were The Paragon in 1971, Spreading Fires in 1974, A Vein of Riches in 1978, and Peace breaks out in 1981. Peace Breaks Out was the sequel to A Separate Peace that was called “the work a worthy successor to his signature work by critics” (Burt). Peace Breaks out was based on the familiar setting of Devon but with a different atmosphere. “World War II is over and the school is coming back to normal. There is also the nervousness because of the cold war” (“John Knowles”). This is personal to Knowles because he lived through the war while at Phillips Exeter Academy. A Vein of Riches was set in West Virginia and “produces a novel set in his native West Virginia in the early years of the twentieth century to depict the corrupting influences of capitalism.” (Burt). His ability to write about more than just war and coming of age means that he did not just stay in his wheelhouse, but tried to expand is
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