I want to talk a little about books this morning. Books and legendary West Virginia authors.
But first, you remember books, don’t you?. Those things printed on real paper, the thing some of you used to read before you discovered doom scrolling on your phone.
Just four years ago, the average American read a book a month. Now, 48 percent of Americans say they will read only one book over an entire year.
But a look deeper inside the numbers show that maybe books aren’t going the way of the dodo bird after all. While overall reading rates have declined, there’s a smaller group of “super-readers” still furiously turning pages. About 11 percent of total book readers burn through 20 books a year, with four percent claim they read a book a week.
Today is the birth anniversary of Fairmont’s John Knowles; born September 16th, 1926. And while that name may not register for some West Virginians, for those of a certain generation, of which I include myself, his first novel, “A Separate Peace” was required reading.
Knowles grew up in Fairmont, but both of his parents were from New England, his dad, who was in the coal business, from Lowell, Mass and his mom was from New Hampshire. After attending the old St. Peter’s High School in Fairmont, Knowles continued his studies at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and graduated in 1945.
And Knowles’ boarding school years at Exeter created the template for his first ever published novel in 1959. “A Separate Peace” — a phrase he admittedly lifted from Ernest Hemingway, is a coming of age story, it captures the loss of innocence of its main characters Gene and Phineas during World War II.
The characters in the book are loosely based on real people. Knowles himself was much like Gene, the introverted bookworm. His best friend Phineas, the charismatic athlete, was based on David Hackett, the real life friend of Robert F. Kennedy, who served in the Justice Department. The character Brinker Hadley, the student who investigates the accident key to the end of the story, was based on the writer Gore Vidal, who was two years ahead of Knowles at Exeter.
Knowles’ “A Separate Peace” won the Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel in 1961 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The book was a very popular and frequently taught in American high schools for thirty years, until the mid-90’s. It sold more than eight million copies and was adapted into movies twice, in 1972 and again in 2004.
Knowles went on after “A Separate Peace” to write ten more novels, but wasn’t able to really build on the wild success of his first book. The critics were especially hard on his attempt to write about West Virginia life in his book “A Vein of Riches” in 1978. He died in 2001 at the age of 75.
But we remember Fairmont’s John Knowles on the 99th anniversary of his birth this morning. And for those of you who have never read “A Separate Peace” and might have an aversion to paper and ink, there’s always the Kindle or the audio book, but please, not while you’re listening to the MetroNews Morning News.