Meritocracy: A Love Story

by Jeffrey Lewis

Meritocracy is the story of a generation when it was young, caught at the moment when history arrived to exact a tragic and inevitable price. It is the end of the summer of 1966 and a small group of friends, recent Yale graduates, gather in a Maine summer cottage to say good-bye to one of their own. Harry Nolan is joining the Army and may be sent to Vietnam. Also present is Harry's beautiful young bride, Sascha.

Harry and Sascha represent to their friends the apex of their generation. Sascha has men falling for her "up and down the eastern seaboard," and Harry, a rich and fearless Californian, son of a United States senator, has his friends convinced that he will one day be president. The story proceeds from the point-of-view of one of the friends, Louie, whose unspoken love for Sascha is like a worm that works its way through the narrative, cracking apart every innocent assumption. An aura of power, earned and unearned, assumed and desired, hangs over this Ivy League world.

And it settles at last on Harry, who on this final weekend before his induction comes to understand a terrible if he's going into the Army simply to maintain his political viability, his action will dishonor his right to lead; but if he doesn't go, he will likely never have the chance. His wrestling with this paradox unleashes a spiral of events that becomes as fateful for all the characters as it is emblematic of the times they grew up in.

In one sense, Meritocracy is a novel for the Al Gores and John Kerrys and George Bushes of today's America. But in a larger sense it is a book for all those of the postwar generation who have mourned the loss of their true "best and brightest," and who regret how the life of their nation, so brightly and hopefully imagined when they were young, and now entrusted to their care, has come to be diminished.

Genres: Fiction

168 pages, Paperback

First published June 17, 2004

Reviews

[Tilda Larmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really really beautiful book, and a nice way to reminisce on my time in Maine (even tho I left like 2 days ago lol). Would've hit a lot harder if I was of that generation, but nonetheless a really amazing book

[Sherry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recommend this one to all my friends of a certain age.

A love story. In the time of the Vietnam War. It is the end of 1966 and a small group of friends, recent Yale grads, gather in a Maine cottage to say goodbye to Harry. He is joining the Army and may go to Vietnam. Also present is Harry's bride, Sascha.

Read this on one rainy afternoon.

Lessons, memories, and lots of thoughts of times gone by. And what might have been. And what is.

[Fredsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because I read this book last in the quartet (but it is actually first), I am reviewing them all as one big novel, which is an important work. Lewis really talks, and if I were willing to pretend to be in school again I'd draw up a timeline and graph for this set. It takes place over 4 decades, the very same 4 where I had the most drama myself. Read them all.

[Barbara Berry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult to get through for a good story and short novel. Devastatingly sad.

[Scout O'Donnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5. had some good quotes but it left me bored and sad

[Jamie Stuart-Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

So insanely beautifully written

[Patricia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this, because there are four books in the series. But there were too many characters introduced all at once and the plot wasn't compelling enough for me to sort out who they were. The writing was a bit dry, too.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful thoughtful novel tracing the circumstances intertwining the lives of a group of friends just graduated from Yale in 1966 from the vantage point of the narrator many years later. The blend of memory and observation is completely satisfying.