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Late Bloomer: A Memoir of School Days
Half a century on, Nat Bickford revisits the predatory advances of two boarding school masters, one at Phillips Exeter, the other at Williston Academy, whose provocative behavior-sadistic in one case; tragic in the other-violated the genteel codes of prep school life in the late 1950's. Less cynical than Catcher in the Rye and more disturbing than A Separate Peace, the narrative benefits from the distance.
A distinguished New York lawyer buoyed by the sustaining warmth of a forty-six year marriage, Nat Bickford explores two bewildering relationships that marked his adolescent life. Chilson Leonard-temperamental, demanding and a player of favorites-at Exeter and G. McCall Maxwell-gentle, refined, encouraging and repressed-at Williston powerfully influenced, and nearly ruined Nat's late adolescence.
Nat went on to Harvard College and Columbia Law School, a successful career and a rich family life bearing no obvious teenage scars. Yet, the memories remained-unrevealed, unexamined and unresolved until he began sharing them with his wife who encouraged him to explore the separate invasions of Leonard and Maxwell, so at variance with the imagined sanctity of prep school life in the quiet years before the fractious exuberance of the 1960's. Written with restraint and grace, Late Bloomer reflects a time and place long gone, while exploring a theme that is as resonant as ever: the power of teachers to shape, inspire and, occasionally, disturb impressionable minds.
A distinguished New York lawyer buoyed by the sustaining warmth of a forty-six year marriage, Nat Bickford explores two bewildering relationships that marked his adolescent life. Chilson Leonard-temperamental, demanding and a player of favorites-at Exeter and G. McCall Maxwell-gentle, refined, encouraging and repressed-at Williston powerfully influenced, and nearly ruined Nat's late adolescence.
Nat went on to Harvard College and Columbia Law School, a successful career and a rich family life bearing no obvious teenage scars. Yet, the memories remained-unrevealed, unexamined and unresolved until he began sharing them with his wife who encouraged him to explore the separate invasions of Leonard and Maxwell, so at variance with the imagined sanctity of prep school life in the quiet years before the fractious exuberance of the 1960's. Written with restraint and grace, Late Bloomer reflects a time and place long gone, while exploring a theme that is as resonant as ever: the power of teachers to shape, inspire and, occasionally, disturb impressionable minds.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 3, 2009
Late in his life a lawyer with a distinguished career looks back on his schooling and in doing so uncovers two incidences that shaped his college and early career and perhaps his whole life. The son of a lawyer with one older brother Nathaniel Bickford was an average student who was privileged to attend private schools. He spent his days playing tennis and idolizing his hero, Gil Hodges, but he was also a serious reader. He would eventually shine as a writer for the school paper in his Junior and Senior years at Williston Academy. His experiences at two private college prep schools included incidences that he shares in both intimate and dramatic fashion. In some respects this memoir can be compared with the fictional account in A Separate Peace, but it is different in many ways and it is a very personal story. Bickford's memoir is well-written and a seemingly honest reflection on the impact of school masters who went beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior. That he survived and flourished in the remainder of his life is a testament to his determination and values. I found his story both interesting and moving.
January 22, 2017
4 pages of search results with "Late Bloomer" in the title. This is on the 2nd page.
The makings of an Updikish novel, or a Waugh-like memoir are here, but they are simply anecdotes told in a sequence that come to an end when the writer graduates college. The story of his drumming out of Exeter (described later as "the most vicious thing" ever done by a faculty member) should be the heart of this book, but is an anti-climax for another faculty story that shocks and then disappears. I praise Bickford for not embellishing, and simply telling what he remembers. On the other hand, if he had expanded into the realm of fiction, this might have been a more compelling read.
The makings of an Updikish novel, or a Waugh-like memoir are here, but they are simply anecdotes told in a sequence that come to an end when the writer graduates college. The story of his drumming out of Exeter (described later as "the most vicious thing" ever done by a faculty member) should be the heart of this book, but is an anti-climax for another faculty story that shocks and then disappears. I praise Bickford for not embellishing, and simply telling what he remembers. On the other hand, if he had expanded into the realm of fiction, this might have been a more compelling read.
January 20, 2009
A true story about a prep school secret that the author finally revealed after 50 year. Good read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews