Introduction

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 paradox: 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.

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Excerpt

Chapter 1

It was six hours from Boston to where we were going. It rained from Augusta to Belfast, and then along the coast road there were patches of fog. After Bucksport we turned off Route 1 and the road became narrow and roughly repaired and it roller-coastered up and down the hilly country. We passed a blueberry packing plant lit like an all-night truck stop and closed garages and repair shops and empty black farmland, and I began to feel a cool unease in my throat and in the tips of my fingers, not for the passing scene but for the fact that we were getting closer. Just as now, half a lifetime later, when the potholed road and astral blueberry plant dot my memory like so many fossils from an otherwise eroded landscape, I feel on beginning to tell this story a sense of trespass, as if what happened that weekend is none of my business, and never was. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions from the Publisher:

The characters in Meritocracy inhabit a world of wealth, privilege, and status. In short, they are the ultimate “insiders” of the Ivy League elite. Louie, however, does not belong to this world. He states, “I didn’t own a car then. I had no money. I was a scholarship kid from Rochester and I had never been to Maine and my ideas of it were taken from old ViewMasters.” In short, Louie takes pains to depict himself as an outsider in this world of privilege. How does this affect and influence Louie’s narration of the novel? Is his narration effective? Why do Harry and his friends permit Louie? What do they benefit from Louie’s presence?

Harry and Sascha are idealized as the ultimate couple, the pinnacle of their generation. What about the two characters draws people to them? Do they deserve the adulation of their peers?

Throughout the book, Harry is deliberately evasive when asked why he enlisted in the army. At the roadhouse he claims, “I’m doing something I something so that people will think I’m doing something I believe in, so I can do something else.” His statement may lead the reader to suspect he enlisted not out of a sense of honor and duty, but rather to ensure a future political career. Discuss the possible motivations for Harry’s enlistment, especially given the fact that he could have easily gotten a deferment. Do Harry’s true intentions behind his enlistment ultimately serve to make his actions dishonorable? Should his involvement in Vietnam influence his future political career?

George W. Bush and John Kerry each make brief appearances in the novel. Are their characterizations effective? Fair? Accurate? Why did the author have the two presidential candidates appear as characters in the book?

The circumstances surrounding the car crash and Sascha’s untimely death are highly ambiguous. Did Bloch see a dear, or was he in fact drunk? Should any one character in particular “shoulder” the blame for the accident, or are Louie, Harry, Cord, Teddy, and Bloch each in some degree responsible? Does the accident disillusion the young men?

On page 114, Louie ponders the differences between a meritocracy and a democracy. Does Louie feel one is better than the other? Why is the title of the book Meritocracy? Is the title meant to be ironic or literal given Lewis’s depiction of his characters and the world they inhabit?

Weblinks

»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Reviews
»	A Conversation With Jeffery Lewis
»	Jeffery Lewis Extended Bio

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