Rob Dinerman’s Prep-School Memoir “Chasing The Lion” Reissued At Amazon August 11, 2021
-- Rob Dinerman’s prep-school memoir “Chasing The Lion: An Unresolved
Journey Through The Phillips Exeter Academy,” originally published in
2010, has been reissued earlier this week with Amazon. The book vividly
chronicles, depicts and comments upon the author's experience of life
at a high-end New England prep school during the late 1960's and early
1970's, and the undulating relationship he forms with the school during
the decades following his graduation. Dinerman explores the effect
those years had and continue to have both upon himself and his
classmates, a number of whom showed clear signs during those
high-school years of the high-profile careers that awaited them. Prep
schools in general, and this prep school in particular, underwent
momentous changes during that time period, and the author's experience
is examined within the context of his complex personal relationships,
the stress of school work and the college application process, raging
campus politics and the maelstrom of the prep-school bubble.
Among the captivating episodes are a
fistfight that erupted in class one morning between a veteran faculty
member and a militant student; the crossing of a boundary line in a
vain attempt to survive a try-out for a sports team; a bid for a
coveted newspaper position in the face of a stacked deck; a tumultuous
graduation; and several highly charged encounters with school
administration figures in subsequent years. These events, along with
the more anonymous moments which have lasting ramifications as well,
are recounted with striking detail through the prism of the book's
protagonist in a manner that will resonate with anyone who has
experienced prep-school or Ivy League life or is contemplating doing so.
