The “separate peace” of the title refers ... To posterity it offers up a minor curiosity: its portrait of Brinker Hadley, a cunning verbal torturer based on Knowles’ Exeter schoolmate ...

One of the characters, Brinker, was based on Gore Vidal ... “The next thing I know is he has published ‘A Separate Peace,’ in which I play a cameo part as sort of a snoop. . . . Then ...