I'm done with prep school novels. If the glaring similarity of themes that runs through these books is the tell, the genre has been exhausted. Richard Yates' A Good School is not a bad effort, but it's a pedestrian one. Let's check our list: WWII backdrop, homoerotic bullying, deep yearning for hot teacher's daughter, socially awkward narrator redeemed by writing, school stud first to die at war, awkward first couplings, awkward first proclamations of "I Love You," awkward, embarrassing and deeply guilt-ridden masturbation, faculty adultery, one good man. Sound familiar? Well, you can read it in an afternoon, and maybe this generation was so profoundly affected by its lack of access to female flesh at a time of life when no desire would ever be more powerful again and the ultimate satisfaction of their lust was so all-consuming that nothing would ever live up to it. Now in their 40s and 50s, either in wistful longing or in a desperate attempt to feel anything in their middle aged numb, these writers return to what they now know was their time of deepest feeling. As a therapeutic exercise, I hope it helped them. As a reader, however, it's become an oft told tale as stock as today's daddy abuse and rehab fables. Put Yates back in the kitchen with a couple arguing over tall glasses of Canadian Mist and I'll get up at dawn to read him. Just keep him out of the dorm room. There's just too much wanking going on in there.