One of the unexpected pleasures of graduating is that you get to read crap again. Our first bestseller binge included The Rule of Four; for those of you — wow, a hundred percent, really? — who avoid novels with even the merest taint of pop lit, Four is The Da Vinci Code in a mortarboard. Set at Princeton in 1999, Ian Caldwell (Princeton ‘98) and Dustin Thomason’s (Harvard ‘98) novel follows two seniors’ obsession with the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the message coded geekily therein.

Honestly, it’s a pretty good summer read. But there’s one unwittingly hilarious scene we feel compelled to hate on. Listen in as one Parker Hassett (a character introduced as “Ivy’s village idiot, a half-wit from a wealthy family”) enters the eating club’s end-of-year party. He’s met at the door with “hisses” from the crowd — do they still make those? Later, …

… a huge thud comes from below, followed by an explosion of glass.

Gil hurries for the stairs; we rush down behind him to find a wide puddle of debris. Blood-colored liquid is seeping in all directions, bringing snags of glass with it. Standing at the center of it all, in a perimeter of space everyone else has evacuated, is Parker Hassett, flushed and fuming. He has just thrown the entire wet bar to the ground, shelves, bottles, and all.

“What the hell’s going on?” Gil demands of a sophomore watching nearby.

“He just went off. Someone called him a dipso and he went crazy.”

Veronica Terry [Parker's date] is holding up the ruffled skirts of her white dress, now fringed in pink and spattered with wine. “They’ve been teasing him all night,” she cries.

“For God’s sake,” Gil demands, “how’d you let him get that drunk?”

She looks at him blankly, expecting pity, getting fury. Partygoers nearby whisper to each other, holding back satisfied smiles. … [Parker is] amidst the hecklers. From the crowd come coos of Lush! and Drunk! and worse. Laughter at the edges of insult.

My God! An undergraduate inebriated at a party! We just laughed for an hour. (”Lush!“) Caldwell and Thomason: What the hell Princeton are you writing about?

Did the mean bullies tease you a long time ago? Make you mad, with their touchdowns and chest hair and girlfriends? We know it hurts, guys. But if you’re going to get revenge by portraying one as a jerk in a novel, don’t make his crime … pregaming.

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