The First Fall: Ytterboe Hall, Autumn 1946: A Novel - Softcover

Steve Swanson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965776204 ISBN 13: 9780965776202

Publisher: Nine Ten Press, 1997

Synopsis

Four years of free college were among the provisions of the GI Bill of Rights enacted by congress after World War II. In 1946, thousands of returning veterans with generous tuition and expense grants swelled America colleges and universities to overflowing.

St. Olaf, a co-educational liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, founded by Norwegian Lutheran immigrants in 1874, watched its freshman class double. Men were jammed into campus dormitories and the overflow in rooms everywhere -- in campus attics and basements, in a local orphans home, in a remodeled chicken house on the college farm, and in the homes of many local families.

A clash of cultures followed. Blond, blue-eyed Lutheran innocents met these older battle-wise and worldly-wise survivors.

The First Fall examines that conflict in the paring of unlikely roommates: eighteen-year-old Jon Adamson, the son of St. Olaf s Dean of Men, and Anthony Tarpezi, 27, still recovering from battle trauma he experienced in North Africa and Italy.

In their struggle to be friends, roommates, and classmates, Jon and Tony differ in almost every way -- except their desire for the same co-ed -- the dark and beautiful Rhonda Rasmussen.

About this title

About the Author:

Steve Swanson is a pastor, college professor, and the author of more than 20 books and half-dozen plays. An outdoorsman and lifetime recycler, his stories come from many of the places he and his family have lived: Florida, Oregon, Texas, Canada, as well as his native Minnesota.

Review:

With 20 years of teaching under my belt I've always been a soft touch when it comes to the academic novel, from the tales of "Old Siwash" through Mary McCarthy's "Groves of Academe" to the more recent Jon Hassler novel, "Dean's List."
I've read so many that I can even get religion-specific, having made my way through novels of Lutheran academe, like Per Stromme's "Halvor" and Art Lee's "Brother Hottanbottan," both about Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Now I've finished a new one by St. Olaf College English professor Steve Swanson. I told him over the phone that it's the best Lutheran academic novel I've ever read - and certainly the raciest.

"That sounds like a Norwegian compliment to me," replied Swanson, the wry author of 25 previous books.

No, no, Prof. Swanson. The First Fall can stand with any academic novel, but it will be of special interest to readers acquainted with St. Olaf College traditions and especially its landmark Ytterboe Hall, the 97-year-old men's dorm that's scheduled for demolition this month unless a lawsuit stops the procedure.

Swanson lived at Ytterboe as a kid when his father,

Cully Swanson, was dean of men. Later he bunked there as an Ole student, class of 1954. So he wrote this novel to coincide with the destruction of the old pile, setting it some years before his matriculation, during a fascinating period in the history of American academic life, the post-World War II years.

It's 1946, and returning GIs with loads of worldly experience have flooded the Northfield, Minn., campus. In the thick of it is protagonist Jon Adamson, son of the dean of men and an incoming freshman who hasn't ventured east of Eden or very far from Northfield. Adamson. First Fall. Get it? "In Adamson's fall, we sinned all," a fine opening for a Lutheran hornbook. Adamson learns all about sin in this comic and poignant coming-of-age novel because he draws as his dorm mate one Tony Tarpezi, 27, a Milwaukeean who has been shell-shocked in the North African and Italian campaigns.

Despite Tony's big-city background, his language is "barnyard," as an Augsburg dean called mine years back; he's forever pulling on an inexhaustible brandy flask, and he has a ravenous taste for chasing the blond Norwegian undergrads whom he calls "chicks," which the priggish Adamson considers disrespectful.

And down St. Olaf Av. comes an aspiring actress and St. Olaf Choir wannabe, the beauteous Rhonda Rassmussen, whose grandmother lives in Edina. Adamson is crazy about her, saves her used chewing gum, ogles her from afar, tries to sit next to her in the cafeteria (do they sup on a Diet of Worms?). He finally manages a double date, with Tarpezi and a Wisconsin naif, Holly Hanson. Tarpezi pours sloe gin and Coke into Adamson, who experiences his first abortive sexual experience with Rhonda, then promptly passes out.

In the throes of first love, Adamson is insanely jealous, especially after Rhonda is tapped for choir, which at St. Olaf is right up there next to being seated at the right hand of God the Father. He's even jealous when he sees Rhonda chatting with a senior with a sexy name: Halvor Follensby. And he extracts a promise from Tarpezi that the worldly vet won't try for a piece of Rhonda action.

Yeah, I know you think you know how this menage a trois will work itself out, but read on. You may be surprised.

Swanson does a fine job of evoking this not-too-distant past, a beer party in the caves, crosstown rival Carleton College calling St. Olaf "the college built on a bluff and operated on the same principle," the stuffy upper-lipped St. Olaf administrators, and, of course, THE CHOIR and its lutefisk-scented CHRISTMAS CONCERT. --Dave Wood - books editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

About this edition

• Publisher: Nine Ten Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0965776204
• ISBN 13: 9780965776202
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180
• Illustrator: Judy Swanson