The class reunion - the gathering of a given year of graduates at their high school or college - is a Big American Event, and the biggest, most elaborate class reunion is the 'Harvard 25th', celebrating the quarter-century from each Harvard class's year of graduation. When the first of a light snow of Harvard missives arrived a year ago in October, reminding me that the 25th-year reunion of my Harvard Class of 1961 would be the following June, my reactions were mixed. My four years in Cambridge, Mass. had been among my best, but somehow I had grown away from the place, transferring my affections to the smaller, cosier American colleges where I had taught. To keep up with the friends I treasured from my undergraduate years did not require a five-day jamboree. And yet I believed that I ought to go, that I would be missing and evading something if I did not.

LRB 20 November 1986 | PDF Download