“But AD’s the Worst House on Campus”

By Brendan Neff | Friday, January 12, 2007

BOOK REVIEW

The Real Animal House
Chris Miller
Little, Brown, & Co., 2006

Tradition is something that is deeply important to Dartmouth as an institution and alumni body. It is, after all, the singularly most emphasized command of the alma mater, and its preservation is what binds generations of Dartmouth students and alumni to the College and to each other. The men and women of Dartmouth are practically steeped in it, whether consciously or not, from the moment they arrive on the Hanover plain, and carry with them a conception of it long after they graduate. Any initiative or political act pertaining to this College on a Hill must at least pay lip service to this supposedly shared ideal. It is a rhetorical device employed liberally by President James Wright and his ilk, who have made it their business to define what constitutes valid tradition. Unsurprisingly, the abuse of alcohol and the fraternal culture that surrounds it is not a valid Dartmouth tradition in the eyes of these administrative gatekeepers. The well known suspicion that the main inspiration for National Lampoon’s classic Animal House comes from the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity of 1960s Dartmouth is certainly something that some quarters would like to ignore or somehow make go away. Thankfully, this is no longer possible.

Chris Miller’s The Real Animal House does its best to establish the real-life facts behind the Animal House mystique, and in doing so makes manifest Dartmouth’s sponge-like culture of consumption and the grim behavior that goes with it. Miller’s “mostly lucid memoir” is more than a litany of grotesque, beer-soaked acts and self-calls from a dirty old man (though it most certainly is that as well). More significantly, it depicts a snapshot of Dartmouth cultural history that is in many ways the basis for today’s not so dissimilar campus social scene. Chris Miller stood at a crossroads of American history. A ’63, he describes a time before the civilizing influence of coeducation transformed the campus, when rock’n’roll was just getting started, at once pre-Hippie, but post-Beat. He is friendless and very much alone until mostly by chance he happens to pledge AD and become Pinto, so named because of his two-toned member. From this point he is fully indoctrinated into the Adelphian culture of sickness, and the memoir is narrated thereafter in the third person. This culture is distinguished by pursuit of entrance into the Hard Core, and the loss of virginity. This is a dynamic, that seems none to dissimilar to the typical Greek today, even if the specific acts surrounding the pursuit do not. Though Miller employs a number of devices, such as using selective memory, house nicknames, and building composite characters, there is still plenty of horrorshow to go around, crammed into the space of one year. Miller is, however, very forthcoming in his indictment of himself. While a memoir prefaced as an “Awesomely Depraved Saga” is necessarily self-aggrandizing, you’d be hard pressed to find a prose writer outside of perhaps Henry Miller who would admit to losing his virginity at a whorehouse in Saratoga Springs. Miller, it seems, has nothing to loose.

Ironically though, much of what is described is tolerated to a much greater, if only tacit, degree, while simultaneously making it much easier to get the boot. In a time when ungentlemanly behavior was grounds for immediate dismissal, many a blind eye was necessarily turned. It is difficult for students missing a number of their friends not to wax nostalgic about such a time. Parts anyway.

The culture of sickness depicted itself stems from a mythic and idealized past, characterized in the chapter title “There Were Giants in those Days.” The original Hard Core were the first class of Dartmouth Korean War Veterans, too old and changed by war to go back to being perfect Dartmouth gentleman for which the house was originally founded as a literary institution. Just as these giant figures were objects of wonder for Pinto’s generation, so too have his exploits become of the stuff of myth and imitation. The Alpha Delta Phi described by the memoir does not in any meaningful way describe the house in it current incarnation, a point made clear by Miller himself. The U-shaped bar is replaced by a more traditional shape, though the house still boasts a similar drainage system. Pinto’s class has the distinction of being the last to participate in the traditional performance of AD’s rite of confirmation, The Night of the Seven Fires. This event which is distinguishead by egg-yoke beers, drinking out of a condom, booting on a bush from a snow throne, nd pretending to have to defrost a hot dog using only your brother’s rectum and mayo for lube, was moved indoors by decree of a Dean. Oh how things have changed. The graduation of a brother called Don Marcus “last of the ooooold ADs” and creator of Magic Monday is marked as the end of “the Era of Adelphian Sickness.” Seal, a model for the movie’s Bluto, a composite character, is called AD’s last great wild man. Undoubtedly though, the contemporary house bears some vestiges of the house depicted in the memoir. And thankfully the public now has the privilege of knowing all about it. Have fun with that.

It is important to remember though the The Real Animal House is only one version of a traditional past. A preface from director Harold Ramis makes clear that the movie itself is a somewhat absurd and coincidental construction. The book follows on naturally, and one must suppose inevitably, from the enduring success of the movie. The scenes of debauchery in both certainly have and will have their affect on college social culture, both at Dartmouth and elsewhere. Just as our dear College is continuously evolving, so too are the contested ideas of the tradition that is meant to guide this evolution. Like it or not, alcohol, Animal House, and Chris Miller are all part of this tradition. Let us drink a gentleman’s beer to that.

“But AD’s the Worst House on Campus”

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