F rom high above — from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator, such as existed in the 19th century, or one of those camera-equipped drones that exist in the 21st, which certain male students love to fly among the maples and conifers of Westish College, past the grassy practice fields and big stone bowl of the football stadium, far out over the rippling blue-gray water of Lake Michigan — you could see, in the early September dusk, amid the dark rectangles of roofs and the deep-green treetops, the bustle of preparations for the Parties.

Ribbed aluminum kegs were loaded out of trucks and vans and hauled through gaps in fences into backyards scorched tan by late-summer heat or up the peeling steps of porches and through the propped-open doors of ramshackle manors. Ladders leaned against garages. Young men perched in the Vs of trees, stringing the boughs with holiday lights.…