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Old School, by Tobias Wolff
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The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself.
The agency of revelation is the school literary contest, whose winner will be awarded an audience with the most legendary writer of his time. As the fever of competition infects the boy and his classmates, fraying alliances, exposing weaknesses, Old School explores the ensuing deceptions and betrayals with an unblinking eye and a bottomless store of empathy. The result is further evidence that Wolff is an authentic American master.
- Sales Rank: #47980 in Books
- Brand: Vintage
- Published on: 2004-08-31
- Released on: 2004-08-31
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.98" h x .52" w x 5.13" l, .40 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 195 pages
- Great product!
Amazon.com Review
Tobias Wolff's Old School is at once a celebration of literature and delicate hymn to a lost innocence of American life and art. Set in a New England prep school in the early 1960s, the novel imagines a final, pastoral moment before the explosion of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the suicide of Ernest Hemingway.
The unnamed narrator is one of several boys whose life revolves around the school's English teachers, those polymaths who seemed to know "exactly what was most worth knowing." For the boys, literature is the center of life, and their obsession culminates in a series of literary competitions during their final year. The prize in each is a private audience with a visiting writer who serves as judge for the entries.
At first, the narrator is entirely taken with the battle. As he fails in his effort to catch Robert Frost's attention and then is unable--due to illness--to even compete for his moment with Ayn Rand, he devotes his energies to a masterpiece for his hero, Hemingway. But, confronting the blank page, the narrator discovers his cowardice, his duplicity. He has withheld himself, he realizes, even from his roommate. He has used his fiction to create a patrician gentility, a mask for his middle class home and his Jewish ancestry. Through the competition for Hemingway, fittingly, all of his illusions about literature dissolve.
Old School is a small, neatly made book, spare and clear in its prose. Each chapter is self-contained and free of anything extraneous to the essentials of plot, mood, and character. Near the end of the novel, the narrator, now a respected writer, imagines that he might one day write about his school days. But he is daunted. "Memory," he says, "is a dream to begin with, and what I had was a dream of memory, not to be put to the test." Old School enters this interplay between dreams and the adult interrogation of memory. Risking sentimentality, Wolff confronts a golden age that never was. From the confrontation, he distills a powerful novel of failed expectations and, ultimately, redemptive self-awareness. --Patrick O'Kelley
From Publishers Weekly
A scholarship boy at a New England prep school grapples with literary ambition and insecurity in this lucid, deceptively sedate novel, set in the early 1960s and narrated by the unnamed protagonist from the vantage point of adulthood. Each year, the school hosts a number of visiting writers, and the boys in the top form are allowed to compete for a private audience by composing a poem or story. The narrator judges the skills of his competitors, avidly exposing his classmates' weaknesses and calculating their potential ("I knew better than to write George off.... He could win.... Bill was a contender"). His own chances are hurt by his inability to be honest with himself and examine his ambivalent feelings about his Jewish roots. After failing to win audiences with Robert Frost and Ayn Rand, he is determined to be chosen by the last and best guest, legendary Ernest Hemingway. The anxiety of influence afflicts all the boys, but in crafting his final literary offering, the narrator discovers inspiration in imitation, finding his voice in someone else's. The novel's candid, retrospective narration ruefully depicts its protagonist's retreat further and further behind his public facade ("I'd been absorbed so far into my performance that nothing else came naturally"). Beneath its staid trappings, this is a sharply ironic novel, in which love of literature is counterbalanced by bitter disappointment (as one character bluntly puts it, "[Writing] just cuts you off and makes you selfish and doesn't really do any good"). Wolff, an acclaimed short story writer (The Night in Question, etc.) and author of the memoir This Boy's Life, here offers a delicate, pointed meditation on the treacherous charms of art.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-The unnamed narrator of this coming-of-age story set in 1960 is a scholarship student at a prestigious New England prep school that has a tradition of inviting literary stars to the campus. Prior to the visit, the seniors are requested to write a piece to be "judged" by the guest. The winner is given a private meeting with the literary luminary and the story is published in the school paper. The narrator, having missed out on an audience with Robert Frost and Ayn Rand, is determined to meet with Ernest Hemingway. Much of this quiet novel is about writing and love of the written word. Merits of The Fountainhead or "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" are discussed by their authors and the students, and readers glean some information on the writing process and the cult of personality. In his fervent desire to be chosen, the narrator "borrows" an idea and reveals a secret about his heritage that he has carefully hidden. He wins, but the results of his story's publication are disastrous and his life is forever changed. The events and ideas in this thoughtful and thought-provoking novel remain with readers after the story is over and could provide meat for discussion. Teens will identify with the protagonist and internalize ideas on creativity as well as honesty and the importance of seemingly small decisions or occurrences in life.-Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
The Truth Lies Like Nothing Else....
By prisrob
"Old School" by Tobias Wolff is riveting. This story of a New England boy's prep school in the 1960's is told in first person. The clincher is we never hear the tellers name, nor do we know what he looks like, but if I heard him speak in a crowd I would know him!
We hear the story of his sixth form or senior year from a literary perspective. We meet his roommate Bill White and learn of his Jewish heritage, only by chance and not mentioned at all by Bill. George Kellogg, the literary review editor is a friend and foe. A fellow writer and a winner of one esteemed writing contests. And then there are the two Jeff Purcells,two other adversarial foes, little Jeff and big Jeff, cousins to the core.
There was a tradition at the school where a famous writer was invited to the school to meet and greet, and one of the lucky boys had a private audience. To win this audience, the boys must write a story or a poem and the writer would get to choose which one he considered the best. Robert Frost and Ayn Rand were but two of these illustrious authors. One of the most interesting chapters in the book, is Ayn Rand's visit. The story teller got out of a sick bed (flu, runny nose, cough)to go to a private meeting with this author and some of the boys. The story teller was such a fan of "Fountainhead"- he had read it 4 times, and HAD to meet the author. He was disappointed and disgusted with Ayn Rand and her treatment of his friend and of the headmaster. He felt she was rude and obnoxious, and he becomes an avowed ex-fan of Ayn Rand.
Ernest Hemingway was the next famous author to come to the school, and the storyteller had to win the private audience with him. He did win this prize, and the last chapters of the book describe the entire episodes leading up to this event in full regalia. The writing of his story that won the "best" prize, and the aftermath is an enigma. The ending of the book was a disappointment to me, I wanted more- I wanted to know and understand the full implications of the story tellers mischief.
Tobias Wolff has written a page turner- buy the book, read it, and enjoy it. prisrob
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A Mutual Peace
By G. Ware Cornell Jr.
This book completes the prep school trilogy along with The Catcher In The Rye and A Separate Peace.
Ambition, literature and honor collide in a New England boys' school where competition pushes the envelope of understanding and integrity in unexpected ways.
As a product of such a boy's school, I recognize the world within the sixth form that presses our narrator towards a crushing fall from grace. The competition for private audiences with the lions of literature in the early 1960's (Frost, Rand, Hemmingway) is so intense, and the actual selections so misguided that we are left to wonder would the real Frost or Rand have made the same mistake. However, the ambiguity of the selection process serves to elevate the game while depressing the honor with which it should be played.
Significantly, Wolff proposes a new form of honor for morally ambiguous times, but this is a suggestion we would be well to avoid. The real test of honor lies in its ability to elevate standards and not lower them. Plagiarism cannot be the sincerest form of flattery as the victim of the narrator's perfidy tells him comfortingly.
To disagree with Wolff is to enjoy most richly what this book has to offer. In years to come new generations of students will debate Wolff's hypothesis late into the night. Out of it will come a deeper appreciation of what literature can bring to life, much as Salinger and Knowles have done for the past half century.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
funny and meaningful
By E.M. Bristol
Very differently written than "This Boy's Life" but more perceptive, "Old School" tells the story of an (unnamed) narrator who attends a prep school which places major emphasis on literature, sponsoring a yearly writing competition, which even the less literary students enter. (We should all be so lucky.) The three writers who are invited to visit campus and give a private meeting to the winner of that year's contest are Robert Frost, Ayn Rand and finally, Ernest Hemingway. Great portrait of a writer's coming of age.
As the narrator competes and witnesses these writers, he adopts then discards their worldviews, as he comes to terms with the facade he has adopted in order to fit in with his more wealthy schoolmates. His final entry, while perhaps the most dishonest act of all, winds up winning. And, we learn, after the narrator has left the school, the misunderstandings and facades extended to the staff, as well. The most hilarious section is Ayn Rand's, but there is plenty of subtle humor throughout.
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