Old School

If I were asked to describe this novel in a few words I guess I would say “Quiet, gentle read. Compelling coming of age story. A book about books and writers. “The unnamed narrator (and you could swear this was a memoir but, no, it’s a novel) is in his senior year at a private boarding school on the east coast in 1960. It’s an elite school and he’s a scholarship boy trying desperately to fit in with this upper crust population. It’s also a school that places great importance on writing and writers and three times a year an important writer comes to visit. Based on a submitted piece of writing, one student is selected to actually have a private meeting with the writer. When I say “important” I mean Robert Frost, Robert show more Penn Warren, Ayn Rand, that sort of important. Very important.

Our narrator is in love with books and writing, as are his acquaintances. This is his crowd and they are competing against each other to win the golden prize—the private audience—much like other boys compete on the football field. Along the way, we learn about his loneliness and his desperate wish to be what he is not and the love that was there all along. In trying to write his paper in preparation for a visit from what he considers to be the foremost American author (you figure it out) Wolff, who is new to me, sums up our narrator’s plight beautifully:

“The whole thing came straight from the truthful diary I’d never kept: the typing class, the bus, the apartment; all mine. All mine too the calculations and stratagems, the throwing-over of old friends for new, the shameless manipulation of a needy, loving parent and the desperation to flee not only the need but the love itself. Then the sweetness of flight, the lightness and joy of escape. And, yes, the almost physical attraction to privilege, the resolve to be near it at any cost: sycophancy, lies, self-suppression, the masking of ambitions and desires, the slow cowardly burn of resentment toward those whose favor you have falsified yourself.” (Page125)

Our poor narrator though makes one critical mistake in his exuberance to produce the perfect story for a revered author. Beautifully written and highly recommended. show less

A beautiful short novel set in an American prep school where the biggest event of the academic year, at least for the unnamed first-person narrator and many of his friends, is not a sporting event; not a mixer with the girls' school down the road, but a writing competition. A competition that gives the winner a one-on-one meeting with whichever visiting writer of renown the school has successfully invited to talk to the students this year. Frost, Ayn Rand, Hemingway---the boys' minds boggle at being judged worthy of standing in such light. Our narrator dreams of being a writer. "I knew that Maupassant...had been taken up when young by Flaubert and Turgenev; Faulkner by Sherwood Anderson; Hemingway by Fitzgerald and Pound and Gertrude show more Stein. All these writers were welcomed by other writers. It seemed to follow that you needed such a welcome...My aspirations were mystical. I wanted to receive the laying on of hands...I wanted to be anointed." For three years, Toby (I'm going to call him Toby, because let's face it: this has to be heavily autobiographical stuff. It reads much more like memoir than fiction.) strives to be the chosen one. The process becomes the core of his education--not just in literature, or in creativity, but in life, as he confronts again and again the difficulty of knowing the purpose of Truth when Honor may seem to be better served by deception. show less

Here is a book about people who love books written for people who love books. The plot is easily told: At an East Coast prep school where writing contests generate more excitement than athletic ones, the narrator is forced to confront himself in a most unexpected way and the result changes the course of his life.

The idea that fiction is a force that can both redeem and trap a person is one of the book’s compelling themes and a premise that would seem to be more than a little tricky to pull off well. However, in Wolff’s spare and direct language, this notion is given a fresh life and the result is very rewarding. By the way, after reading this novel it may be impossible for you to admit to liking both Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway; show more the author certainly makes it clear which writer he would choose. show less

It's hard to tell the truth; I think Tobias Wolff does. There are vignettes and phrases that now will flash at certain moments - such as "sodden dinners" - but The line that reverberated with me is on pg. 193 “ Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he’d led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity – its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering condemnation and violence against others and self.” I think the whole story is a set up for this last chapter – and this insight. The roots of our violence are in our desire to be guiltless, perfect, beautiful, flawless, right – pure.

I love the little hook on our imagination on p. 174 – the false end to the real story show more – “ He didn’t quite finish. While describing Dean Makepeace’s wedding he broke off and …” It’s only after we finish the book that we think: WHAT wedding??? That is just delightful.
And so I’m left imagining whom he might marry. There being no candidates, it’s 100% up to me to imagine. show less

This book reads so much like a memoir, that I was surprised to find it wasn’t. The story follows a young man in his senior year, at a private boarding school, somewhere in New England. It is 1960. He is part of the “scribblers”, a group that reveres writing, “book drunk boys”.
Several renowned authors visit the school and in preparation to Ayn Rands visit, the narrator reads The Fountainhead and becomes infatuated with her radical ideas. This changes quickly, as she makes her appearance, along with her thuggish entourage and her Fascist presentation. It’s both funny and scary.
The story takes a dramatic turn, when Hemingway is scheduled to appear and a contest is put in motion, for a short story contest to be submitted by the show more students and judged by Hem himself. Here our narrator makes a crucial error, a mistake that could have serious repercussions, in both his academic and adult life.
I loved Wolff’s memoir This Boy’s Life and look forward to reading his short story collections. This is his first novel and it was a pleasure to read. show less

It felt like self-indulgence on Wolff’s part, though not really in a negative way. He’s a careful enough writer to pull it off. But I got a strong whiff of a very reverential nostalgia for his younger self in the process of becoming both a writer and a moral man. It’s a fond book, and although I’m not sure I liked how he handled the last section, it was still good and easygoing. His tenderness for the characters was especially sweet—I can’t remember the last time I read a book without a single dislikable person in it.

For the first 10 pages or so I was underwhelmed. Yet another semi-autobiographical novel about a young boy's coming of age at an exclusive prep school? Featuring yet another young male protagonist who aspires to become a writer? In this outing, the plot of the story revolves around a yearly literary competition in which the winner gets to meet a major author - Hemingway, Frost, Rand. But all the obligatory subplots are there: the privileged schoolmates who see the world as their oyster, scholarship students seeking to conceal their bourgeois origins, competition, cruelty, sports/games, noisy dining halls, inscrutable dons, faculty politics.

Except that that's not really what this novel is about.

Underneath the familiar trappings, this is show more a moving and authentic evocation of that time in everyone's life when we must figure out who and what we will become. A time during which, by the way, literature assumes an awesome power to mold and shape us. What young girl of the 1900s didn't want to grow up to be independent and strong-minded like Jo in Little Women? What young boy of the 1950s didn't pick up their ideas on duty and honor from Hardy Boys books? What young person of the 1960s didn't experience the world through the eyes of Hunter S. Thompson? During the course of this novel, our protagonist finds his worldview shaped by each of the literary figures noted above, on a journey that ultimately culminates in finding his authentic voice. His path – like ours - is peppered with misjudgments and missteps, some minor, others appalling; but in the end those mistakes prove as important as successes in shaping our protagonist into the man he is to become.

Wolff’s prose is gorgeous and his word portraits of the academy so evocative, I could practically smell the brick dust and leaf mold as the boys walked between classes.

Not the best choice if you’re looking for light reading, perhaps, but a dense, thoughtful book designed to inspire reflection and an appreciation for the role that literature, values, and experiences assume in shaping our lives and characters. show less