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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.
From Booklist
There are ways to lie without saying a word. It is 1960, and the narrator is beginning his final year at a private school of strong literary traditions. Aspiring writers edit the literary journal and compete to win private audiences with visiting luminaries of letters. This year, the guests are to be Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway. The narrator is a scholarship student, and though his school prides itself on class blindness, his classmates are well versed in spotting the subtle indicators of economic background. Longing to fit in, he dissembles, cultivating an "easy disregard" by which he hopes to imply his own privilege. But this doubleness leads him toward an unexpected decision with far-reaching consequences for his future. While a main theme here is a writer's growth, the work's essential component, the forming of character, gives it a universal appeal. As our storyteller grows through his identification with and understanding of important books, and learns the importance of writing honestly, he also learns that to insist too adamantly on the truth may require the individual to stand apart from even the group he loves. Wolff, acclaimed for his short stories and memoirs, has written a marvelous novel with resonance for old and young alike. His storytelling is economical, his prose is elegant, and his meditations are utterly timeless. Some readers may wish to turn from the last page to the first and begin again. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Ingenious. . . . A tour de force. . . . Achieves a real profundity. "—The Boston Globe
"A sharply drawn, acutely felt novel of moral inquiry. . . . Wolff has put his readers in the landscape tracked across by writers as different as J. M. Coetzee, Philip Roth, and, going back, Conrad and Hawthorne." —The Washington Post Book World
"The kind of deceptively quiet novel that deserves a second, slow reading. An homage to the power of story to move, to awaken and even to transform." —The Plain Dealer
"Gentle, reserved, graceful. . . . Wolff again proves himself to be a writer of the highest order: part storyteller, part philosopher, someone deeply engaged in asking hard questions." —Los Angeles Times
Review
"Not a word is wasted in this spare, brilliant novel about the way that reading changes and forms our lives, and about how one learns to become a writer--and a conscious human being."
--Francine Prose, People
"Wolff again proves himself a writer of the highest order: part storyteller, part philosopher, someone deeply engaged in asking hard questions that take a lifetime to resolve."
--Carmela Ciuraru, Los Angeles Times
"An elegant ode to writers, and to writing, from one of our most exquisite storytellers."
--Adrienne Miller, Esquire
"The interesting, vexing drama [puts] readers in the landscape tracked across by writers as different as J. M. Coetzee, Philip Roth, and, going back, Conrad and Hawthorne . . . Impossible to counterfeit, [the novel] persuades us, as the best art always does, that however hard we look, there's always more to see."
--Sven Birkerts, The Washington Post Book World
"Old School is utterly new, even as it tells a story that draws you in with the warm comfort of its narrator's voice. [It] proceeds as a dream of innocence and experience, but toward the end takes a twist that should not be spoiled. [He] has created a world whose reality is so vivid, it will break your heart."
--Ken Tucker, The Baltimore Sun
"A compact marvel of a book, with its tale of a paradise gained and lost, its study of a young man's emerging character and mind, and its look at the subtlest workings of class-consciousness and prejudice in an idyllic, ideal-driven setting. [Old School] takes as its subject the slippery nature of truth and fiction, honesty and dishonesty, sound judgment and seductive delusion. As such, it couldn't be bettered."
--Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times
"Acute, graceful . . . Tobias Wolff makes his grownup narrator a writer very much like himself and brings him to a complex, loving reconciliation with his old school despite its flaws. Writing, Wolff suggests, can teach you not only a measure of self-knowledge but also the ability to open yourself to an imperfect world."
--Christopher Porterfield, Time
"A fine offering, manly in spirit and style . . . Wolff displays exceptional skill in capturing the small sights and sensations that evoke the whole rarefied world he's taking us back to."
--Thomas Mallon, The Atlantic Monthly
"The real satisfaction in this deeply satisfying book comes from its main character, literature."
--Alec Solomita, New York Sun
?In this stylistically restrained but emotionally devastating book, every sentence is nailed down with rare and terrific precision.?
?Entertainment Weekly
"[The novel's] point, which is that telling the truth in fiction--or, more generally, in writing--is both logically impossible and morally essential . . . mirrors Wolff's own passionate ambivalence about the craft he has practiced so long and so well.
--A. O. Scott, The New York Times Book Review
"Ingenious . . . A very fine novel, a deft tour de force that is not only strangely exciting, but that by its end, achieves a real profundity."
--Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Sunday Globe
"A big novel hidden in the structure of a small one, this work is highly recommended."
--David Hellman, Library Journal
"Short yet bottomlessly provocative . . . Wolff has been writing so well for so long that, in a single paragraph, he'll toss off sketches that a less gifted storyteller might prefer to husband against a rainy day."
--David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle
"There are ways to lie without saying a word . . . While a main theme here is a writer's growth, the work's essential component, the forming of character, gives it a universal appeal . . . Wolff, acclaimed for his short stories and memoirs, has written a marvelous novel with resonance for old and young alike. His storytelling is economical, his prose is elegant, and his meditations are utterly timeless. Some readers may wish to turn from the last page to the first and begin again."
--Keir Graff, Booklist
"The novel's candid, retrospective narration ruefully depicts its protagonist's retreat further and further behind his public facade . . . Beneath its staid trappings, this is a sharply ironic novel, in which love of literature is counterbalanced by bitter disappointment . . . A delicate, pointed meditation on the treacherous charms of art.
--Publishers Weekly, starred review
From the Hardcover edition.
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