Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50997 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-31
• Released on: 2004-08-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

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.

Customer Reviews

First Rate Novel by Great Short Story Writer
This book is excellent in many ways. It presents literary ruminations, a description of adolescent ambition, and prep school life tied together by a plot which culminates in a very interesting ending. Tobias Wolf is a master of the short story who uses those skills to fine advantage in this novel.

A real-world lesson in morality
This book was on my teenagers' high school Summer reading list. I picked it up and started reading a few pages out of curiosity and was immediately hooked. There are real-world moral lessons in this book; "real-world" because they are messy, convoluted, and open-ended, but utimately this book satisfies and has the reader slowing down to read and digest every word in the last few pages. Highly recommended!

Excellent story, draws you right in
This is an excellent story, it is a excellent book and something the I will stop by the bookshelf, pull out, and read a passage at random. I won't comment on Wolff's writing ability, that is well established, but he does everything that helps bring you into a story and keep you there until the end.

I don't know the technical difference between a short story, a novella, or short novel but this book is on the shorter side and you can probably read this through in a couple of hours. It is well worth it.

Though I attended boarding school and can relate to the experiencesI have no trouble recommending this to anyone because Wolff brings the color and texture of that era (1960), of boading school, and of the narrator seemlessly.

It amazes me that there is no 'Search Inside the Book' feature for this book, the first paragraph itself is just magnificent.

The Poison Pen of Aberdeen Prep: A small rebellion against law and good will.