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Old School

3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 · rating details · 5,377 ratings · 695 reviews

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....more

Paperback, 195 pages

Published February 7th 2005 by Bloomsbury Paperbacks (first published November 4th 2003)

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Jun 26, 2010 Ellen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: autobiographical-theory, academia

Want to read something funny and literate? Read this memoir.

There are few books that provide this much hilarity, wisdom and grace.

Old School, though categorized as a novel, is a thinly veiled memoir of Tobias Wolff’s own experience as a scholarship boy in an elite prep school. The action largely centers on the boys’ writing competitions. Three times a year, a famous author would visit the school and choose one boy’s writing as the best. As a reward, that boy earned a private audience with the au...more

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Feb 24, 2012 Donna Kirk rated it 5 of 5 stars

At Donald Hall's house, he talked quite a bit about formalism and style in literary traditions. He told me that a person can't really move into the contemporary unless they have read pre-1800's writing and beyond. In Charles Simic's classes, he taught a more delicate, elegant modern aesthetic. his approach was more arachnid, mysterious, dark and removed. his writing is about the hidden and therefore, he admires any approach used to unleash what one can usually only whisper about. while Billy Col...more

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Jan 26, 2008 Edan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed this novel very much, perhaps most of all because it reminded me of my own reading experiences in high school--how falling in love with Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Tom Robbins, Sandra Cisneros, and Flaubert shaped my sense of self--or my desire to have a specific kind of self. And just like Wolff's narrator, I had a brief love affair with Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, which ended when I tried to read Atlas Shrugged.
It's a simple novel that does something bold (yet still subtle--how can that...more

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Feb 29, 2012 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Imagine yourself as a young writer at a prestigious boarding school. A prominent member of the faculty has just read your submission for a contest. He is genuinely excited for you. “A marvelous story! Pure magic. No—no—not magic. Alchemy. The dross of self-consciousness transformed into the gold of self-knowledge.” Pretty heady stuff, isn’t it? Old School’s protagonist was at an experiential high point when he heard that one. The truth is there are moments within the book where you could congrat...more Imagine yourself as a young writer at a prestigious boarding school. A prominent member of the faculty has just read your submission for a contest. He is genuinely excited for you. “A marvelous story! Pure magic. No—no—not magic. Alchemy. The dross of self-consciousness transformed into the gold of self-knowledge.” Pretty heady stuff, isn’t it? Old School’s protagonist was at an experiential high point when he heard that one. The truth is there are moments within the book where you could congratulate Wolff for the same achievement. More than once I asked myself whether a passage was so good because of its insights or because of the way it was worded. The answer was typically both.

The story was set in the early 60’s at a prep school for boys somewhere in New England. The narrator, who never gave his name, was on scholarship there. It was an eccentric, bookish place where writers, not athletes, were the heroes (if you can imagine that). The school featured a series of literary competitions where the prize for each was one-on-one time with whatever notable figure was recruited as judge. Robert Frost was the first. The old man passed on our boy’s work in favor of one he misinterpreted as having depth and irony that, in truth, was simple and earnest. (Think of Peter Sellers’ character in Being There.) For the second competition, Ayn Rand was judge. The narrator was seduced by her philosophy of self-interest to the point of obsession, reading The Fountainhead four times. Then he became deliriously ill. He was too sick to write an entry, but thought he could at least go to her talk. As she turned her disgusted face on him after he sneezed, he was quickly disillusioned. “She made me feel that to be sick was contemptible.”

The final competition was the big one. Hemingway, his hero, was the judge. The whole school felt a kinship to the man via stories of friendship with one of the teachers formed during the Great War. The drama really begins as the narrator thinks of what to write. And this is where I stop summarizing because I might give too much away if I don’t. Let’s just say that the truth can have good days and bad days. I’ll also hint to you that class, privilege, and identity come into play, but it’s all by the teaspoon not the trowel-full.

People who would know have called this a thinly veiled memoir. This is a natural form for Wolff who has a great reputation as a memoirist. All I know is the writing seemed exceptionally good. His short stories have always rated well, too. If associations are at all indicative, I’ll mention a wiki factoid: He was on the faculty with Raymond Carver at Syracuse, and students who worked with Wolff while he was there included Jay McInerney, Tom Perrotta, George Saunders, and Alice Sebold.

This was close to a 5-star book for me, but I’m compelled to take one away because the main character’s clash with himself seemed a wee bit contrived. Or maybe it was just inconsistent with the way I’d been viewing him. And since I’ll have you believe I’m a paragon of virtue myself, high standards unmet get a demerit.
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Oct 14, 2010 Sparrow rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: English majors

Recommended to Sparrow by: The New Yorker

Shelves: favorites, memoir-biography, hilarious

A review dedicated to and inspired by my friend Eh!, who reads things backwards.

This book is way literary meta. It’s so meta that there are prereq reading requirements for an optimal experience. Everyone knows Robert Frost, right? So, I’m not putting him on the list. But, I require you to read Atlas Shrugged, The Sun Also Rises, and (if you liked The Sun Also Rises, but not if you hated it) A Farewell to Arms before you read Old School. If you don’t care for Hemingway, you’ll probably not care f...more A review dedicated to and inspired by my friend Eh!, who reads things backwards.

This book is way literary meta. It’s so meta that there are prereq reading requirements for an optimal experience. Everyone knows Robert Frost, right? So, I’m not putting him on the list. But, I require you to read Atlas Shrugged, The Sun Also Rises, and (if you liked The Sun Also Rises, but not if you hated it) A Farewell to Arms before you read Old School. If you don’t care for Hemingway, you’ll probably not care for this book. But, it might still be worth reading for the Atlas Shrugged joke. You might think that sounds like a lot of work, but you should be reading those books anyway, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about. If you don’t want the reading prereqs, This Boy’s Life is just as good and relies a lot less on the meta.

I’m pretty sure Wolff was monitoring my literary preferences through a satellite feed at his office in Stanford while he was writing this. This book is just the definitive description of how I feel about reading and writing and literature and fame, authors I love and authors I hate. Maybe it’s how I feel about everything I consider important in life. I’m convinced that it was written to me. To add to the meta of this book, when I met Wolff some years back, the experience was exactly what he describes of himself meeting authors. There always seems to be a cream pie for me to faceplant into when I meet authors.

I think Tobias Wolff, both his fictional self in this book and his memoir self in others, is a sort of Holden Caulfield, if Holden was born poor and on the West Coast. To me that means that he is lovely and a genius. He’s also probably scrappier than Holden, though I think Holden has his own version of urban scrappiness. Even though Old School is all about boys, and women only appear in weird fun-house-mirror shapes, I still find the characters identifiable. They are boys, but they are not just that – they are writers and students.

I’m a devoted fan of modernism and spare writing, and it strikes me that some of the more clean, modernist writers alive today write memoirs. I’m thinking of Jeannette Walls and Tobias Wolff. Not that two writers make a trend, but I can’t think of any current fiction writers I have read that edit with the skill those two have. I guess, most modernism has a coming-of-age feeling of crushed narcissism and idolatry, and that is something that fills my heart up every time. It’s that laughter and tears recipe like a hearty meal. I absolutely love it.

Anyway, this book basically picks up where This Boy’s Life leaves off in the story of Tobias Wolff’s life, so it might be best to read that one first. I read this first, and I still didn’t guess the end of the other, so I don’t necessarily think it’s terrible to read this one first if you’ve done your necessary literary background reading. Mostly, this book is a tribute to some wonderful authors who have had a hand in shaping American literature. If you don’t know the authors, I’d think reading this would be a little like watching the Oscars without having seen any of the movies up for awards. You can still do it and be entertained by the song and dance, but you don’t have that investment at the moment they announce that Brittany Spears is a better actress than Meryl Streep, or some such. (less)

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Apr 29, 2008 Erik Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a really good story that I read in an afternoon, but what I liked most about the book is that it imagines a scene with Ayn Rand and her acolytes, and all of them look like the fools I imagine them to be. I know, I know, I'm an idiot and I just don't understand her, and because she's so popular I know I'm alienating myself from legions, but her books are emotionally infantile and intellectually silly, and I've always suspected the same of her readers. So have at me Ayn Rand fans.

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Jan 06, 2008 Becca Becca rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Literary folks, book lovers, nostalgic blokes

Recommended to Becca by: Rasputin

Shelves: favorites

Hot damn. I do realize this was on my 'currently-reading' shelf for one long stretch of time, but I must confess, I had only done a cursory read of a few pages.

Well, last night, I visited the land of IKEA (dreadful place that I rarely venture to) and bought myself a reading lamp. Wanting to try out my latest device, I picked up this book and began to read. This was at Midnight (I'm a bit of a night owl). Well, I got so engrossed in this book that I read the entire thing! Finished around 4 in the...more

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Sep 02, 2007 Fred rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i read this book on the advice of nick hornby after reading a collection of articles he wrote for the mcsweeney's magazine "the believer" which had been compiled into book form. i pretty much hated the nick hornby articles (for their cutesy, self-satisfied tone, i think, and also for the way he kept faux-dissing the believer as an overly fey literary mag and therefore underscoring himself as a salt-of-the-earth regular type of guy; basically the whole book is packed with obvious false modesty an...more

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Mar 24, 2011 Monica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Monica by: Rory

Shelves: 2009, favorites

So this was beautifully written and set in my absolute favorite sort of boarding school setting, but what I REALLY loved about it was Wolff's ability to connect the experience of being a young reader. The relationships that the boys in the book have with literature makes me feel so nostalgic for the first time I read Salinger or Vonnegut and I just fell totally, utterly in love with an author.

So short and affecting and totally consuming.

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May 03, 2012 Kristen rated it 4 of 5 stars

A strong 4.5 only because the ending lost some momentum for me (which may have been intentional since for the first 2/3 of the book, the narrator is reflecting back on his last year of prep school which ends rather suddenly). Definitely a book lovers book...an homage to American literature, to the teachers who are passionate about it and to the early 60s, before the deaths of JFK and Ernest Hemingway and the general upheaval later in the decade. Wolff's writing pulls you right into the narrator'...more

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Jan 05, 2009 Núria rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: los que fueron adolescentes aspirantes a escritor

Recommended to Núria by: Oscar

Shelves: 5-favoritos, literatura-en-ingles, siglo-xxi, 2009, mios

Ya en la segunda página sabia que 'Vieja escuela' se iba a convertir en uno de mis libros favoritos. Sin duda. El protagonista es un adolescente que está cursando el último curso antes de la universidad en una escuela secundaria pija. Son los años 60 y el protagonista (del que nunca se dice el nombre) proviene de una familia rota y de clase media y su padre es judío, y cosas como ésta son las que esconde a todos sus compañeros, creándose una identidad falsa para encajar. La escuela se caracteriz...more Ya en la segunda página sabia que 'Vieja escuela' se iba a convertir en uno de mis libros favoritos. Sin duda. El protagonista es un adolescente que está cursando el último curso antes de la universidad en una escuela secundaria pija. Son los años 60 y el protagonista (del que nunca se dice el nombre) proviene de una familia rota y de clase media y su padre es judío, y cosas como ésta son las que esconde a todos sus compañeros, creándose una identidad falsa para encajar. La escuela se caracteriza por la atención que dispensa a la literatura y por alentar a los adolescentes a escribir. Tres veces al año se invita un gran escritor y los alumnos compiten en un disputado concurso literario cuyo premio es el honor de poder tener una entrevista privada con el gran escritor en cuestión. El protagonista intentará con todas sus fuerzas conseguir una de estas audiencias, pero se encontrará con dificultades como el bloqueo del escritor, su propia arrogancia frenética, su incapacidad para sincerarse en la escritura por miedo a ser descubierto, y por supuesto también las obras de sus compañeros y rivales.

La descripciones del ambiente y las relaciones que se establecen entre los personajes (y sus sentimientos, sus miedos, sus orgullos, sus envidias, su soledad, su compañerismo, sus errores, sus inseguridades) son tan reales que parece que estén hablando de uno mismo. El protagonista, y también sus compañeros, irán madurando a través de la relación que se establece entre ellos pero sobre todo a través de la literatura, a través de las obras que van leyendo (tanto si son las obras de grandes escritores como si son los escritos amateurs de sus propios compañeros), a través de la visión de la vida de los tres escritores que asisten a la escuela y les dan una conferencia magistral, a través de los comentarios críticos que hacen sus profesores de ciertos libros, y a través de los textos que ellos mismos van escribiendo.

Es una novela sobre como la lectura puede cambiarte la vida. Es una novela sobre hacerse mayor, madurar y dejar atrás el esnobismo y la arrogancia adolescentes, sobre aprender a aceptarse tal como uno es para así poder dejar de fingir, sobre encontrar un lugar en el que encajar, sobre saber valorar con humildad la bondad de los que nos rodean, sobre la vida. Es una novela teñida de nostalgia y ternura, pero también con una gran cantidad de humor irónico y crítico. Es un libro que adorarán no sólo todos los que fueron aspirantes a escritor sino también todos los que han experimentado el poder transformador de la lectura. Es un libro que te hace querer aún más a los libros. (less)

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Oct 09, 2011 John Carella rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I was in high school I went to reading by Tobias Wolff from his set of short stories "The Night in Question." I was a student at the same boarding school he had attended years earlier and went to see our famous alum and make a direct connection with a real writer. The evening started better than I could have expected, because he decided to read the one story from the collection that was set at a boarding school -- it contained specific details of the campus that were familiar and let me la...more When I was in high school I went to reading by Tobias Wolff from his set of short stories "The Night in Question." I was a student at the same boarding school he had attended years earlier and went to see our famous alum and make a direct connection with a real writer. The evening started better than I could have expected, because he decided to read the one story from the collection that was set at a boarding school -- it contained specific details of the campus that were familiar and let me laugh at the "inside joke." I talked with the author briefly and told him I was from the school and recognized his sources. He laughed, thought for a moment, then wrote the school motto -- "Whatsoever Things Are True" -- in the inscription of my copy and gave a cryptic smile. At the time, I didn't get the joke: Tobias Wolff got into the school by forging his application, and was then expelled. There's certain irony to having a motto about truth written into your book by your school's most famous forger.
"Old School" reminded me of this episode because Wolff explores the notion of authenticity in the setting of 1960s boarding school filled with young boys who, like me, wanted to meet famous writers. The style of the novel is quiet and understated as it follows the burning desire of its unnamed protagonist to write both truthfully and well. The plot revolves around a series of writing competitions at the school in which the winner is awarded a private meeting with an author or poet visiting the school. Robert Frost, Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway all are the prizes dangled before the students. The protagonist faces a series of crises in each competition as he decides what to submit, how honest be about parts of his own past he had hidden from classmates, and his dealings with his friends and the competition. He chooses a path that challenges the notion of what it means for a work of art to be authentic and to belong to its author.
As with the quote Wolff wrote in my book, "Old School" is both a gentle mockery and a celebration of the environment it describes. At times funny and always engaging, it manages to stimulate a lot thought about art, education and honest in a short space. I definitely recommend it.(less)

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Jan 06, 2009 marg rated it 4 of 5 stars

This author falls under the humbling yet appreciated category of "Why Do I Even Bother?" Wolff's mastership is evident from page one - a sympathetic yet flawed and nameless protagonist is on scholarship in a prep school (this read a bit like a male version of Prep at times) and wants desperately to be counted among the great writers and succumbs to temptation to get there - I loved, loved loved this book. It was beautifully written and moving, and at times hysterically funny (though in a literar...more

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Sep 07, 2011 Katherine rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

"Nixon was a straight arrow and a scold. If he''d been one of us we would have glued his shoes to the floor" (3).
"'Rhyme is bullshit. Rhyme says that everything works out in the end. All harmony and order. When I see a rhymed in a poem, I know I'm being lied to. Go ahead, laugh! It's true--rhyme's a completely bankrupt device. It's just wishful thinking. Nostalgia'" (44).
-versus this:
"I am thinking of Achilles' grief, he said. that famous terrible, grief. Let me tell you boys something. Such gri...more "Nixon was a straight arrow and a scold. If he''d been one of us we would have glued his shoes to the floor" (3).
"'Rhyme is bullshit. Rhyme says that everything works out in the end. All harmony and order. When I see a rhymed in a poem, I know I'm being lied to. Go ahead, laugh! It's true--rhyme's a completely bankrupt device. It's just wishful thinking. Nostalgia'" (44).
-versus this:
"I am thinking of Achilles' grief, he said. that famous terrible, grief. Let me tell you boys something. Such grief can only be told in form. Maybe it only really exists in form. Form is everything. Without it you've got nothing but a stubbed-toe cry--sincere, maybe, for what that's worth, but with no depth or carry. No echo. You may have a grievance but you do not have grief, and grievances are for petitions, not poetry" (53).
"They lived on the salted meat of salmon and also of bears, which greatly outnumbered the people and proved a sorrow to the unwary" (59-60).
"The businessmen struck me as especially pathetic in their hats and suits and London Fogs, each with some laughable flag of individuality hanging from his neck" (70).
I love his realizations after hearing Ayn Rand speak at his school, but they are too lengthy to include here.
"We're not here to talk about essays, he said. One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without...chess, but one could live in it...Stories, though--one could not live a world without stories" (131).
"Without stories one would hardly know what world one was in. But I'm not saying this very well. Mr. Ramsey stared out over the garden. It has to do with self-consciousness, he said. Though I'm no believer, I find it interesting that self-consciousness is associated with the Fall. Nakedness and shame. Knowledge of ourselves as a thing apart, and bound to die. Exile. We speak of self-consciousness as a burden or a problem, and so it is--the problem being how to use it to bring ourselves out of exile. Whereas our tendency is to lose ourselves in the distance, wouldn't you say?" (132).
"With still a month to graduation I was already damp with nostalgia" (134).
"During our worst dreams we are assured by a dog barking somewhere, a refrigerator motor kicking on, that we will soon wake to true life" (146).
"We know what is sacred when we recoil from impiety" (163).
"And as for that, 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 in condemnation and violence against others and oneself. For years Arch had traced this vision of the evil done through intolerance of the flawed and ambiguous, but he had not taken the lesson to heart. He had given up the good in his life because a fault ran through it. He was no better than Aylmer, murdering his beautiful wife to rid her of a birthmark" (193).(less)

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Jul 23, 2008 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this a couple years ago on the recommendation of an admired English teacher colleague; I loved it then but lost my copy of it. When another admired English teacher colleague reminded me of it I went and bought another copy, read and finished it in less than 24 hours. This is a book worth buying (and reading) twice. It's an amazing combination of a page turning, compelling read and awesome, literary writing. I'm a HUGE Separate Peace fan but this one is better.
I'm convinced that there's so...more

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Jan 06, 2008 Kirk rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sentimental-faves

First things first: this is not a movie tie-in. No earmuffs, No "Hank the Tank," no Andy Dick seminars. It is, rather, a nostalgic coming-of-age novel set in the early 60s with a neat conceit: each year at the narrator's exclusive prep school, a literary master visits campus, igniting fierce competition among the preps for the golden opportunity to have their writing evaluated and, just maybe, be discovered. The three luminaries here are Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway. In the hands...more

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Jul 28, 2007 Peter added it · review of another edition

Shelves: tutoring

Told in the voice of a writer recalling his younger days--though when you begin the novel you believe for a while that the narrator is still in high school--Old School is the story of the trials and tribulations of a prep school boy in 1961 as he sorts through his family, his ambitions, and of course, his relationships with his peers.

As the nameless narrator describes it, the school is very much a "literary place"--Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway all appear at different points--but...more Told in the voice of a writer recalling his younger days--though when you begin the novel you believe for a while that the narrator is still in high school--Old School is the story of the trials and tribulations of a prep school boy in 1961 as he sorts through his family, his ambitions, and of course, his relationships with his peers.

As the nameless narrator describes it, the school is very much a "literary place"--Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway all appear at different points--but whether or not this literary zeal spreads beyond the narrator and his circle of literary-magazine friends, all of whom seem to have writerly aspirations, is unclear. In fact, readers discover that this kind of perception and deception, of others and of oneself, plays an enormous role in the novel, and the narrator's sense of self and others is no exception.

And this is what Wolff does so well. His characterization of adolescent boys is spot on. He recreates their attempts at profundity, their sometimes haughty self-importance, their insecurities, their sense of truth, their appraisals of each other, and more with unfailing and often hysterical accuracy. (Ok, at least it's pretty close to my experience as a boarding school teacher and once-student.)

Of particular note in Old School, however, is the ending. For pages and pages the plot leads us down one road, only to careen off the highway and rocket in another direction. It's surprising and a little shocking, and I've been told it's a classic Wolff maneuver, but for what it adds to the story, it's fine with me!

This is a good, quick read, but there's a lot to hold on to when you're reading and a lot, almost too much, to think about once you've finished.

Do I recommend it? Yep. It's fast, it's smart, and it makes you want to be a writer.
Would I teach it? Perhaps to a creative writing elective. It's treatment of character is terrific, but there are better novels for conveying the craft of writing.
Lasting impression: There are two. First, the plot: it barrels along and then blows itself into some other novel. Second, the accuracy with which he captures the complexities of an adolescent boy: he could be describing people I knew and know.
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Feb 04, 2009 Simon A. Smith rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, novels-after-1980

WOW... this is a damn fine book. Some amazing writing here... In fact, I think the best way to prove to you folks that this Wolff guy is "a beast," as the kids say these days, is to quote some passages right here.

"The heat from the fire brought a flush to her face and made her perfume thicker, headier. She turned to Mr. Rice, an English master and a southerner himself, who was tapping his ashes from his pipe into the fireplace. Do you think she'll come tonight? she asked."

"Patty was his second w...more WOW... this is a damn fine book. Some amazing writing here... In fact, I think the best way to prove to you folks that this Wolff guy is "a beast," as the kids say these days, is to quote some passages right here.

"The heat from the fire brought a flush to her face and made her perfume thicker, headier. She turned to Mr. Rice, an English master and a southerner himself, who was tapping his ashes from his pipe into the fireplace. Do you think she'll come tonight? she asked."

"Patty was his second wife, a friend of my grandmother's who'd married him after Grandmargie died. Patty was boring too. She read him the day's news while he peered at the crossword puzzle through his half-moon glasses. They say they're going to widen the road where the car went off with all those kids. She had covered the floors of their house in thick white carpets that deadened the air and made whatever you said in that woolen silence sound like the sudden caw of a crow on a damp day."

"Though never overtly so, his responses were much more destructive than Purcell's. They left you feeling dazed, flatfooted. It was exactly the way he played squash - never slamming the ball head-on, like I did, but breezily tapping it through some sly angle so it died in the corner."

"We had made ourselves unknowable behind our airs and sardonic courtesies, and the one important truth I'd discovered about him we'd silently agreed never to acknowledge. Many such agreements had evolved between us. No acknowledgment of who we really were - of trouble, weakness or doubt - of our worries about our life ahead and the sort of men we were becoming. Never; not a word. We'd kept everything witty and cool, until the air between us was so ironized that to say anything in earnest would have been a breach of manners, even of trust."

SEE! I had to copy his words down just to get a sense of his rhythm, his mastery with language (just like the narrator in the book does to get an idea for the prose of Hemingway.) Anyway, this is the best book I've read since Revolutionary Road , and Wolff's style here reminded me a lot of Yates's throughout his novel. If you're looking for an action packed, entertaining, plot driven whirl wind of a read, this isn't for you. If you like to sink into good writing and let the characters and story just sort of wash over you, then definitely read this. Do it. Right now. Go.

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Jun 19, 2007 Casey rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Headmasters, writers, former privileged youths.

If nothing else, this book made me wish I had had an ivy-covered education, smelling of damp tweed and cigars, instead of attending my high school, which looked like a series of carboard boxes left out in the rain, and was positioned downwind from a tannery, hazing our Indian summers with the sharp smell of ammonia and rotten meat.

Though I was afraid it would come across as too nostalgic for a time (early 60's) and place (New England prep school) that most of us have never had access to, I real...more

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Feb 14, 2009 Theresa rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is one of my all-time favorites. I am consistently moved by the way it captures the Prep School boys at its center, and the thoughtful, affectionate way it address some of the greatest names in American Literature through the eyes of teenage boys. It is not just a story of a Prep School with a writing competition-- Its a story about what happens when literature and reality collide, or at least stumble into each other. It makes you think about truth--artistic, emotional and factual. It...more

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Feb 19, 2008 Clare rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Heather and Scott

Wolff's tale leaves you wondering where the bio ends and fiction begins. Very fascinating and well-written. Having attended a competative boarding school myself, I strongly identify with this character, especially how he interacts with other kids - when I 1st arrived at school, I also feel I was in a different world. My peers dressed, talked & walked differently. The author's reaction to this is fascinating.

I also enjoyed the sections describing authors who came to the school to lecture. I w...more

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Jul 25, 2008 erin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

the prodigal paragraph

this book had one of the best final paragraphs i've ever read. ever since i finished the book a few months ago, i am oftentimes reminded of it:

"Arch stopped and looked down the garden to where the headmaster stood by the drinks table with another master. The headmaster said, Late for his own funeral! and everyone laughed, then he put his glass down and came toward Arch with both hands outstretched. Though the headmaster was the younger man, and much shorter, and though Arch...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Ubiqua rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tobias Wolff cala il lettore nell’universo tipicamente americano delle prep-school (e non dei college, come erroneamente riportato in quarta di copertina), ossia i licei-collegio dove gli adolescenti vengono preparati all’università. L’ambientazione si presta duttilmente a un romanzo di formazione obliquo, che è soprattutto una riflessione sulla letteratura (rigorosamente americana) e sullo scrivere. Il manifesto di Wolff è semplice: l’onestà intellettuale è il primo strumento che lo scrittore d...more

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Nov 23, 2008 Ruby rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

(Novel—Finalist Pen/Faulkner Award) I read about this author is the LA Times Book Review section; he had just published a new collection of short stories. The review was one of the most glowing I have ever read. I am not a big fan of short stories—if I am going to take the time to get to know characters, I want to spend a whole novel with them—not just a short story. But because the review was so glowing, I decided to check him out. The only one of his works at the library turned out to be a nov...more

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May 18, 2013 Peter Fortune rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-classics, fiction-high

Tobia Wolff is a Stanford Literature professor whose genre is the memoir crafted skilfully into a novel. Old School is his first novel. It is set at an Eastern Boy's School in 19660-61. Its protagonist is a young man--a senior--who adores the school and wants to become a writer. His observations on the atmosphere of a boy's school is spot on: the boys are both friends and vicious competitors; the faculty are bound together in friendship and a common vision of the school; the boys have no sense o...more

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Dec 08, 2012 Darrell Reimer rated it 5 of 5 stars

On Friday Big Jeff made it known that if his cousin got kicked out for cutting next afternoon's chapel, he was leaving with him. This was a curious and agreeable twist, Big Jeff spanieling after his cousin with tongue out, barking at phantoms as he followed him into martyrdom. It somehow put the whole thing in a farcical light, as Purcell must have understood, because he was furious.

The above passage comes late in Tobias Wolff's Old School. At this point the narrator and his other schoolmates ar...more On Friday Big Jeff made it known that if his cousin got kicked out for cutting next afternoon's chapel, he was leaving with him. This was a curious and agreeable twist, Big Jeff spanieling after his cousin with tongue out, barking at phantoms as he followed him into martyrdom. It somehow put the whole thing in a farcical light, as Purcell must have understood, because he was furious.

The above passage comes late in Tobias Wolff's Old School. At this point the narrator and his other schoolmates are just weeks away from graduating their Exeter-like institution. Purcell has become that most insufferable of humans: an adolescent convert, in this case from an inherited, nominal Christianity to ardent atheist. Now he stands, alone, on principle. This being 1960, elite Protestant prep-schools require their students to attend daily chapel. Purcell is having none of it, and will soon be expelled for his insouciant variety of passive resistance. Alas for Purcell, “Big Jeff” has marched himself into a spotlight meant for one, and transformed a tragic drama of noble principle into a Laurel and Hardy comedy. Fraudulent motivations have been revealed — along with a great deal more.

It is a comic episode, one of many, elegantly framed by a writer who takes the comic imperative very seriously. The novel's school is quite the literary construct, a Hogwarts for young writers. The boys all compete for a private audience with the literary stars of the era (Frost! Rand!! Hemingway!!!). The fictions penned by these sprats are, in fact, masks crudely constructed to fit over their visages. Facade upon facade, painstakingly maintained to protect vulnerabilities — truths — from being revealed.

Wolff generates a beguiling self-awareness that is entirely unselfconscious — a precarious and breathtaking feat of balance. After all, this is a novel in which young writers concoct fiction upon fiction in a vainglorious effort to build themselves up into something they are not. Wolff's narrator, for instance, is attending the school on a scholarship, and in fact comes from a struggling household of modest means. He is understandably evasive about this with his schoolmates. He is also a Jew — a fact he is evasive about with himself.

Wolff's narrator's voice perfectly evokes the unfocused heat of youthful yearning, now regarded through a lens tempered by experiences that render a person either humiliated or humbled. Every character receives his comeuppance. Only the truest of them discover that their vulnerabilities are something not to reject, but embrace.

Earlier I made a comparison to Harry Potter. Had this been a novel of bold and inept measures, that is how it might have actually read. That so many readers regard Old School as a memoir is a testament to Wolff's fabulous powers of fictive persuasion. Perhaps there are a few “police court facts” thrown into the stew, but Wolff's compassionate exploration of life and truth is indeed novel, and finally an endearing and delightful work of fiction.(less)

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Nov 28, 2012 Karyl rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, bookstore-finds, favorites

I picked this book up on a whim, attracted by the beautiful cover and the interesting blurb on the back cover. In need of a relatively short book (I'm running out of time on my reading challenge -- ack!), I chose this book from the many scattered about my home in hopes I could finish it quickly. Less than 24 hours later, and I've devoured every page.

Wolff's narrator is a boy from Seattle attending a prestigious boarding school in New England in the 1960s. His descriptions of the boys then evoke...more

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Nov 13, 2012 Matthew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Old School, by Tobias Wolff, published by Bloomsbury, reviewed by Matt Stewart

Much like its sumptuous, sepia tinted cover Old School is an inviting world of ideals, nostalgia and the quiet joy of the written word. Each term a charmed circle of well-born prep school boys compete for a private audience with a famous writer, the best story wins that audience. Wolff immerses us into the lives of these fledgling literati with a deft and striking feel for authenticity. Each character is imbued with a...more Old School, by Tobias Wolff, published by Bloomsbury, reviewed by Matt Stewart

Much like its sumptuous, sepia tinted cover Old School is an inviting world of ideals, nostalgia and the quiet joy of the written word. Each term a charmed circle of well-born prep school boys compete for a private audience with a famous writer, the best story wins that audience. Wolff immerses us into the lives of these fledgling literati with a deft and striking feel for authenticity. Each character is imbued with a sense of self possession in what is essentially a coming of age tale. He identifies the DNA of writing with a cavalcade of literary figures and allusions. Old School is about learning how to write, it is a love letter to the form.

Wolff channels himself through the unnamed main character – his is the voice and this is a complex trick to pull off. The reader gains a private audience with Wolff and the languid, assured movement and elegance of the writing makes this gentle authorial ruse ring true. Wolff then is the soulful, ambitious young proponent whose thought and deed bristle with humanity, fallibility and idealism.

It has been noted that happiness “writes white” and that goodness “writes purple”. If you buy this axiom then Old School writes a noble, resilient green. It walks a path gilded with spiraling possibility and it characters, precocious and mentally virile, seem destined to be satisfied. Storytelling, Wolff reminds us, is universal. We all have stories and the good ones are sometimes the ones we are living.

Repercussive double-takes, musings and stories within stories draw out life as the great narrative. This tactical mirrors-in-the-elevator approach lets Wolff expound on the nature of writing without delivering a sermon. Thus the ebb and flow of a writers’ sense of creative potency is explored, the shiftless fluidity of the persona, the self-aggrandizing motivations all lead to that timeless epiphany - truth.

Truth is a potentially corny and always nebulous theme and another writer may have garbled it but with a kindly series of philosophical nudges Wolff reveals that candid introspection and unfeigned personal evaluation lie behind good writing.

Capital Times, May 5, 2005
(less)

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Sep 16, 2012 Chris Amies rated it 4 of 5 stars

In many ways I felt this was a love letter to Hemingway as well as a memoir of growing up in an elite school in the late 1950s/very early 60s. Hemingway it is after all with his gruff compassion for the wounded and hurting who cures our narrator of his Ayn Rand fixation - I was drawn to this book by its mention of Ayn Rand and wasn't disappointed. The hothouse pressure of this slightly strange and unnatural environment is well brought out and indeed it is surprising in a way that more people who...more

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Sep 07, 2012 Rusty rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

I liked this book. It seems like a series of short stories about a boy growing into a man. The boy is the same individual throughout the chapters with very different experiences. He tells all the stories. When he uses another's story in a senior writing competition for Ernest Hemingway he wins but is expelled from school. The master who drives him to the train station tries to tell him that he will recover from this incident but doesn't quite know how to tell him so. Life brings other experience...more

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About Tobias Wolff

Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is a writer of fiction and nonfiction.

He is best known for his short stories and his memoirs, although he has written two novels.

Wolff is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, where he has taught classes in English and creative writing since 1997. He also served as the director of the Creative Writ...more

More about Tobias Wolff...

Books by Tobias Wolff

In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War

In the Garden of the North American Martyrs

Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

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Quotes from Old School

“a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.” — 19 people liked it

“You boys know what tropism is, it's what makes a plant grow toward the light. Everything aspires to the light. You don't have to chase down a fly to get rid of it - you just darken the room, leave a crack of light in a window, and out he goes. Works every time. We all have that instinct, that aspiration. Science can't dim that. All science can do is turn out the false lights so the true light can get us home.” — 7 people liked it

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