<![CDATA[Old School]]>

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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

1153120

2003

Old School

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4 4 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 22 17:55:17 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 26 00:28:20 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 5 false false Tue Apr 29 09:35:01 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 29 09:37:17 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Mon Oct 08 13:24:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jan 06 11:13:01 -0800 2008
Well, last night, I visited the land of IKEA (dreadful place that I rarely venture to) and bought myself a reading lamp. Wanting...more...]]> 4 2 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 27 20:08:38 -0700 2007 Sun Sep 02 10:07:19 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 2 false false Tue Oct 06 17:03:03 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 09:47:55 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 17:03:03 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Jan 04 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Dec 14 04:40:36 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 05 05:30:08 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Nov 27 06:13:55 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 06 22:05:03 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 29 18:48:05 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 23 11:44:49 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Sun Jan 06 12:11:30 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 06 12:20:42 -0800 2008 more...]]> 0 1 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 28 15:26:29 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 28 15:55:44 -0700 2007 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 cours...more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Feb 04 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jul 09 04:23:01 -0700 2007 Wed Feb 04 15:28:23 -0800 2009
"The heat from the fire brought a flush to her face and mad...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 02 22:05:23 -0700 2007 Wed Jul 11 13:45:14 -0700 2007 Old School is about honesty, dishonesty, honor, dishonor, cowardice, forgiveness. I kept feeling like doom was to befall (woah--I just realized that he had no name) the main character and wasn't sure he didn't deserve it.

I was in love with how in love the boys were with their school and ...more...]]> 3 1 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 10 17:57:13 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 19 07:32:17 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Mon Mar 26 21:37:12 -0700 2007 Sat Feb 14 10:56:53 -0800 2009 6 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Feb 19 17:50:02 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 19 17:55:14 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Mar 27 07:16:37 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 25 05:59:12 -0700 2008 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 ma...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Nov 23 18:32:42 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 23 18:35:02 -0800 2008 1 more...]]> 5 0 false true Mon Oct 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 21:34:46 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 20 16:18:23 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Aug 03 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 03 06:49:38 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 03 06:58:19 -0700 2009 I really loved this book, right from the start. This is my first real foray into Tobias Wolff and I can't believe I waited this long. There are lots of things that I have read in criticism of this novel (well, novella is probably more apt). The characters are probably hard for many pe...more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Jul 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 31 17:19:25 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 31 17:31:51 -0700 2009 more...]]>