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Old School

by Tobias Wolff

3.75 · rating details · 3,660 ratings · 533 reviews

The author of the genre-defining memoir This Boy’s Life, the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning novella The Barracks Thief, and short stories acclaimed as modern classics, Tobias Wolff now gives us his first novel.
Determined to fit in at his New England prep school, the narrator has learned to mimic the bearing and manners of his adoptive tribe while concealing as much as possible...more

Hardcover, 208 pages

Published November 4th 2003 by Knopf (first published 2003)

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Jun 26, 2010

Ellen rated it

· 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 ...more

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Oct 06, 2009

Donna rated it

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I've been to Donald Hall's house, in Charles Simic's classes and had dinner and drove Billy Collins' to the airport on two seperate occasions; I had time to talk to each about this topic. I still wonder, though. Donald Hall talked about Robert Frost quite a bit. I couldn't help but quote this passage from Tobias Wolff's book.

Quoted from the text:

Your work sir, Mr. Ramsey said, follows a certain tradition. Not the tradition of Whitman, that most American of poe...more

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Jan 26, 2008

Edan rated it

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 ca...more

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Oct 14, 2010

Sparrow rated it

· review of another edition

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 pr...moreA 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

· review of another edition

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

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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 aro...more

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Sep 02, 2007

Fred rated it

· 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 ...more

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Mar 24, 2011

Monica rated it

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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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Jan 05, 2009

Núria rated it

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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...moreYa 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

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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 familia...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

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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 i...more

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Sep 07, 2011

Katherine rated it

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, grie...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

· 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...more

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Jan 06, 2008

Kirk rated it

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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...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 ...moreTold 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.
(less)

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Feb 04, 2009

Simon A. Smith rated it

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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 ...moreWOW... 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.

(less)

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Jun 19, 2007

Casey rated it

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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 acces...more

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Feb 14, 2009

Theresa rated it

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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. ...more

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Feb 19, 2008

Clare rated it

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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 ...more

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Jul 25, 2008

erin rated it

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 ...more

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Nov 23, 2008

Ruby rated it

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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...more

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Oct 26, 2011

Robert Price Rifkin rated it

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Tobias Woolf is known primarily for his short stories, many of which have won prestigious prizes and awards, and for his harrowing memoirs of his brutal childhood–This Boy’s Life–and his Vietnam book, In Pharaoh’s Army. This is Woolf’s first attempt at a full-length story and it is successful on some levels; less successful on others. Woolf is always a meticulous craftsman–you will waste a lot of time trying to find sentences that aren’t painstakingly crafted. He is one of those writers who suff...more

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Oct 01, 2011

Philip rated it

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Superficially, Old School by Tobias Wolff suggests the gentility of an adolescent memoir. The paroxysms of growing up will be heartfelt, but from the distance of adulthood they will surely claim no more than the relative insignificance they deserve. But Tobias Wolff’s book is not of this mould. An apparently idyllic paradise is shattered not only by a taste of forbidden fruit, but also by a significant kick up the proverbial by an angry farmer!

Again superficially, Old School presents ...moreSuperficially, Old School by Tobias Wolff suggests the gentility of an adolescent memoir. The paroxysms of growing up will be heartfelt, but from the distance of adulthood they will surely claim no more than the relative insignificance they deserve. But Tobias Wolff’s book is not of this mould. An apparently idyllic paradise is shattered not only by a taste of forbidden fruit, but also by a significant kick up the proverbial by an angry farmer!

Again superficially, Old School presents an adolescent male in an environment of privilege, certainly one to be envied. The school’s atmosphere seems rarefied in the extreme, with the study and generation of literature elevated to render writers and would-be writers to almost God-like status. Students compete to publish in the school’s journals and employ criticism from the adulatory to the vicious, thus forming alliances and confirming enemies. The teacher, of course, are co-conspirators, never unwilling to voice an opinion of their own, often implicitly, thereby doubly wounding.

This Old School has a tradition of inviting some very famous writers to judge its competitions. The entries, of course, are pre-selected by teachers, but not all pupils are aware of this preservation of power. For Tobias Wolff, the prospect of a visit by Ernest Hemingway is tantamount to an invitation to dine with God. Unfortunately, his previous attempts at creative writing have not exactly set the editorial committee on fire and he has never come close to winning any of the previous events.

Then one day he finds inspiration in the words of another. He finds a story that is so clearly his own that he seems to live the lives of the characters he imagines. It is a story he commits to paper and submits for the great man to consider.

You may have guessed that all does not turn out well for our young student. Years later, having made his way through whatever life he could cobble together in New York, estranged from a previously supportive family, he returns to the Old School to discover that all was not as it seemed when he was a student there. His own recalled misdemeanours had only ever been part of the story. The book’s principal character recalls the childhood impression that personal conflicts are all that matter and that the adult world is a place where such tensions are not allowed to exist. He then realises, apparently suddenly, that this adult world is no more than an aged version of childhood’s continued confusion. It is the school and memories of it that have become old in this surprising book.
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Sep 28, 2011

Patrick McCoy rated it

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Shelves: contemporary-fiction

Old School by Tobias Wolff has nothing to do with the movie of the same name. It is a novel about a traditional boy's boarding school school in the northeast that fosters the boys literary ambitions by holding writing contests judged by visiting literary dignitaries. Over the course of the novel three of these living legends are introduced: Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, Earnest Hemingway. The novel recreates the atmosphere of these particular institutions before they went co-ed and has a plot devoted ...more

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Sep 22, 2011

Elaine rated it

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I could almost imagine Marquand's writing this novel. However, Marquand wouldn't have elucidated the lies that lead to success and shame. Marquand certainly did expose the sham of honor supposedly guiding the New England elite, but his characters don't descend to the lesser classes. Nor do any realize the sham and atone for it.

Woff's novel also dissects the art of writing, and whose life an author is entitled to portray. The questions of what people hide in order to be accepted forms ...more

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Jul 26, 2011

R. rated it

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Shelves: american-lit

"How do you begin to write truly?" This question, posed by Wolff's unnamed teen protagonist, dwells at the core of this story. Writing truthfully and living truthfully, are intertwined in this beautifully brought off story which seems to cut rather close to the authorial bone if you know anything about Wolff's biography.

This autobiographical work of 'fiction', set in the very real world of the elite Eastern prep-school, gets at the heart of our sense of self and the created f...more"How do you begin to write truly?" This question, posed by Wolff's unnamed teen protagonist, dwells at the core of this story. Writing truthfully and living truthfully, are intertwined in this beautifully brought off story which seems to cut rather close to the authorial bone if you know anything about Wolff's biography.

This autobiographical work of 'fiction', set in the very real world of the elite Eastern prep-school, gets at the heart of our sense of self and the created fictions with which we surround ourselves. The young protagonist, like so many strait-jacketed prep school boys, maintains multiple performances simply to get by in that most hyper-critical and conformist world of the hide-bound all-boys school, performances that both fuel and confound the young writer-in-training.

Wollf deftly captures the posturing, competitive self fashioning, and cover-ups that cling to teenage boys. "We had made ourselves unknowable behind our airs and sardonic courtesies, and the one important truth I'd discovered about him [his roommate] 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 the 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."

A reading of Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead' temporarily brings into focus the artificiality of the hum-drum, or so the narrator thinks until he actually meets the vitriolic Ms. Rand. "Despising any sign of uniformity, I saw uniforms everywhere -- not only on soldiers and policemen, but on high school girls and housewives out shopping. 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." But, again, the 'truth' behind Rand's individualist heroes soon reveals itself and leaves the aspiring writer feeling betrayed and wanting something more humane, more human indeed than Ayn Rand at least. And so returns to Hemingway with a new eye, an eye that acknowledges the damage, but also the humanity, in Hemingway's characters.

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Jun 17, 2011

Dennis Matthews rated it

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Shelves: 2011-reads, all-time-favorites

Especially since getting a Kindle (with its ease of accessing and downloading quickly), I am surprised at the unplanned thematic strings that emerge among my book choices. Old School takes this a step further. Many of my choices of late have centered around World War II - looked at from various perspectives (see reading list for 2011). In Old School, a generation of young, priveleged men are clearly experiencing the pinnacle of the post-war era, and perhaps simultaneouly, the ebb of an educ...moreEspecially since getting a Kindle (with its ease of accessing and downloading quickly), I am surprised at the unplanned thematic strings that emerge among my book choices. Old School takes this a step further. Many of my choices of late have centered around World War II - looked at from various perspectives (see reading list for 2011). In Old School, a generation of young, priveleged men are clearly experiencing the pinnacle of the post-war era, and perhaps simultaneouly, the ebb of an educational tradition grounded in deep appreciation - nay, awe - of literature. Much of this body of literature visits themes of war, commeraderie and manhood - again, themes commonly explored in a number of my recent reads. A couple of other choices have looked at "coming of age" themes, and on a completely different level, Old School explores this in quite distinctive fashion. Wolff focuses on male bonding and themes of community among the priveleged, which I first expected to be off-putting and unaccessible. I was wrong. It was both accessible and insightful.

While I am certain Wolff exaggerated the literary permeation within this academy, I confess a great deal of envy of both the intellectual stimulation and the bonding associated with it - exagerated or not! At the same time, I was grounded by the constant awareness of the limits of this experience to those of greatest privelege - wealthy offspring of some of the country's most priveleged families. There are funny moments, poignant moments, moments when I literally felt the hurt and confusion of the narrator; and throughout, vast enjoyment at the literay references to the people (Frost, Rand, Hemingway) and works that were most influential for the time.

If you have adolescent sons, read this book carefully from the "father perspective." Then, read David Foster Wallace's commencement address to the graduates of Pomona (This is Water . . ., available on Amazon, see my 2011 reading list) and spend some time thinking about the life and the education we want for our sons. We have an aewsome responsibility.(less)

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Apr 23, 2011

Lorraine rated it

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I hate to say this, but I'm forced to say it. Tobias Wolff knows what he's doing, alright. But I didn't enjoy the book. I felt it was too arrogant. That is, it feels like Wolff knows a lot -- for one I am with his protagonist where Rand is concerned -- but when his cleverness gets through it is insufferable. For me, anyhow. If the bits about Hemingway, Rand, Frost, etc had been in essay-form I would have loved them. It's clear that Wolff loves his authors. The essays would have brought to mind a...more

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Mar 18, 2011

Jenna rated it

Felt like an incredibly wonderful long short story...a 200-page short story. This is a great novel for writers to read, as it documents so many parts of the creative life not usually shown to the outside world--the desire to fit in, the need to be noticed by and associated with Great Writers, the jealousy over other peer writers' success, the blocks that you convince yourself you are storing up incredible material behind. Yes. Felt all true. Still...what I mean by a very long short story is that...more

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Oct 12, 2010

Kate rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: cannonball-read

I’m a public school kid. I spent my elementary years in an inner city school where the teachers manually cranked out math assignments from the old mimeograph and our school books were donated by richer school districts. From sixth until twelfth grade, I moved into one of those richer school districts and enjoyed the novelty of a Xerox, but watched as our 30 year old natatorium began to collapse in on itself. I finished off my educational career at a state university, where funding was ample enou...moreI’m a public school kid. I spent my elementary years in an inner city school where the teachers manually cranked out math assignments from the old mimeograph and our school books were donated by richer school districts. From sixth until twelfth grade, I moved into one of those richer school districts and enjoyed the novelty of a Xerox, but watched as our 30 year old natatorium began to collapse in on itself. I finished off my educational career at a state university, where funding was ample enough to begin building two new dorms after I had graduated. What I’m try to say here is that I’ve seen friends in their private school uniforms and met up with old classmates who described garden parties on the greens of Princeton, but have never experienced it myself. It’s a mystery, but an intriguing one.

I suppose that’s why I’m always seeking out books about boarding schools, those elite institutions where the rich make contacts and children are separated from their families for the sake of education. During The Magicians and the Harry Potter novels, the magic didn’t interest me as much as life within those closed circles. The Secret History was a trove of insight into a privileged world. So when I picked up Old School by Tobias Wolff, it was love.

Old School follows the literary exploits of an unnamed narrator in a post-World War II school where writing is a sport with very tangible prizes. Each year, three different writers visit the school and meet with the one boy whose literary work as sufficiently impressed them. Competition to be that one boy is great, driving the students to curl over their typewriters night after night in a flurry of concentration. Winning not only gains a famous author’s attention, but the audible admiration and silent fury from the student body. In other words: nothing like a public school.

Wolff manages to lay out a school that seems ridiculously overblown in theory, but tangible in print. He also has a firm grip on the voices of the authors featured in the story: Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway. Their conversations with the fictional characters are perfect counterparts to their real-life works. Wolff has a keen ear for voice and has clearly dedicated himself to the Great American Classics.

The book turned into something much more than a look into the foreign world of boarding schools. It inspired me to track down all of those Hemingway novels that I read in high school, to give William Faulkner another try, to continue to avoid finishing The Fountainhead (I’m not perfect, you know). It’s time to bring that public school education back into action. So, thanks, Tobias Wolff.
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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 direc...more

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Books by Tobias Wolff

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Quotes from Old School

“a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.” — 10 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.” — 4 people liked it

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