Old School (Vintage Contemporaries)

Here's another book about a prep school student on scholarship who is a fish out of water. In this case, however, he's not a loner, and he's one of several students with realistic literary ambitions at a school whose reputation rests on its literary program. Each term is highlighted by a composition contest in the preferred genre of a visiting writer who judges the entries and grants the winner an hour-long dialogue. You don't have to love literature to love this book, but it probably helps. Robert Frost's argument for the form in poetry, the scathingly funny depiction of Ayn Rand's high-mindedness, and Hemingway's letter about courage and truth are all fictional and yet fitting for what we expect from each author. There are so many captivating stories here, including that of Little Jeff and Big Jeff, in a love-hate relationship where one's loyalty gives the other the courage to keep from self-destructing. Ultimately, the book is about forgiveness, and Wolff develops this theme in a marvelous way, citing two parallel transgressions. One is huge, but the culprit is somehow barely aware of its severity, and the other is more of an oversight that generates more guilt than the deed warrants.

In this delightful novel, Mr Wolff tells the story of a boy called Lambert attending an elite prep school in New England in the 1960s. At that establishment, it is the tradition that one pupil should be granted a private audience with a visiting author provided that a piece of his or her own work wins the competition. The winner is chosen by the author and the pupil's work is then published in the school newspaper. When the visit of Ernest Hemingway is announced, Lambert struggles along with his competitors George Kellog, Bill White and Jeff Purcell to win the honour of meeting the famous writer in private. Unfortunately Lambert chooses a not quite honest way of winning the competition which results in his being expelled from school.

Apart from the plot which magnificently describes life at school at that time, Mr Wolff poses interesting questions. What is an author? How does the desire to create arise? How many of those who have literary ambitions will eventually succeed? How can an aspiring writer fight the writer's block? The author also shows that the topics of truth and fiction and of honesty and delusion are slippery ones. One wonders indeed if it is possible to tell the truth in writing and if, in art in general, there is any truth at all. In this sense, the main character in "Old School" is perhaps not Lambert but literature itself. One quality this novel certainly possesses is stylistic restraint with every sentence having a rare and high precision.

For the handful of impatient readers out there who have barked at me for recommending 500+ page epic novels such as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (three years ago) and Middlesex (last year), this book is for you. Weighing in at just under 200 pages, this novel is just as much a heavyweight as much lengthier works of literature that I have sparred with this year. John Updike's The Early Stories, for example, a massive and brilliant collection of some of the best short fiction out there, had me up against the ropes for the better part of two months. In contrast, Old School can be read in the better part of an afternoon. And yet despite its meager size, as quality literature this book could go toe-to-toe for twelve rounds with pretty much any book out there.
First and foremost this is a book for book-lovers, for readers who treasure literature and writing as essential elements of our humanity. It is a book about writers, about famous ones like Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost and about young, aspiring ones at an east coast boarding school in the early 1960s. At this school, students compete for an individual audience with a visiting writer - the student who submits the best short story or poem, judged by the famous writer, wins the prize.
But this book is more than just an ode to great writers and great writing. It is a novel about morals and ethics, and about the gray areas that cloud our judgment. It is a novel about the development of human character, about the differences that separate us and the ties that bond us together. It is at times humorous, at other times tragic, and still at other times triumphant. But throughout, it is undeniably honest and human.
So go ahead - open this book and smell the September leaves as they fall on this school campus. Feel the excitement in the air - the excitement of being young, the excitement of learning, the excitement of growing up and being on the verge of adulthood.
A 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, Old School is without question one of the best books of the past year.

For those who did enjoy the old private school life or wish they did, this book will suit you. There is plenty of detail about everyday events and what kind of behavior gets you tossed out of the place.

For example, considering today's youth and promiscuity, a boy in 1960 hitchhikes down to a nearby girls' school and necks with one girl in the boat house. They are each thrown out of their schools. He was a talented young writer, alas.

The section where many a young person's idol?, Ayn Rand of the Objectivist School, comes personally to the Boys' school to talk about her ideas of the rational man and the folly of self-sacrifice. The boys have read The Fountianhead and Atlas Shrugged with their Übermensch heroes.

First he is surprised that she is short and block-shaped and dark with short hair. She is far from any love goddess ideal as her character Dominque seems to be to a boy of school age. Not mentioned is that she is a Russian Jew and that our protagonist, partly Jewish himself, must have known or suspected it. She claims she came from nothing. Every Ayn Rand fan knew she was a privileged member of pre-1917 Petrograd where her parents owned a pharmacy. Although they lost it, she was not forced into a worker's misery. She attended the university and got a diploma in Philosophy. She worked as a tourguide in the Crimea, a pleasant job for educated people.

She also had help in getting out of thr USSR and getting work in Hollywood working in the costume department. Lots of contacts helped her.

But I digress. And that is what I think is the big fault of this otherwise well written story. There is too much digression into authors such as Hemingway and trying to prove one philosophy over another. Ok Hemingway had sympathy worth his fellow man, those who suffered outrageous fortune yet soldiered on. He himself drank like a fish to assuage his own shames. He treated women badly and his shame came out in anger at life itself because he knew himself to be a cad. Yet we as readers are drawn to praise him and condemn another.

Oh for the glory days of books and literature!!

Throughout all of Western civilization the day of the book and the reader as a pinnacle of mankind's ideas is dying. Yet here we are in the store reviewing books and others are reading our reviews.

As you go forth! Take books and ideas with you!

Tobias Wolff's "Old School" is one of those books for people who love literature. Dedicated to the soul of twentieth-century literature -- the good, the bad, and the arrogant -- it's a spare, deceptively simple book with some startling twists.
It takes place at an elite prep school in the 1960s, when the world was shifting under people's feet. A working-class boy secures a scholarship, and manages to pass himself off as one of the carelessly moneyed types who populate the school, hiding his middle-class Catholic/Jewish background. He and his classmates adore the (then-modern) classics, and are thrilled when major writers are called on to judge writing competitions at their school.
But the boy doesn't make an impression on Robert Frost. And because of a nasty cold, he can't even get into a competition judged by Ayn Rand. But when he learns that Ernest Hemingway -- his literary hero -- is the next judge, he's determined to catch the great man's attention. But to create a true-to-life story, he delves into a real-life story from his own school -- with disastrous results.
Don't read "Old School" if you need a lot of thrills. Like the school itself, "Old School" is a quiet, restrained book. And without preaching or being arrogant, Wolff manages to show us how important honesty of all kinds is to good literature. And at the same time, he can give his straightforward story twists and new dimensions.
Wolff shows exceptional insight into literature -- and how a teenage boy sees it. For example, the narrator becomes enamored of Ayn Rand's books at one point. Then he meets the author herself, and her arrogance and disdain strip away his appreciation for her works -- he sees how writers like Hemingway focus on people who may be ordinary, but are magnificent in their ordinariness.
Wolff's writing is spare and quiet, and his characters are sort of the same. There's the narrator, a naive young teen boy who grows up a lot over the course of the book -- even if he is the least alive of the characters -- the quirky classmates and the imposing Dean. And he does a wonderful job of translating Frost, Rand and Hemingway into his own words: Frost is faux-humble, Rand is unabashedly hypocritical and self-absorbed, and Hemingway is endearingly rambly.
"Old School" is an ode to good literature, and the "old schools" of the mid-20th century. A quiet, nostalgia-laden and surprisingly poignant book, this is a solid and satisfying read.

In the world of Old School, literature matters. Collectively, the students of this high strung, Eastern prep school, write with intensity, compete through writing and reveal, discover and in some cases even diminish themselves in plot, character, voice, words. For the characters in this compact gem of a novel, no task presents more difficult or leads to greater disapointment than that of distinguishing truth from falsehood, representation from reality, understanding from intent. If the world of literature presents no bright lines to them it is because even literature is unable to reflect that which is not there to be seen: "It is the nature of literature to behave like the fallen world it contemplat[es]." Between the covers of this novel, Wolff offers us superb insights on Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, Ernest Hemmingway, Nathaniel Hawthorne and others. That's as it should be, since Old School does indeed concern itself with the great dialogue within the cannon of American lit. If America had a literary czar whose job was to bestow on books deemed worthy the status of a classic, even though newly published, I am certain such a czar would make that proclammation of Wolff's Old School.

I love the boarding school / summer camp genre. This is a great story about a 6th form (senior) boy at a boarding school during the early 1960s. I liked the way the author portrayed the young protagonist's relationship with his roommate and with the other boys at the school. The book is divided around 3 writing competitions at the boy's school, and the relationship with the boy and the other boys "competing" for the writing awards - audiences with famous writers. I love how in each case, the audience with the visiting writer is "won" by a boy who does not deserve the prize. (SPOILERS: In the first case, the boy's story is mistaken for satire, in the second case the winning boy's story is mistaken for political genius, and in the third case the story is plagiarized.) This reflects the view of one of the masters at the school that having the audience with the famous author as a prize pits the students against each other as competitors; whereas writing should be about writing, not about winning.

Like this review, the ending of the book was somewhat abrupt. Recommended.

Wolff has written a beautiful book about the redeeming nature of time and honesty. Two characters within this novel, one primary, the other secondary, go through a crisis of misrepresentation. The main character, the narrator, misrepresents who he is through plagiarism. Conversely, the headmaster misrepresents who he is through failing to correct the misperceptions of those around him. His students and colleagues think that he has a stronger connection to Ernest Hemingway than he actually has. Both, in the end, are redeemed. With the narrator, it takes years to be able to be proud of who he is and what he has accomplished. All of his actions following his plagiarism are aimed toward redemption. His misdeed is what directs him. The headmaster realizes that, although quite subtle, his misrepresentation is equally as bad and through terrific honesty over the course of a year, is able to come back "home." Wolff's writing is beautiful throughout this slim novel. Like many of Hemingway's novels, not an unnecessary word is used. Wonderful.

Tobias Wolff's gentle ear for "book-drunk boys" submerging themselves in the writing life is as true to boys as anything out there--more so than the Christlike hero of "A Seperate Peace" or the bratty disaffection of Holden Caufield in the ubiquitous "Catcher in the Rye", or myriad other tired, ivy-clad coming-of-age tirades. The boys' school is there, all right (minus the irritating rapes and violence), and so is the betrayal, but Wolff's theme is betrayal of oneself, the sting of which can ache down the years in all our hearts, regardless of our circumstances.
And what an elegiac, beautiful sting it is. This novel is so quotable--and in spots so funny--you'll want to keep it close. The boys' stabs at essays and poems (inevitably mirroring an author whom they're trying to impress) are a scream. But it's the narrator and his search for the real that are most touching. Put "Old School" next to Philip Larkin's "Jill" as one of the few boys-to-men books that rings true.

Old School is a small, quietly wonderful book that will not have you on the edge of your seat, laughing out loud, or questioning various societal roles and rules. What it will do is captivate you in its spare fashion, surround you with a shared sense of love for literature, recall to you your poignant coming-of-age moments, fear, conflicts.

Set at an all boy elite prep school and centering on a young character who has manage to hide that he is middle-class and Jewish, the book centers on the annual writing contest where the winner gets to meet the invited writer of merit personally. during these years, the visiting writers are Ayn Rand, Hemingway (who doesn't actually appear), and Robert Frost. The competition is fierce and sparks some questionable acts, all of which are recalled in later years by the narrator. While he and his friends, along with the adult characters (the dean, some teachers, a teacher's wife), are sparsely drawn, the few details are so rich that the book suffers not at all. Rand and Frost make strong guest appearances as characters, captured brilliantly and humorously. Even better perhaps than the characters is their writing--Wolff does a wonderful job of capturing/parodying the adolescent writer and the way in which they tend to mimic established ones--all with a sense of sincerity rather than mockery.

The book is more than a love affair with literature, it delves in its few pages into concepts of honesty, of redemption, of friendship and identity, of shame and healing. But to be honest, even when these themes cropped up, moving as they were, well-handled as they were, they paled in comparison to Wolff's description of boys drinking literature like water and agonizing over writing like an early love affair.

It's a quick read, but one that should be lingered over. Don't toss it down in an afternoon though you could. Spend some time with it, reread some of the better sections, take some trips down memory lane yourself. Strongly recommended.

I call this novel an "instant classic" because it is timeless. Although written recently, it could have been written years & years ago - the characters, setting, plot, and themes have been & will be forever relevant to the human condition. This novel demands a place in the "coming-of-age" canon. It focuses on a year in the life of a boy. He is a senior in a boarding school in 1960, a year far enough in the past to allow the reader to believe the utter devotion to literature inhabiting the minds of the students there.

Tobias Wolff has delivered a soft-spoken, brilliant depiction of deception: not ruthless deception or even outright, conscious deception, but private, sometimes accidental, and at times unconscious deception that people stumble into, deception that can shape a life & create false honor, & that can unravel lives and bestow dishonor just as quickly. In fact, Wolff deconstructs the very concept of honor, showing how tenuous its ties are to actual reality, to living & breathing humanity.

A last word: lovers of literature will love this novel. Seldom have I run across a book that has so accurately & beautifully depicts how literature can & does shape our lives.

I enjoyed reading "Old School" probably more than I expected I would. I am a journalist myself, and I get bored very quickly with self-indulgent "writer's life" memoirs. In "Old School," Tobias Wolff escapes that literary ghetto by building some interesting characters, asking compelling questions and developing an amusing frame tale. Further he does it all with lively style, rich use of imagery and metaphor, and an overall sense of honesty and vitality in the narrative.

However, Wolff completely drops the ball when he inexplicably transforms the main character from a brilliant-but-conflicted youth into a perhaps-talented-but-amazingly-boneheaded twit. Defenders of Wolff might argue that he plants the seeds that supposedly justify this twist of character, but the actual twist itself is jarring and nonsensical. (I won't ruin it by telling, but it occurs between the second and third sections, on Ayn Rand and Papa Hemingway).

Unfortunately that's not the only problem with "Old School." The plot is thin at best; it's really a frame tale, allowing the narrator to examine his angst. And the characters other than the narrator are not particularly well developed. Wolff hints at deeper waters there, but never dives into them.

This, combined with the main character's baffling behavior in the last third of the novel and the sudden switch to a completely different narrator at the end leaves the reader wondering, "What was that all about?" The writer's honest and realistic style dissolves into hackwork in the last third of the book.

Upon finishing "Old School," one might guess there's more complexity here than can be grasped on first read. But upon reflection, "Old School" becomes more a mishmash of ideas, albeit a nicely packaged mishmash delivered through compelling prose.

Thus my main comment would be to warn readers against expecting too much from this book. "Old School" does _not_, in my opinion, merit the accolades that have been heaped on it. It is, however, an enjoyable read.

Old School is a tremendous piece of literature that is as thought provoking as it is beautiful. Wolff paints a picture of a prestigious boarding school in 1960. The school is highly regarded in literary circles and tradition holds that three authors visit the school for a lecture and one sixth-year student can win a private audience with an author by submitting their own writing and being selected by the author.
The Narrator has high aspirations of obtaining one of these audiences and Wolff traces the boy's quest from Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemmingway as each author increases the boy's obsession with their work. Interestingly enough, the students at the school begin to develop the character of each of their guests and the parallels develop beautifully.
The unnamed narrator struggles to compose a story befitting victory until he realizes that the greatest pieces of literature come from an honest self inventory and acceptance. Old School is an entertaining read and highly recommended to anyone who looked at a piece of literature and said, "That's me".

"Old School" has a certain logic to its message--which seems to be that one doesn't possess the human understanding necessary for becoming a writer until one has experienced a loss of innocence, or a fall from grace.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

The problem I have with the book is that Wolff's writing doesn't reach that level of rich understanding and narrative until after his young protagonist has plummeted out of his prep school, and as an older and wiser man recounts the even sadder story of the school's dean. Up until then, I did not find the story of the young boy (who seems nearly a cipher) very arresting reading. This is a short novel that seems "rear loaded", because the only really good reading is at the end.

The protagonist (who never is given a name) and his friends are not really drawn well enough to be memorable. Wolff may be making the point that young boys are in the process of learning who they are, and that they learn who they are in part by copying their peers and playing to their expectations. So he draws parallels between the act of writing and the act of socialization, commenting on the need for the writer to become an outsider and the risks of expulsion--or falling out of favor from the group.

Another weakness in the development of the novel is that the literary figures involved ( Ayn Rand, Robert Frost, and Ernest Hemingway) are caricatured rather than brought to life. They are the "celebrity judges" whom the young men must try to impress in order to win prizes and personal audiences with the greats. So, Wolff makes another obvious point by having the young writers win approval by imitating and flattering the "living legends"... who stand in for father figures. Woolf shows how each writer responds to the impressionable young.... and finds an easy target for satire in Rand. But, if you want to see Rand pilloried, you'll find that Mary Gaitskill did a far better job in "Two Girls, Fat and Thin."

Wolff kind of plays around with the postmodern view of plagiarism... which is that it is completely natural. In the times we live in, art students are lectured that "being completely original is impossible." It's just that you need to learn the correct way to steal, or appropriate. And literary figures, like Jerzy Kosinski and Carlos Castenada, have come under scrutiny for the honesty of their writing. Yet some hold the view that all creative writing is a form of lying. And like the young girl who is the "victim" of the boy's instance of appropriation, many come to the postmodern view that it really doesn't matter. That is the shift in values that Wolff ironically states in his title, "Old School."

I think Wolff could have written a really profound book about these issues. But as it is, he just chose to pussyfoot around for most of the book, and then deliver fifty memorable pages at the end.

I don't bother writing reviews. I would rather read books. This book, however, deserves to be more than read and re-read. It breaks my heart, and it gives me hope. I felt a connection to a time and place I have not had the privilege to touch, and I saw some of my deepest feelings written with clarity and grace.

Early in Tobias Wolff's novel, Old School, the never-named first person narrator introduces the tradition of a literary contest that poses as the text's central line of suspense. But bubbling beneath this contest is a clutter of additional themes, tensions, and perturbations that converge in a three-chapter swirl in the middle of the novel to comprise the text's climax.

You will feel the living presences of Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, and Ayn Rand in this book. At the same time Wolff draws in and excites readers who are familiar with these authors, he employs the famous authors huge personalities to interest and inform less familiar readers as well.

The book is an exploration of gender and sexuality, Judaism, truth to one's self, the value of scholarship, literature, and the struggle to create, and like a masterful conductor, Wolff expertly manages these themes towards a beautiful convergence in the climax of the novel.

With this novel Tobias Wolff cements his status as one of the greatest writers of our time. 'Old School' - his first full length novel - does not lose any of the impact of his short stories and proves that he is an author capable of taking on any format (including his autobiography 'This Boy's Life'). At a prestigious boarding school for boys in the early sixties we meet our narrator as he begins his senior year - a year which will bring him successs and great consequences. 'Old School' masterfully weaves a variety of themes including friendship, honor, betrayal, and the loss of innocence with a palpable love of literature. This admiration for the classics and also for the craft of writing adds a heartfelt layer to a book that was already amazing simply based on its story. And how appropriate that Wolff pays tribute to classic authors like Hemingway and Ayn Rand as 'Old School' itself is an instant classic (not to mention a joy to read). Highly recommended.

I thought this was a very interesting premise for a book, in which actual authors become characters in the story. Wolff's story takes place in 1960 at an elite Eastern prep school for boys, which takes pride in its literary connections and achievements. The plot revolves around the school's literary contest, whose winners are given an audience with famous authors.

Robert Frost, Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway are featured and, at a reception in Rand's honor, students and faculty participate in an extended discussion of her characters and philosophies in The Fountainhead.

There are more complex parts of the story as well. The narrator, on scholarship to the school, is acutely aware of class distinction and privilege and keeps his modest background and Jewish heritage a secret. He struggles with his own self-image as he mirrors the looks and actions of his wealthy classmates, inviting the false assumption of wealth and class. The contest puts him at the center of a scandal that reveals deceptions and radiates to classmates and faculty. Its conclusion shows Wolff's characters in their true form.

I found the ending to be a bit of a let-down. Maybe you can tell me what you thought!

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 suffers over his words for years and years; he claims to have spent more than ten years working on this novel, which, at 195 pages is really more of a novella. The problem with the novel is plot and characterization. Woolf spends too much time on the words and not enough time on story and character. This is a coming-of-age-on-the-campus novel that, in the end says nothing particularly new or groundbreaking about its characters or about coming-of-age. I love this type of story and this book is part of a long tradition of similar novels. But there are many more powerful and meaningful examples of this genre; beginning with Salinger's the Catcher in the Rye.

please read and review The Speed Of Time

In this homage to literature, the literary life, and the power of literature to influence a reader's life, Tobias Wolff focuses his attention on a small New England prep school in 1960, a school in which students live and breathe "the writing life." The headmaster has studied with Robert Frost, and the Dean is thought to have been a friend of Ernest Hemingway during World War I. To the boys, the English Department is "a kind of chivalric order," where they practice the "ritual swordplay of their speech."

For these students, the highlights of the school year are the three-times-a-year appearances of literary luminaries. When a writer visits, one boy has the opportunity to have a private audience with him, an honor for which the boys contend in vigorously competitive writing contests. The speaker/narrator, a scholarship student, is desperate to win an audience: "My aspirations were mystical," he says. "I wanted to receive the laying on of hands that had written living stories and poems." As various writers--Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and finally, everyone's idol, Ernest Hemingway--are scheduled to appear at the school, the reader observes the growth of the boys, especially the speaker, as they are influenced by and react to the contest, to each other, to the visiting writers, and to the writers' speeches. In the contest to meet Hemingway, the novel reaches its peak, and in a shocking way, the speaker's life changes forever.

Wolff's novel is most remarkable for its point of view and for its conciseness. We never know what the speaker looks like or even his name, since it is through his eyes that the entire novel is filtered. He is interested in poems and short stories and philosophy and writing, all of which he talks about in detail, not in the observation of his surroundings. The limited setting of a New England prep school expands as the speaker ages and moves from school to the crueler outside world, and in later chapters, in which we see him as a mature writer, we also see how he uses some of his school experiences in his fiction, some of which appears within this novel.

Old School is a novel which students of writing will treasure--for its revelations of what it means to be a writer, its insights into the thinking of a perceptive teenager who is both idealistic and pragmatic, its irony, and its remarkable narrative voice. The themes are beautifully realized, and not one word is wasted or rings false. Though Wolff says that "No true account can be given of how or why you become a writer," he comes as close here to illustrating that process as in any other novel I've ever read about the writing life. Mary Whipple

Tobias Wolff's coming-of-age/love affair with books novel is a decent read. However, its writing quality is patchy, themes only half-heartedly tackled, and its characters are on the wrong side of compelling and likeable. It's good, just not disciplined enough, not tightly woven enough. One could say that the writing reflects that blue-blooded insouciance with which the protagantist is so enamored. There are ample passages that demonstrate Wolff's skill at writing, but its uneven quality leads me to believe he wrote this between cocktial parties and book signings.

I enjoyed reading this book, and finished it rather quickly. Wolff hits on some pretty solid themes of self-awareness and its connection to good literature. However, there was a certain je ne sais qois about it that left me unfulfilled at the end. Perhaps it was the lack of genuine drama, or the lack of any serious resolution. The book meanders melancholicly and then suddenly dissipates, unable to leave much of an imprint due to its insubstantiality.

Many will enjoy this book. I did myself. I suspect however that it will collect a lot of dust on the bookshelf after you're finished. It will on mine.

I cannot stand the privileged, especially the "old school", white boy, head bowing privileged, though I certainly wouldn't mind if my own son were one of them--privilege after all, has its privileges--but I still enjoyed this book. The writing is concise (The hero worships Hemingway) getting even better in the final third, though I found the ending irritating. For those of us who have no waiting trust, if we blow a break, it's over. We take up a job in some life-draining cubical and get to feel lucky that our credit-card debt is only a third our annual wage. We don't get to be stupid, wasted, AWOL and President of the United States. We get to be continually at work and in debt. In the book the working class hero takes the famous ride of defeat home on a train only to veer off to live Hemingway's life of combat, all while developing his craft as writer, the loss of a full-boat to Columbia be damned.

Despite blowing a chance of a life-time our hero grows to be a grand success, though it is expressed to us only through implication, as if the author himself doesn't want to boast. There is a scene, during a reconciliation with the school years later, that he is told he'd have seat between Ayn Rand and Hemingway. (Perhaps that's a bit more than implied success.)

In my world, we'd take the cigaret the headmaster gave us, smoke it on the train, and either slit our wrists or live the uneventful and exhausting life we knew at some level fate always had waiting for us. We'd come to accept that some inadvertent break early in life could never lift us from what we should have known would be our tragic inevitability. The character who does have a poor man's fate is a woman whose story our hero lifts for a contest--the event that sends him to temporary ruin--in this case, the length of a train ride. Family misfortune--a staple of the underclass--forces her to a lesser school. She works toward being a doctor anyway, but has to put away the self-indulgences of writing in exchange for the need to get real things done. That's not old school but it is real life.
'

Toward the end of this wonderful little novel, a teacher says, "...one could not live in a world without stories." This is absolutely one of those stories. Beautifully wrought and told with an aching sense of the heaviness of life, the story is funny and poignant and so, so true. The tale is that of the unnamed narrator and his determination (nearly an obsession by novel's end) to earn a private audience with one of the school's three visiting writers: Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, Ernest Hemingway. (Academicians will chuckle knowingly at Wolff's portraits of these staples of American literature.)
The plot heads in fairly unsurprising directions: what is surprising is the beauty with which Wolff handles his topic, capturing the angst of those teen years simultaneously with the joy and wonder of that age. As an additional bonus, Wolff also captures, especially in the book's coda, the essence of what it means to teach, to be a true teacher, one of those few who instruct from their very hearts, who teach because it is, indeed, a calling.
This is a story one should not live without.

For those who love "great books" and literature, I highly recommend Tobias Wolff's Old School. Old School is the story of what perhaps can never be again -- an old fashioned, boarding school where love of books, not sports, gets everyone's hearts pounding. Set in the fifties, Old School is a place where, if you could magically make available to its students all the gadgetry that is the mainstay of modern youth (cell phones, game boys, computers, ipods, etc), they wouldn't be bothered with them, and would look upon anyone who was as a Philistine or a fool. These are serious students who spend their time reading books, talking and writing about them, and, as special rewards, meeting best-selling, literary writers. Elements of class and youthful indiscretions drive this story of flawed but honorable characters making their way in a lost age.

Tobias Wolff does not disappoint with his long-awaited first novel, which describes the making of an artist. The earlier sections of the book are a set-up, illustrating Mark Twain's famous aphorism that the difference between good writing and great writing is akin to the difference between "a lightning bug and a lightning bolt." Wolff's lightning bolts electrify the second half of this wonderful book, bringing the reader to a full stop time after time to re-read certain brilliant passages. This book puts me in mind of "Youth" by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee, another exposition of how an artist is made. "Old School" is, simply put, not to be missed.

Old School's use of real people as characters provides for an engaging and compelling read, however, its ability to capture the reader tapers off due to a weak ending. The story describes a teenager's journey to becoming a respected writer, a journey that takes place at an elite boarding school that holds literary competitions three times a year with the winner earning a date with a famous guest writer. The book spends little time describing the setting, and is more focused on the protagonist's strong desire to win one of the literary competitions. The strong desire leads to many unexpected events and unusual encounters with the unnamed protagonist's classmates. All these features make for an exciting read, but this excitement comes to an abrupt end with a weak ending that left me confused as to why the author would end the book that way.
The most interesting part of the book is the inclusion of Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway as character. All are portrayed in a different way, and each presents qualities that persuade and dissuade the protagonist from becoming a writer. This certainly is the reason why the book is so engaging. Frost is the first of the three, and the protagonist expresses his desire to win the competition by saying "I hopelessly spent the last three years watching other students win a private audience with a famed writer." (16). Although the protagonist does not win, he feels determined to win the next one. Frost's humor and friendliness persuade the protagonist that becoming a writer is really what he wants to do. Ayn Rand, on the other hand, makes the protagonist feel radically different about writers. Her arrogance and feeling of superiority that she gives off irk the protagonist. In one instance, a student asks Ayn Rand what she believes is good writing, and she answers by naming two of her own works. She then proceeds to bash Hemingway and calls his characters "weak." Her persona as a writer and reading how the protagonist reacts to this had me unable to put the book down. I felt as if I was following the protagonist and observing how his journey to becoming a writer progressed with each new encounter. The final competition, in which Hemingway is the guest writer, is where the book becomes extremely interesting. The protagonist becomes borderline obsessed with winning a private audience with Hemingway, spending every second of his time working on his piece. This causes him to make some ill advised decisions, decisions that had consequences that would severely change the protagonist's future. These occurrences were very unexpected and made me feel sad that the protagonist hit a huge obstacle that might ruin his chance of becoming successful.
The protagonist's ability to bounce back and maintain hope after these events leaves the reader satisfied. After developing a personal connection with the character, the reader only wants to see him do well. A major theme in this part of the novel is the comparison of the cruel and uncertain outside world with the privileged and sheltered private school atmosphere. The protagonist is a scholar at school, winner of a scholarship to Columbia and then becomes a wanderer struggling to find a stable job. The ending seems good and well-written until the actor includes a chapter about Dean Makepeace is a character that is barely spoken about in the book until it is revealed that he is the reason why Hemingway is a guest speaker. After developing a connection with the protagonist and leading the reader through his progression, it seems silly that the author would include such a random chapter. This chapter really ruined the ending for me and left me confused.
This book is meant for lovers of writing and literature, boarding school students like me, and anyone who is experiencing hardship. The inclusion of Frost, Rand, and Hemingway would definitely peak the interest of people that enjoy those writers. The story itself is about a school that is full of aspiring writers competing. As a boarding school student, I could relate to many of the daily activities of the protagonist, such as going to chapel and his routine interactions with classmates. I was especially happy to see that the author mentioned Portsmouth Priory at one point in the book. The author includes an aspect of the novel that people with conflicts can relate to because teenagers are the largest group of people with constant conflict. Since this book is meant for high school students, it makes sense that there is a message that readers can add to their own lives and use to solve their conflict. Anyone that is going through adversity would benefit from seeing how the protagonist never panics and perseveres through his troubles. People who just want a fun and engaging read would certainly enjoy this story.

I entered the world of `Old School' expecting to find what I found in every other book we had to read for school. Difficult language, symbolism lurking behind every corner, and a confusing plot to follow. Tobias Wolff did not write your average core English book. `Old School' caught me by surprise and actually gave me something to think about.
One of the most interesting things about this particular novel is that the narrator remains completely nameless throughout the whole story. He is never called on by a teacher and none of his schoolmates call his name (at least not that we hear). This both annoyed me and compelled me to keep reading. Mystery or an unknown aspect of a character easily draws readers in. I also realized (completely by accident) that not giving the readers the name of the main character, Wolff was giving our narrator even more of a `mask' to wear. He has been living a lie for such a long time that his own name gets caught up in it.
All of the main characters in `Old School' are very different, but I managed to connect with all of them. George Kellogg is the `good guy' of the group. He tries to please everyone and the narrator "never heard him say a hard word about anyone" (10) and he becomes very upset when he sees any of his classmates teasing someone. Bill White is the main character's roommate, but we don't see as much of him as the other characters. From what the narrator tells us, Bill is a studious honor roll student who also has a literal mask over his face (although Bill's wasn't acquired on purpose). Jeff Purcell is another main character in Old School, but he isn't the only Jeff Purcell. His cousin attends school with him as well and because their names are identical, our narrator's friend is `Little Jeff', while his cousin is `Big Jeff' (even though neither one is abnormally large or small. The narrator and his friends simply call him Purcell). Purcell is definitely the delinquent of the group and pretty much the opposite of George. He criticizes everyone's work extremely harshly and tends to curse a lot as well.
The only part of `Old School' I disliked was the ending. The rest of the book was nicely paced and had a good combination of dialogue and just straight prose, but the ending was simply Mr. Ramsey telling the narrator about Dean Makepeace. It seemed like Wolff was just coasting; not really putting any effort to make the reader want to read more.
But that's a minor detail.
Overall, Tobias Wolff's `Old School' was one of my favorite book I have read this year, not just in English, but in my free-time as well.

Not unlike the general public, the protagonist of Tobias Wolff's novel Old School is embarrassed of his life. Since beginning as a first year student at an elite prep school for boys, he has purposefully played himself as a laid-back, no worries, wealthy boy who is absolutely accustomed to the illustrious university in which he studies. He never outright lies about his life, which is the opposite of who he creates himself to be, but simply plays the part of someone else, allowing his comrades to assume the rest.

As does every boy at the school, the protagonist holds great writers in high esteem and is powerfully influenced by their works. By tradition, the school periodically invites famous authors to visit the school and to choose one story or poem written by a student. The chosen boy has his work published in the school paper and is granted a private meeting with the visiting author. This is the highest honor for which each boy desperately strives. Following the visit of Robert Frost, it is announced that Ayn Rand is to be the next visiting author. In anticipation of Ayn Rand's arrival and in the hope of winning with her the private audience, the protagonist begins reading her work. His thought processes are dramatically influenced, and he begins to think as she does. He views self-sacrifice as a denial of will and therefore a weakness of character. In the same way, moderation and conventional morality lead only to the death of respectability. These ideas flourish from the written pages of Ayn Rand and further feed the disgust the protagonist feels towards his own conventional, mundane, secret family of which he never speaks. Not until the protagonist hears Ayn Rand speak in person does he begin to see the absurdity from which her ideas are produced, and it is as a result of her unabashed deride of Earnest Hemingway, a particular hero of the protagonist, that his vision of truth begins to clear. It is the first step in his no longer being ashamed to love the drab family he has been so cautious to conceal and which Ayn Rand would readily condemn.

The visiting author scheduled to follow Ayn Rand is Earnest Hemingway, the legendary, idealized Earnest Hemingway. In light of his Ayn Rand experience, and in view of the stark, vulnerable truth of Hemingway's novels, the protagonist feels the weight of the falsehood of his life and his stories for the previous four years and comes to understand that to write something great, he must write something true. The protagonist's revelation results in a striking and surprising rotation of plot and time sequence, bringing the slow and thoughtful prose to a violent halt and then catapulting the reader through time at an alarming new rate. His time at the boy's school is then written as a look at the past, and an example of his would-be life is presented through the life of a different character had he remained in disguise.

The importance of truth in life and writing and the immeasurable power an author has over his reader is prominent and clearly portrayed throughout Tobias Wolff's work as a whole. These ideas are made evident in the intertwined plot which holds a slight storybook quality yet presents themes and stories which can realistically be applied to any reader. The majority of the book's plot is openly displayed in the descriptive mind of the protagonist as he observes himself and his fellow classmates, each fascinating and likable, although as a whole, fitting the perfect stereotype of an elite boy's prep school. The detail of the characters and the story, however, are developed deeply and slowly, requiring the reader not to rush but to pace himself and to ponder each character and the character's story. The setting of the story is somewhat surrealistic, particularly in the closing third of the novel as the protagonist recalls his four years at the school but, once again, can easily be applied to the reader's own life. As a whole, the novel is intriguing and beautifully written both in content and form. It deserves a second read.

Plainly and simply, this is a great little bit of fiction. I love everything Wolff writes, but this one has a special place in my heart because it speaks to the literary geek in me. It reads like a memoir and once I finished it, I wished it could have been me that wrote it. Wolff is a perfectly balanced writer and the "memories" he lays down on paper of his schooldays are absolutely captivating for those who cherish the importance of the written word.

This is the perfect book for a quick and enjoyable experience without too much excess or filler. Highly recommended.

The novel, Old school is a good piece of literature. It takes place during in 1960s in a New England Prep School. The story has a first person perspective. The protagonist of the story is the narrator. The book doesn't reveal the narrator name. The narrator and the other boys at the school worship English Literature. They are astonished by the works of Frost and Hemingway. In this Prep school literture is the center of life for them. The narrator and the other boys at school spend their time reading. At this school they have famous authors as such as Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway to come to there school to choose an essay. The narrator as well as the other boys try to win the constest to meet the author. The narrator fails to win the contest so he devotes all his time to win the opinion of Ernest Hemingway. Underneath all of this the narrator is living a false life. He covers up the fact that he is Jewish and that he is at the school on a scholarship. He tries so hard to cover this up and to try to please everyone else. When he is writing his essay to give to Hemingway, he reads a story by another author. This story is very similar to his life. He relates so much to this story that he makes himself think that it is his story. As he copies they story he changes the main character name into his. The narrator finds out that he won the contest and that he was going to meet Mr. Hemingway. Before he meets Hemingway, Mr. Ramsey a teacher at the school discovers that the narrator copied the story from another author. He later is expelled from the school for this. This changes the life of narrator. This book is a good piece of literature it brings us a lot of themes. The conflicts in the story are based on the narrator finding himself, becoming a writer, and the fact that he is Jewish. Sin and redmeption are the themes that are shown throughout this story. This work by Wolff is good, and I enjoyed reading it.

I originally picked this book because of the cover. As someone who went to an all-boys prep school (in the 1990's, not the 1960's when this novel is set) , I thought I would be able to find some common ground with the character. The story, which revolves around a narrator and his fellow classmates who love literature and are more interested in Robert Frost and Ernest Hemmingway than JFK and what's going on in the world around them beyond the lettered page provides a very vivid and realiztic portrayal of what things would have been like in this prep school. The descriptions of competition over who would or could write the strongest pieces and thus earn a chance to have a private meeting with one of the school's illustrious visitors is quite compelling, yet there is something lacking in this text. Some reviewers have praised the spare prose, and yet it is this spareness that makes it almost impossible to sympathize with the narrator. I think Wolff makes the mistake of spending too much time talking about literature and the connections to the author(the protagonist's rant against Ayn Rand destroys the veil of fiction Wolff creates) and there are often instances when we leave the world of the novel and instead come to a simple discussion of literature and its value. I felt disconnected from all of the characters and so I never entered into Wolff's world. The strength of the test remains the setting he creates, and yet there is very little description of the school the author professes to love, only vague descriptions of his emotional devotion to it. I wonder if I loved the school more because I picture my own than for anything Wolff describes or does not.

Overall, a better than average book, but not something to get too excited about. Get it from a library or from a $1 bin. I'm glad I did.

A wonderful, low keyed novel. A must read for lovers of books, lovers of a good story and lovers of good writing. I was not disappointed with one single paragraph in the entire work. I think that many readers, like myself, will indeed suddenly find themselves examined in a delightful way... if they can remember when they were young, or, if like me, has only distant memories of youth, will find their memories refreshed. Mr Wolff's wonderful syntax and insights are sharp and actually quite remarkable. You will want to purchase this one as it is worth a periodic rereading. I highly recommend!

Tobias Wolff's Old School is a remarkable book. It is smart about literature and reading and what those two things mean to us when we are young. Anyone who ever loved a book or a writer will find this novel/memoir dead on right. And this is the thing that will draw people initially to this fine book.

But this book offers so much more. It is also an excellent lens on a world where reading mattered. The 60's were probably the last great age of reading and writing in the US. First class writers like Frost and Hemingway were important. People felt that in order to understand what was happening in the world, they had to read the latest from Saul Bellow or Katherine Anne Porter, from Sylvia Plath or Robert Lowell. Wolff captures that feeling and also the gray regret that that world of books and writers is gone, and gone forever. It is the thing that is beating ceaselessly back into the past at the end of Old School.

Finally, Old School is a moving study of honesty and deception, truth and lies, and the consequences of both. I don't think anyone can finish this novel/memoir without a profound realization that often we will give up the truths that mean the most to us because we fear standing alone with those truths.

Opening this novel, I already knew by the dedication (For My Teachers) that I would love it. I was not disappointed; this book is a paean to the printed page. Reading Old School, I enjoyed total immersion in an atmosphere where love for writing resonates in the strongest, yet purest tones with the capability of transforming people. As a high school English teacher in the public schools, contemplating the idyllic atmosphere of the old boarding school makes me giddy. I am indebted to Tobias Wolff for offering me the chance to experience this world, even vicariously. This sweet, nostalgic book is a treasure, a gem. I inhaled it like nectar.

"Old School" is Tobias Wolff's first novel. It seems strange for such a revered author to have just accomplished this, but it was worth the wait. The majority of this novel, dealing with a New England boarding school, and three writing competitions, which bring to the school Frost, Rand, and Hemingway, is a joy. It conjures up the days when writing was cool, and the novel was America's most respected form of art. The book is a great examination of the trials, anxieties, and pitfalls of wanting to be a writer. Unfortunately, Wolff misses out on creating a classic, because of a couple chapters at the end that seemed almost like add-ons. The narrator, also, is a bit of a tabula rasa.

Wolff has demonstrated yet again that he has a feel for the last half of the 20th Century, but this time he shows it in the novel, "Old School." Given what we know of him through his previous non-fiction works, he provides a similar critical view of the country by presenting critical pictures of three American literary icons as they might really have been seen through the eyes of teenage boys at an apparently prestigious private school. Wolff also provides a critical perspective on the nature of private schools, the faculty of such schools, and on the students themselves.

While Wolff perhaps makes too little of the main character's plagarism, he does show that, in spite of the "sound and fury" attending to this witting or unwitting act, in the end the act has little real consequence. This point, in and of itself, may be the most important and most scathing element of his critique of the country at its most painful period --- Vietnam, Watergate, and all the betrayals that followed.

I am not sure that "Old School" is the type of novel that the average American will respond to, and this is sad. I do think it should be mandatory reading for all who attend university or ply their trade in secondary and higher education, particularly in light of lowering standards (even with No Child Left Behind), grade inflation, and the flawed idea that students are consumers, who by virtue of paying are entitled to good grades, a degree, and all that is implied by both. This is the key for me in the novel, even though the main character may well be seen as a prototype both for students and for faculty as they now co-exist in schools and colleges today.

Robert B. LeLieuvre, Ph.D.

So it's not exactly light reading, but Old School presents the reader with a lot to think about. The book takes place at a New England Boarding School, where an unnamed protagonist narrates the story. The school has writers like Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway visit occasionally, and in order to get a one-on-one meeting with the writer, a student must complete an original composition and be selected by the author. The narrator is obsessed about being chosen by the writers and goes as far as to copy a piece of work in order to get an audition with Ernest Hemingway. This consequently gets him expelled. He then continues his story after he has left the boarding school.

The book truly made me think about whether what the narrator did was moral. It made me question human decisions, and what leads us to make decisions that we consciously know are bad, yet we do anyway. This book is definitely not something you should pick up for a light read. It is rather slow and boring for the first half, and then the second half magically picks up in pace. Tobias Wolff definitely has created a piece that encourages the reader to think deeply about several themes. I definitely recommend this book.

Wolff describes in this personal book the coming to age in a elite school and the blind adoration for some writers as pop stars. Between the lines you also read how appreciation and knowlegde for literature take shape, specially by (young) people.
Extreme characters like Robert Frost, Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway play pivotical roles in the story which ends with a unexpected twist when Wolff himself is the invited "famous writer".
The book ia another example of Wolffs fascination with cheating your way in life.

This book is a patchwork quilt of various story lines, with little connective thread. The protagonist narrates with endless tangenital stream-of-thought digressions breaking up the action. I needed to mentally keep my place in the pages to recall what was actually happening in the story vs. what was a multi-page flashback or background story. For this reason, I often envisioned the protagonist spending his time in absent-minded reverie, oblivious to his surroundings.

Several plot threads are begun but fade out - what happened to the whistling cook? What happened to the custodian? Instead, the book stops about 2/3 through and moves ahead in time to the adult protagonist summarizing and filling in details on the story. Even here, plot threads begin and fade out, like his transitory relationship with the author of the story he plaigarized. Instead, we are treated to a long digression about obscure characters and their love affairs and career travails, whereupon the book concludes. It's almost as if the author got tired of reworking the manuscript, wrote a summary, and submitted it for publication.

Though the book is rich with imagery and texture, I have only a sketchy idea of what the campus looks like, and many of the characters are only shadowy images or all-but-disembodied voices. It's thus tough to identify with or care about the characters, or do the hard work of trying to follow the wandering plot. However I did like individual passages - this work, edited and fleshed out along a coherent plot line, has the seeds of a classic.

This book reads like a memoir except the last two chapters. All the reviews say it's about a boy in prep school who is an aspiring writer. He wants to win writing competitions for audiences with three writers Frost, Rand, and Hemingway. In reality the book is about our how our inner conscience works on us. How we get trapped into showing outwardly a false persona. At times we like the recognition and acting the part people think we are. However, deep inside we long to be above the life of a lie we are living. The book makes you think and feel inside yourself to see what and who we really are.

Wolff whose previous work includes "Bullet in the Brain" and "This Boy's Life" shows his mastery of prose again in this well written piece. This story of hidden idnetity and the struggle to succeed and follow, paints a vivid world. Each moment is interesting and forces the reader to continue. Fans of literature will appreciate Wolff's tie-ins of such greats as Hemingway, Frost and Rynd. A somewhat brief tale, it accomplishes so much more than it's length implies. A must read for anyone who appreciates well written prose.

A wonderful new book by the master Tobias Wolff. Just a very perfect autobiographical read regarding his illustrious school days when snobbery was snobbery and the upper class acted like the upper class. He relates his run ins with famous literary people from Frost to Ayn Rand. The story also relates his experiences as youth at a prestigious American school surrounded by great faculty minds and the upper crust of America's youth.

This book reads like a memoir except the last two chapters. All the reviews say it's about a boy in prep school who is an aspiring writer. He wants to win writing competitions for audiences with three writers Frost, Rand, and Hemingway. In reality the book is about our how our inner conscience works on us. How we get trapped into showing outwardly a false persona. At times we like the recognition and acting the part people think we are. However, deep inside we long to be above the life of a lie we are living. The book makes you think and feel inside yourself to see what and who we really are.

Wolff whose previous work includes "Bullet in the Brain" and "This Boy's Life" shows his mastery of prose again in this well written piece. This story of hidden idnetity and the struggle to succeed and follow, paints a vivid world. Each moment is interesting and forces the reader to continue. Fans of literature will appreciate Wolff's tie-ins of such greats as Hemingway, Frost and Rynd. A somewhat brief tale, it accomplishes so much more than it's length implies. A must read for anyone who appreciates well written prose.

A wonderful new book by the master Tobias Wolff. Just a very perfect autobiographical read regarding his illustrious school days when snobbery was snobbery and the upper class acted like the upper class. He relates his run ins with famous literary people from Frost to Ayn Rand. The story also relates his experiences as youth at a prestigious American school surrounded by great faculty minds and the upper crust of America's youth.

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

This novel is narrated by a senior at an exclusive boys' boarding school, portrayed as the type of place where all of the students are hiding their true selves. Those who are wealthy try desperately to hide that fact, and those who are on scholarship, as is the narrator, try even harder to hide their heritage. As this story is told from the point of view of one character, it is impossible to determine if this is actually true, or if his fear of being exposed as a fraud clouds his vision of everyone else. It is hard for me to believe that these boys are so disconnected from each other. According to the narrator, nobody is really friends with anybody else, despite the fact that they have been living with each other for so many years. No student has any real relationship with any other student.

What is real, is literature. Writers are artists, who form their own social club and are therefore able to escape the boxes into which their heritage has forced them. It seems every boy at school aspires to write, and once every semester the class is rewarded with a visit from a famous author. These visits are paired with writing contests, in which boys submit a piece of writing in the style of the famous author. The student whose writing is chosen by the visiting author is rewarded with a private audience with him or her--an unbelievable honor for the student. The narrator of the book is desperate for one of these audiences, and devastated when his opportunity to interact with Robert Frost and Ayn Rand passes him by. When he finds that Ernest Hemingway is to be the next visiting author, he is willing to do anything, even plagiarize a story he comes across in a literary magazine, to meet the famous man.

Some of the parts of this story are interesting, especially those focused on the visiting authors. I particularly liked the passages about Ayn Rand and was delighted when a boy asked her, quite seriously, "Who is John Galt?" and received nothing but looks of utter loathing in response.

I also liked the responses of the authors to the works of the students. The boys submitted very earnest bits of poetry or fiction that were terribly misinterpreted by the authors who judged them and read much more into them than the boys had ever anticipated or expected.

However, I didn't really connect with any of the characters, perhaps because the narrator of the story never got close to anyone. He talks about his roommate and how the two of them lived together for years and kept seeming like they might become friends, but it never really happened. In fact, the narrator, although friendly with many, seems to have no actual friends. There is only one girl who might be a love interest in the story, but the narrator also has only minimal feelings for her. In the end, this lack of interest for anyone in the story left me feeling rather uninterested in everything, as well.

This book really gives the reader a bittersweet view of prestigious private schools and how the characters cope with it. A good way of narration, it gives an insight of literature as a whole and how authors can change the way you see your everyday life similarly to what happened with the narrator's opinion of Ayn Rand and Hemingway.

This book had something different in the quality and tone of the writing.One reviewer here called it "old fashioned". However I thought it was refreshing. I take off a star because of the length of the book, the last chapters of the book and other minor things that bothered me. However this well written book deserves a place on your shelves. It most certainly is not the worst book ever written. People who call this book such names either have no taste in literature or are just hastily adding names to certain books that don't deserve them. Happy reading!

First and foremost, the story is interesting. That being said, what captured me was Wolff's style. There is a great range of sentence structure, making the experience pleasantly varied and enjoyable. There are sentences that you can bite into and sentences that seem to float by you in an elegant sort of way.
If you enjoy reading novels for their structure and style, this is probably something you'll enjoy.

I give it 4 stars rather than 5 because it didn't really take my head off or anything. It was excellent but not earth-shattering.

Tobias Wolff's Old School ambitiously attempted to make sense of the confusing grey area that lurks between a lie and the truth. Throughout the novel we watch as the nameless protagonist experiences a coming of age while he attends a religious boarding school set back east. Although the protagonist is only a teenager, he struggles with the very mature idea of discovering his true self in a world that demands conformity. Although he loves his school and appears to fit in well, we learn that he is living a lie and will continue to battle with his inner turmoil until he is able to reach a balance between being the boy that he is and the man that he aspires to become. Despite a deliberate lack of details the reader is able to enter this boy's world and to identify with his situation.

If the novel had ended there I would have closed the book and been content. However, this solid novel quickly began to unravel in the last two chapters that appeared to have been added almost as an after thought. During these final pages new characters are developed and a story that previously could have been marked as a coming of age suddenly takes a religious spin and tackles the issue of sin and redemption. I enjoyed the book up until this point, but after having finished this complicated novel I was left dazed and confused as to what the book was trying to express. If you a looking for a thought provoking book then Old School is a good choice, but if you are looking for a satisfying story then I would suggest looking elsewhere.

Tobias Wolff writes elegantly about a '60s private boys school where star writers have more prestige than star jocks and where honor comes before all else. A student who breaks the honor code is spared no mercy. The plot revolves around this code and the quirky ending is breathtakingly ironic. I couldn't put the book down.

I was surprised that Old School was Wolff's first novel. The intrigue of this book lies in its look at writing as an occupation, as a way of living. Beyond that, Wolff's look at the socioeconomic tensions that typified boarding schools like his narrator's unnamed school is excellent. If you love good literature and like reading about the love of literature, I highly recommend this book. The end is a little slow and not quite as attention-grabbing as the first three quarters of the book, however.

This book was assigned as part of my freshman creative writing class. At first, I wrote it off as "Oh great, another A Separate Peace-esque snobby boys' school clone" but within 25 pages, I was unexpectedly hooked. This is definitely one of those novels that is so elegantly written that it holds together brilliantly, even though there's really very little driving action or even overt tension.

I definitely recommend this to anyone who's loved an author past the point of credibility- and if you're reading the store reviews, that most definitely must mean you.

I didn't rate it 5 stars because, as someone else mentioned, the inclusion of the last section of the book is a kinda confusing. I didn't really understand the point of it, although the writing retains the same level of prose that easily keeps you going.