Rating: 
Summary: A seeming sequel to "This Boy's Life"
Review: I am only glad that I haven't read "In Pharoah's Army", because having read "This Boy's Life", I am convinced that Wolfe's latest novel is almost biographical, so I'd like to read the seeming "trilogy" in sequence. However, I will need to do some more research on him to determine to what extent. This impression isn't deterred by the cover photograph which originates from the Hill School where Wolfe managed through duplicity to be admitted."Old School" is an interesting and engaging novel which seems to depict an era reminiscent of the 1940s, though the protagonist ends up a Vietnam veteran. It depicts an regimented, hierarchical academic world isolated from the mainstream that predated meritocracy, one that is somewhat idealistic with a cerebral focus on writing and literature, and rigid social mores and honor codes established to maintain the WASP ideal. While many novels need substantial editing, this is one where I felt the characters could have benefitted from being fleshed out somewhat more. Additionally, after the protagonist's abrupt and tragic self inflicted wound, there seems insufficient development and almost a disconnect between that catastrophe and his achieving almost too poetic closure. The protagonist's graciousness at the end doesn't seem commensurate with the brutal and disproportionate punishment meted out to him. This is a good and worthwhile novel; perhaps it was simply at the end that I wanted more.
Rating: 
Summary: "Old School" Disappoints
Review: Those who buy "Old School" will do so because the author is Tobias Wolff, but his latest work is a major disappointment. "Old School" takes place at a prep school where students compete with one another writing stories and submitting them for competition. The winner is selected by a famous writer, in this case, Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway. One would assume that meeting such characters in a novel would be fascinating, but under the circumstances Wolff puts them in (speaking to students briefly at a prep school), the result is monotonous and unrealistic. There is little conflict in "Old School" except 150 pages into the story. By then, the reader finds it difficult to care about what happens to a group of characters that are difficult to see or hear or care about. The novel unravels toward the end when Wolff tries to connect the main character's weak dilemma with his own. Still, "Old School" is a very slow moving novel, and with an exception or two, little occurs, and little is at stake. Ultimately, "Old School" is a novel-length short story. (If you're interested in Wolff's writing, read "This Boy's Life: A Memoir" which features excellent prose and an even better story.)
Rating: 
Summary: Exquisite prose, fascinating theme
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Book I've Read This Year
Review: I had heard good things about this book, but, I'll admit, I picked this book up more out of a literary sense of duty to read our "best" authors, than with any real expectations. Instead, I found myself reading through, desperately hoping that it stayed as good as it was. It didn't. It got BETTER. Witty. Charming. Exquisite. I truly cannot say enough about this book.
Rating:
Summary: A MUST FOR BOOK LOVERS
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: A+ for Old School
Review: Smooth, polished, carefully enclosed - you can't find a crack in it anywhere. Wolff's first novel comes after years of writing memoirs and short stories, and you can feel the influence of both genres in this book. The writing is subtle and restrained, the narrator is a boy who wants to be a writer, and the field of action is limited mainly to one important year at the boy's private boarding school. It's a captivating combination. In an interview with Salon, Wolff mentions his love of Chekhov, saying that one of the things he appreciates about him is "his humanity, and at the same time his pitilessness." The same might be said for Wolff. His admiration of Chekhov is apparent in the clarity of his writing, in the harsh empathy he shows for a wide range of characters, and in the sudden ways those characters surprise or betray us. There's also something Chekhovian in the way Wolff selects a theme and entirely walks it through its paces, until characters are made to think and say the opposite of what they thought and said before. Still, the book belongs unmistakably to Wolff - his total recall of boyhood, his unfussy tone, his refusal to let the narrator get off easy, and his dissection of what it means to grow up.
There are also many characteristic "Wolffian" moments. In Old School, the narrator's uncomfortable self-awareness recalls the opening scene of This Boy's Life, when, after witnessing a truck lose its brakes and go over a cliff, Toby guiltily takes advantage of his mother's assumption that he is upset, and manipulates her sympathy: "I saw that the time was right to make a play for souvenirs." We feel let down by this, but immediately know we can trust him - he's telling it like it is, and there won't be any false plays for our sympathy. Wolff excels at this kind of tough unsettling and sudden double take. It's reproduced in the style of Old School, which is close to that of Wolff's short stories, clear and crisp and candid, with an ending that gives us a new angle on what's gone before, and opens the story up to a different world.
Rating:
Summary: doesn't miss a single nuance
Review: as a product of boarding school, as a parent who sends her children to boarding schools, as a writer, as a sometime teacher, and as a student who can still remember her teacher's comments on a senior English paper on Absalom, Absalom, I savored every word of this story. It's nearly unbearable in its depictions, the velvet-hammer scenes and soft-shoed tension, to mix a few metaphors. The observations on honor, on truthfulness, on resignation, on competition, on the love of school it's uncool to acknowledge, and on shame, are accurate and poignant. I've been waiting for this novel since I first read an exerpt in The New Yorker, and wasn't disappointed. Can someone please tell me where Tobias Wolff went to prep school as a scholarship student?
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This is a wonderful book by one of America's finest writers. Fans of Wolff's stories and memoirs will recognize and welcome this narrator's voice, and readers new to Wolff will find this an accessible introduction to the author's work. Like all of Wolff's best writing, this book is full of sharp humor and penetrating insight. If you like Catcher in the Rye or A Separate Peace, you'll love this book.
Rating:
Summary: "I¿d seen my own life laid bare on the page."
Review: 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
Rating:
Summary: Go to "School"
Review: 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.
|
