{"id":1932,"date":"2009-07-08T00:01:34","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T04:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=1932"},"modified":"2018-02-12T18:39:02","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T22:39:02","slug":"tobias-wolffs-old-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2009\/07\/08\/tobias-wolffs-old-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Tobias Wolff: Old School<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/span><\/div>

Old School<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nby Tobias Wolff (2003)<\/span>
\nVintage (2004)<\/span>
\n195 pp<\/span><\/p><\/h3><\/div>

\"Old-School\"<\/p>\n

I<\/span>'ve had a few Tobias Wolff novels on my shelf for years now, but until recently I'd never picked one out to read it.\u00a0I'm not sure why.\u00a0Perhaps because I acquire books quickly, and the new additions tend to take precedence over the old. Perhaps it was because I knew nothing about Tobias Wolff or these books. But on the blogs (again,\u00a0trusted blogs are the best place\u00a0to get word of books)\u00a0I'd been picking up an esteem for Wolff that helped me realize that this gap in my reading was larger than I'd thought.\u00a0I pulled Old School<\/em>\"\"\u00a0off the shelf.\u00a0I remember thinking, \"Well, I'll give a it a few minutes to see how it feels.\" As you can see by the presence of this review, that was all it took.<\/p>\n

Wolff is best known for his short stories and his memoirs, This Boy's Life<\/em> probably being the most famous (I have that next on my list).\u00a0Indeed, Old School<\/em> is only his second novel, coming over twenty-five years after his first, Ugly Rumors<\/em> (1975), which was never published in the United States and has never been reissued (you can get it from\u00a0Amazon<\/a>\"\"for a mere $894.50 to $1790.63, if you're that interested in a book the author has essentially repudiated\u00a0\u2014 Old School<\/em> was touted as his first novel).\u00a0Despite my own ignorance of Tobias Wolff, I have been conscious of him for a long time by word of mouth.\u00a0To me, it is impressive that in today's market a writer can become so well known primarily through novellas, short stories, and memoirs. But after reading Old School<\/em>, it is not surprising that Wolff should be well regarded.\u00a0This book is brilliant from page one to the end.<\/p>\n

As you may guess from the cover and title, we're in the familiar boys' school setting from a time period just before the political upheaval of the 1960s. The first paragraph, however, is fresh and all misgivings that this might be a book covering overworked ground are set to rest.<\/p>\n

\n

Robert Frost made his visit in November of 1960, just a week after the general election.\u00a0It tells you something about our school that the prospect of his arrival cooked up more interest than the contest between Nixon and Kennedy, which for most of us was no contest at all.\u00a0Nixon was a straight arrow and a scold. If he'd been one of us we would have glued his shoes to the floor. Kennedy, though \u2014 here was a warrior, an ironist, terse and unhysterical.\u00a0He had his clothes under control.\u00a0His wife was a fox.\u00a0And he read and wrote books, one of which, Why England Slept<\/em>, was required reading in my honors history seminar.\u00a0We recognized Kennedy; we could still see in him the boy who would have been a favorite here, roguish and literate, with that almost formal insouciance that both enacted and discounted the fact of his class.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Each year several famous authors visit the school. It is the privilege of all to submit a piece of writing (fiction or poetry, depending on the visiting author). The author then selects one student as the winner, and that student gets to take a stroll around the garden one-on-one with the author. Our narrator is a budding author struggling to find his voice.\u00a0So far he's never been able to be completely honest with himself, and his writing shows it.\u00a0He is a great reader, though,\u00a0and has a position on the school's literary journal wherein he gets to help select which of the students' pieces get published.\u00a0He loves literature and deeply hopes to win a meeting with one of the visiting authors.\u00a0In a way, he thinks such a meeting might just get his own writing career started.<\/p>\n

\n

All these writers were welcomed by other writers.\u00a0It seemed to follow that you needed such a welcome, yet before this could happen you somehow, anyhow, had to meet <\/em>the writer who was to welcome you.\u00a0My idea of how this worked wasn't low or even practical.\u00a0I never thought about making connections.\u00a0My aspirations were mystical. I wanted to receive the laying on of hands that had written living stories and poems, hands that had touched the hands of other writers.\u00a0I wanted to be anointed.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

These author visits keep the book's narrative on track, moving us methodically through the school year and through the development of this artist and of art. First we have Robert Frost, a nice representation of conventional formalism passing away, but not without a fight. Next comes the incendiary Ayn Rand, whom many in the school didn't want to invite.\u00a0The narrator becomes infatuated with The Fountainhead<\/em> and is eventually baffled by how much it changes his perspective and his relationships.\u00a0It's a tragic part of the novel, and the role of fiction is excellently discussed in these passages and when Rand herself visits the school. The last scheduled author for the school year is the soon-to-be-late Hemingway.<\/p>\n

\n

I myself was in debt to Hemingway \u2014 up to my ears.\u00a0So was Bill. We even talked like Hemingway characters, through in travesty, as if to deny our discipleship: That is your bed, and it is a good bed, and you must make it and you must make it well. Or:\u00a0Today is the day of meatloaf.\u00a0The meatloaf is swell.\u00a0It is swell but when it is gone the not-having meatloaf will be tragic and the meatloaf man will not come anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Wolff doesn't let the story hang on these author visits, however, as central to the book as they are.\u00a0Despite our narrator's youthful self being stifled, the writer he becomes \u2014 the writer who writes this account \u2014\u00a0approaches this memoir of sorts with a cutting honesty but without easily answering the dilemmas encountered this school year. Nothing is easily resolved, if it is ever resolved.\u00a0The end, in fact, is a sort of pseudo-resolution, and it's excellent.\u00a0I'm not giving anything away when I say that Wolff completely reworks the perspective of the novel in the last few pages, not through a surprise twist or an epiphany but by unconventionally straying from the\u00a0narrative he'd been so strict to follow up to that point, playing with our notions of the narrator's aesthetic as well as his personal development \u2014 and justifications.<\/p>\n<\/div>