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A review by lori85
Old School by Tobias Wolff
4.0
The unnamed narrator is a senior (or "sixth former") on scholarship at an elite boys' prep school somewhere in New England. It is 1960-61. The school is noted for both its pretensions to meritocracy and strong identification with literature. Several times a year they play host to a Great Author and there is an accompanying writing contest for a one-on-one audience. (This year, they will be visited by Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Earnest Hemingway.) Naturally enough, the narrator has strong literary ambitions of his own and, with graduation on the horizon, wants nothing more than to win and have a chance to speak with a legend of the field. Meanwhile, he is increasingly aware of the illusionary bubble that encases the school's culture and all the things left unsaid to prop up the dream. Hard lessons will be learned when reality makes its inevitable intrusion.
The school is a transplanted Oxford vision (or Ralph Lauren ad) of old bricks laced with ivy, rolling green hills, tweed, tradition, and tea. Its scholarly, über-prep atmosphere is timeless and could fit easily on either side of the Atlantic at any time within the past century and a half. Everything revolves around literature, and the boys spend most of their academic hours arguing with their "masters" about this or that poem or novel. Non-English teaches are relegated to the fringes. Despite the seniors' reflections on impending adulthood and the close of this educational stage, there is remarkably little anxiety about their futures. After all, with this school on their resume and the wealth and status enjoyed by most of their families, their solitary preoccupation with literature is, despite all efforts to pretend otherwise, a striking mark of class, gender, and racial privilege. (They are genuine, honest-to-god WASPs. The 100% real thing.) Although any bibliophile would certainly love to spend a few days in this place, I suspect the stuffiness - reminiscent of a wood-paneled library chock-full of dusty old volumes - would eventually become oppressive.
The year this story takes place in is no accident. Like the characters of Mad Men, these boys are about to emerge into a world of tumultuous changes whose distant rumbles are being heard even among themselves. The subtle exclusion of the Jewish students, for example, seems to foreshadow the increased diversification of previously restricted spaces. Feminism and the Vietnam War make their entrance in the final two chapters.
The narrator himself has some Jewish background in his family, although he himself is not Jewish. Issues of identity are beginning to trouble him, however, and in the era before widespread multiculturalism in both and life and literature, he lacks the conceptual framework to write his own story. What ends up landing him in hot water is basically the effects of conformity in the conservative, old-money monastery that is his school. The arrival on campus of some fireman due to a small, accidental blaze inspires a moment of long-buried self-awareness:
He later admits that this role of Shabby Prep he has adopted is not his own - it is merely a signifier of his identification with an elite institution he could never have afforded without his scholarship. The primary theme of Old School is how the writer finds their voice and the influence of other writers in the process. When the narrator comes across a story that reflects his own experiences, that truly speaks to him as a working class individual of Jewish background surrounded by Anglo-Saxon wealth, the vertiginous happiness at such a discovery, combined with the impending arrival of Hemingway and the chance to meet with him if I win this contest, results in the narrator committing, ironically, the Mortal Sin of Writing.
Old School is one of the most readable books I have come across in some time. It is vivid and profound, yet holds the readers interest and flies by quickly.
Original Review
The school is a transplanted Oxford vision (or Ralph Lauren ad) of old bricks laced with ivy, rolling green hills, tweed, tradition, and tea. Its scholarly, über-prep atmosphere is timeless and could fit easily on either side of the Atlantic at any time within the past century and a half. Everything revolves around literature, and the boys spend most of their academic hours arguing with their "masters" about this or that poem or novel. Non-English teaches are relegated to the fringes. Despite the seniors' reflections on impending adulthood and the close of this educational stage, there is remarkably little anxiety about their futures. After all, with this school on their resume and the wealth and status enjoyed by most of their families, their solitary preoccupation with literature is, despite all efforts to pretend otherwise, a striking mark of class, gender, and racial privilege. (They are genuine, honest-to-god WASPs. The 100% real thing.) Although any bibliophile would certainly love to spend a few days in this place, I suspect the stuffiness - reminiscent of a wood-paneled library chock-full of dusty old volumes - would eventually become oppressive.
The year this story takes place in is no accident. Like the characters of Mad Men, these boys are about to emerge into a world of tumultuous changes whose distant rumbles are being heard even among themselves. The subtle exclusion of the Jewish students, for example, seems to foreshadow the increased diversification of previously restricted spaces. Feminism and the Vietnam War make their entrance in the final two chapters.
The narrator himself has some Jewish background in his family, although he himself is not Jewish. Issues of identity are beginning to trouble him, however, and in the era before widespread multiculturalism in both and life and literature, he lacks the conceptual framework to write his own story. What ends up landing him in hot water is basically the effects of conformity in the conservative, old-money monastery that is his school. The arrival on campus of some fireman due to a small, accidental blaze inspires a moment of long-buried self-awareness:
For a moment I saw this place as I had first seen it: how beautiful it was, and how odd. I felt its seclusion and how we'd come to resemble each other in that seclusion. We dressed so much alike that the inflections we did allow ourselves - tasseled loafers for the playboy, a black turtleneck for the rebel - were probably invisible to an outsider. Our clothes, the way we wore our hair, the very set of our mouths, all this marked us like tribal tattoos.
He later admits that this role of Shabby Prep he has adopted is not his own - it is merely a signifier of his identification with an elite institution he could never have afforded without his scholarship. The primary theme of Old School is how the writer finds their voice and the influence of other writers in the process. When the narrator comes across a story that reflects his own experiences, that truly speaks to him as a working class individual of Jewish background surrounded by Anglo-Saxon wealth, the vertiginous happiness at such a discovery, combined with the impending arrival of Hemingway and the chance to meet with him if I win this contest, results in the narrator committing, ironically, the Mortal Sin of Writing.
Old School is one of the most readable books I have come across in some time. It is vivid and profound, yet holds the readers interest and flies by quickly.
Original Review