The Metropolitan Online - January 2005

Let me guess…you are thinking, “I don’t have time to read a book. I have books I have to read for school. If I am listening to anyone about what to read, it’s Oprah! Kristin is nuts if she thinks I am going to pick up this book she is recommending and make time in my already-too-busy schedule to read it.”

Hey, I can relate. I work full time, I take two classes each semester and I work for the newspaper. Outside of all that, I try to have a social life.

With so many other things to do, why am I writing this column? Simple: I love to read. I love stories. Sometimes reading a book rescues me from the numbness caused by working in corporate America. For me, a good book can make me feel alive, or help me escape. This column is for students who eke out time to read, despite their hectic schedules.

Every issue, I will read and review one book that is 250 pages or less. That way, even busy students like we are, will be able to squeeze in time for something we love…reading.

Old School teaches something new about truth

Fiction
Old School By: Tobias Wolff
Publisher: Vintage Contemporaries, a Division of Random House, 195 pages, paperback $12, September 2004. Hardcover published November 2003.
First Thoughts: Time well spent. A quick read that I finished in two nights. Well-crafted prose, the way it should sound—like the author is telling me, personally, a story.

“Make no mistake, he said: a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.”

This novel could change your life if you were someone with something to hide. But, even if you have nothing to hide, I think you will still love this book because it’s a great story.

Tobias Wolff artfully pulls the reader into an East Coast boys’ prep school in 1960. As the main character struggles with hiding his Jewish heritage, he grapples with questions like, Can anyone ever really know anyone else? Wolff’s unnamed main character doesn’t necessarily lie, so much as he does just not speak up. He has struggled to fit in with the social elite and has now gained this status. But are the untruths that elevated him to that status—those little white lies really “little”?

In the midst of these inquiries, he also struggles with an annual competition the school holds: a writing contest. In it, he competes with his closest peers. The winner of the contest is awarded a meeting with the most famous author of the time. What would you do to get a personal critique and a few pointers from Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, or Ernest Hemingway? These intimate meetings with famous, long-gone authors are a delight to read. Narrative about various books and writing is also sprinkled throughout Old School.

Meticulous detail and strong verbiage smack you into page-turning submission as Wolff lays out a story that will make you forget you have to get up at 5:30 a.m. and go to work. For example, instead of merely stating “The audience applauded,” he writes “Then Dean Makepeace rose at the head of his table and turned toward Frost and began to clap, each report of his hands sharp as a shot, but measured, decorous, and the rest of us jumped to our feet in a great scrape of chairs and made the hall thunderous with applause and the rhythmic drumming of our feet on the oaken floor.” Passages like this resonated with me the way hearing a song on the radio does.

Wolff invokes the atmosphere of Dead Poets Society or Mona Lisa Smile as these prep-school era stories quickly grab your attention. But what holds your interest is Wolff’s thoughtfulness with words and clear voice. The voices of Wolff’s characters are so clear that, although no quotation marks are used in the story, the reader can clearly distinguish the voices of all of the characters, even those with only minor roles.

Old School was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award, a national bestseller, a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, and a New York Times Notable Book. Another one of Wolff’s coming-of-age works is the memoir This Boy’s Life. Wolff is also well known for his short stories and other memoirs.

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