Old School is about writers
and teachers, as well as prep school students.  It’s a well-told tale about a New
England school sixth-former who loves writing.  He and his friends run the
school literary journal with the rather pompous title The Troubadour. 
His prep school, in 1960, had a tradition of inviting famous writers to the
school and holding a writing competition for the boys to win a personal
audience with the writers.  The visiting writer chooses the winner.  The first
writer is poet Robert Frost.  The literary-minded boys are keen to meet the
great man and they hang on his every word.  The next writer is much more
controversial, the novelist and "philosopher" Ayn Rand.  The school
buzzes with talk about her impending visit. 

Reading Old School, one
quickly gets to know its narrator well, so it is disconcerting to realize that
his name is never mentioned.  His friends are all rich characters: there is
Purcell, Big Jeff, and George Kellog.  We also meet his schoolmasters Mr.
Ramsey who has a shaky marriage, and Dean Makepeace.  In the small world of the
school, everyone knows everyone else’s business, and rumors are rife.  All the
boys are very aware of the school’s traditions and the importance of acting
with honor, and when boys are caught breaking one of the cherished rules they
have to live by, they have to leave immediately, disappearing without even
saying goodbye to anyone else.  Although the novel is set at the start of the
1960s, it feels like an even earlier era, because it is such a closed society
dominated by values that it is hard to imagine schoolchildren endorsing these
days. 

Tobias Wolff’s novel is impressive
even for readers who have not previously read his work, because it is tightly
written and engrossing.  It is nostalgic for an earlier time, yet at the same time
it questions the values of that era, and when the narrator looks back on his
earlier self as an adult, he views himself with some skepticism.  Yet he
remains generous towards everyone in his life, and it is his love of stories
that really distinguishes the novel.  He tells his own stories, those of his
friends and family, and summarizes stories he reads.  His talent at spinning a
yarn draws the reader in, and the overall impression one has of the novel by
its end is of charm.  Wolff wins the reader over even if the topic of a
literary prep school initially might seem less than promising.  . 

© 2004 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved.