Tobias Wolff lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford
University. He has received the Rea Award for excellence in the
short story, the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the
PEN/Faulkner Award.
From the Hardcover edition.
1. What is the effect of the first-person narrative style Wolff
has chosen for this novel? What kinds of information-or
perspectives-does the reader have access to? On the other hand,
what kinds of information does first-person narration deny the
reader? What terms might describe the narrator's voice? Why is this
narrative style so appropriate for this story?
2. About his desire to win the competition that would give him
an audience with Robert Frost, the narrator says, "My 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. I wanted to be anointed" [p. 7]. Is his
aspiration admirable? What does the boy not understand about how
one becomes a writer? How seriously does he work at acquiring the
skills of his craft?
3. In social interactions between boys at the school, much is
left unsaid. Why is this? Consider the relationship between the
narrator and his roommate Bill White [pp. 11-13, 139-40]. What
problems of interpretation arise when so little talking is done?
Why is this relationship so problematic?
4. During his visit to Gershon to explain his mistake in
whistling the Nazi marching tune, the boy decides not to confide
the fact that his father is Jewish. He thinks, "I'd let Gershon
think the worst of me before I would claim any connection to him,
or implicate myself in the fate that had beached him in this room.
Why would I want to talk my way into his unlucky tribe?" [p. 23].
What does this episod-including his meeting with the
headmaster-tell us about the narrator?
5. Very early on, the narrator tells us that the school adhered
informally "to a system of honors that valued nothing you hadn't
done for yourself." He goes on to say "Dean Makepeace had been a
friend of Hemingway's during World War I and was said to have
served as the model for Jake's fishing buddy Bill in The
Sun Also Rises" [p. 4]. What seems here like casual
exposition is seen later to be foreshadowing, linking the acts of
deception committed by the boy and the headmaster. What other
examples do you find of Wolff's careful attention to the structure
of the novel?
6. Having related his experience of Frost's poem "After
Apple-Picking," the headmaster tells the boys, "Make no mistake . .
. a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your
life" [p. 47]. Why is writing dangerous in this novel, and for
whom?
7. Reading The Fountainhead, the narrator says,
"I was discovering the force of my will. . . . I understood that
nothing stood between me and my greatest desires-nothing between me
and greatness itself-but the temptation to doubt my will and bow to
counsels of moderation, expedience, and conventional morality, and
shrink into the long, slow death of respectability" [p. 68]. Why
does Ayn Rand's writing have such a powerful effect on him, and why
does his initial excitement fade upon actually meeting the author?
The boy also learns an important lesson when he rereads the stories
of Hemingway, whom Ayn Rand has attacked as a creator of "weak,
defeated people" [p. 84]. What does he realize, and how is this
lesson important for what happens later [pp. 95-99]?
8. As he looks toward graduation, the narrator says it was a
"dream that produced the school, not merely English-envy but the
yearning for a chivalric world apart from the din of scandal and
cheap dispute, the hustles and schemes of modernity itself. As I
recognized this dream I also sensed its futility, but so what? . .
. With still a month to graduation I was already damp with
nostalgia" [p. 134]. If literature plays a critical role in both
the school's chivalric ideal and in the nostalgia the narrator
feels, is literature an alternate world in which the narrator would
prefer to exist? What is ironic about the above passage?
9. Old School is in large part an examination
of the process by which a boy tries to become the person he most
desires to be. What does Wolff seem to suggest about the process of
self-formation and the fragility of the ego?
10. What is most impressive about the story "Summer Dance" and
why does it appeal to the boy so powerfully? Why in typing it does
he feel "an intuition of gracious release" [p. 126]? Is this his
moment of learning how to "begin to write truly" [p. 126]? Why is
it important that he never considers his submission of the
story-with slight changes-a deliberate act of plagiarism?
11. The competitors for literary awards are all indebted to
other writers: "All of us owed someone, Hemingway or Cummings or
Kerouac-or all of them, and more. We wouldn't have admitted to it
but the knowledge was surely there, because imitation was the only
charge we never brought against the submissions we mocked so
cruelly" [p. 14]. Can it sometimes be difficult to draw a line
between healthy imitation and plagiarism? Is the school's harsh
response to the boy's use of another writer's story unfair?
12. Speaking of Old School in an interview,
Tobias Wolff said, "For this novel to work, the reader has to
believe in these boys becoming so madly passionate and competitive
about this writing business. That can only happen when there is a
complete failure of perspective, which requires a very enclosed
world, like an army or a priesthood. Great mistakes can be made
because the view becomes so narrow." How does Wolff create this
narrowed perspective? How do his choices of what to describe and
what not to describe shape the reader's perspective on the novel's
events? To what degree does the reader's perspective merge with the
narrator's?
13. Tobias Wolff gives his readers an intimate view of his main
character's faults. How does your response to the boy change as the
novel proceeds? What is the effect, particularly, of the last few
chapters?
14. In his review of the novel, Chris Bohjalian noted,
"Virtually every chapter in the novel could stand alone as a short
story" (The Boston Globe, 4 Jan 2004, C7). Discuss Wolff's
attention to the dramatic tension and the formal structure of each
chapter, and decide whether you agree with Bohjalian's assessment
that the novel is informed by Wolff's experience as a master of the
short story.
15. The novel's epigraph, from a poem by Mark Strand, end with
"the truth lies like nothing else and I love the truth." How does
the epigraph relate to the narrator's confusion and his conflicts
with himself?
16. How does the narrator's meeting with Susan Friedman
emphasize the difference between their characters and their
approaches to the meaning and purposes of writing? Who is the more
mature person? Each of them embodies certain ideals. What are they
and what is their essential difference?
17. The book's final chapter departs from the narrator's story
and moves to Mr. Ramsey's story about Dean Makepeace, who had
allowed himself to be thought of as a friend of Hemingway. How does
this story work as a coda to the novel? What is the effect of the
shift in perspective?
18. In what ways is humor expressed in this novel, and what kind
of humor is it? What situations and descriptions are comical?
19. If you have read Tobias Wolff's memoir This Boy's
Life, how would you compare it to Old
School? What is the difference between memoir and fiction,
and how does this question relate to the truth/lies dilemma
presented by Old School?