Literature lovers can wrap themselves up in Old School by Tobias Wolff like it’s a cozy blanket by a fire.  Novels with a writer protagonist may be an overused trope, but then again what better hero can a literati hope for?  Wolff draws us into this world with characters many readers can empathize with because they share our love of books.  Wolff’s protagonist enjoys, and aspires to create, remarkable fiction. At the same time, this novel is a coming of age tale of a boy struggling to define himself through his writing, and encountering the flaws of his own character.

The narrator of Old School is a student at an all-boy prep school in 1960.  During the course of his senior year, several literary masters will visit the school, and the winner of the poetry and fiction contests will get to spend time with them.  During the course of the novel, the protagonist strives to win these contests, and must face his failings, which become increasingly severe.

I’m refraining from elaborating on the substance of Old School to prevent spoilers, but this was a deeply enjoyable reading experience.  The atmosphere can’t help but evoke Dead Poet’s Society, but Old School is a deeply personal tale of one boy, rather than the situation of all the students and their teacher.  The plot is engaging and builds toward a powerful and unexpected resolution.  I took great pleasure reading it.  I’ll leave you with a couple passages I enjoyed:

“Rhyme is bullshit. Rhyme says that everything works out in the end.  All harmony and order.  When I see a rhyme in a poem, I know I’m being lied to.  Go ahead, laugh!  It’s true—rhyme’s a completely bankrupt device.  It’s just wishful thinking.  Nostalgia.”

“The life that produces writing can’t be written about.  It is a life carried on without the knowledge even of the writer, below the mind’s business and noise, in deep unlit shafts where phantom messengers struggle toward us, killing one another along the way; and when a few survivors break through to our attention they are received as blandly as waiters bringing more coffee.”