The Stories Of Tobias Wolff by Tobias Wolff

One of the novel's most intriguing elements is the presentation of these writers-Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway-and its shrewd, penetrating assessment of their works and personalities. In anticipation of these visits, senior students submit their own poems or stories to a competition, and the author of the winning submission is granted a private interview with the writer. Eventually, he-and we-discover that almost everyone on campus has some closely guarded secrets.Įvery year, the school invites three famous writers to visit and give a public talk. Proud of his independence but trying to fit in and advance himself, he conceals the fact that his ancestry is partly Jewish. It is November 1960, and the unnamed narrator of Tobias Wolff's Old School (2003) is in his final year at an elite Eastern prep school. With writers like Tobias Wolff at work it's easy to be optimistic about the future of American literature.

The gripping plot has the unpredictability of real life-by turns funny, alarming, satiric, and sad-as well as the moral weight of lived experience.

Wolff's unnamed narrator seems so very real that it is hard at times to remember that the book is fiction. Tobias Wolff's Old School is the story of an ambitious, idealistic, and insecure teenager who makes a serious mistake and eventually inherits the consequences.

The Stories Of Tobias Wolff by Tobias Wolff