About this title: The author of the genre-defining memoir "This Boy's Life" now gives readers his first novel--at once a celebration of literature and delicate hymn to a lost innocence of American life and art.
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780375701498ISBN:0375701494
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780375701498ISBN:0375701494
Description: Acceptable. A readable copy. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (the dust cover may be missing). Pages can include considerable notes-in pen or highlighter-but the notes cannot obscure the text. ******PLEASE NOTE****** Orders placed after Dec. 7 cannot be guaranteed delivery before Christmas unless you select EXPEDITED shipping! Thank you & Happy Holidays! read more
Description: Good. Purchasing this book supports the King County Library System Foundation. Thriftbooks and KCLSF have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0375701494 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
"It's hard to tell the truth; I think Tobias Wolff does. There are vignettes and phrases that now will flash at certain moments - such as "sodden dinners" - but The line that reverberated with me is on pg. 193 " Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he'd led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity - its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering condemnation and violence against others and self." I think the whole story is a set up for this last chapter - and this insight. The roots of our violence are in our desire to be guiltless, perfect, beautiful, flawless, right - pure.
I love the little hook on our imagination on p. 174 - the false end to the real story - " He didn't quite finish. While describing Dean Makepeace's wedding he broke off and ..." It's only after we finish the book that we think: WHAT wedding??? That is just delightful. And so I'm left imagining whom he might marry. There being no candidates, it's 100% up to me to imagine."
"I've been to Donald Hall's house, in Charles Simic's classes and had dinner and drove Billy Collins' to the airport on two seperate occasions; I had time to talk to each about this topic. I still wonder, though. Donald Hall talked about Robert Frost quite a bit. I couldn't help but quote this passage from Tobias Wolff's book.
Quoted from the text:
Your work sir, Mr. Ramsey said, follows a certain tradition. Not the tradition of Whitman, that most American of poets, but a more constrained, shall we say formal tradition, as in that last poem you read, "Stopping in the Woods." I wonder--
" 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,' " Frost said. He put both hands on the pulpit and peered at Ramsey.
Yes, sir. Now that particular poem is not unusual in your work for being written in stanza form, with iambic lines connected by rhyme.
Good for you, Frost said. They must be teaching you boys something here.
There was a great eruption of laughter, more caustic than jolly. Mr. Ramsey waited it out as Frost looked slyly around the chapel, the lord of misrule. He was not displeased by the havoc his mistake had caused, you could see that, and you had to wonder if it was a mistake at all. Finally he said, You had a question?
Yes, sir. The question is whether such a rigidly formal arrangement of language is adequate to express the modern consciousness. That is, should form give way to more spontaneous modes of expression, even at the cost of a certain disorder?
Modern consciousness, Frost said. What's that?
Ah! Good question, sir. Well--very roughly speaking, I would describe it as the mind's response to industrialization, the saturation of propaganda of governments and advertisers, two world wars, the concentration camps, the dimming of faith by science, and of course the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Surely these things have had an effect on us. Surely they have changed our thinking.
Surely nothing. Frost stared down at Mr. Ramsey.
If this had been Last Judgement, Mr. Ramsey and his modern conciousness would've been in for a hot time of it. He couldn't have looked more alone, standing there.
Don't tell me about science, Frost said. I'm something of a scientist myself. Bet you didn't know that. Botany. You boys know what tropism is, it's what makes a plant grow toward the light. Everything aspires to the light. You don't have to chase down a fly to get rid of it--you just darken the room, leave a crack of light in a window, and out he goes. Works every time. We all have that instinct, that aspiration. Science can't--what was your word? dim?--science can't dim that. All science can do is turn out the false lights so that the true can get us home.
Mr. Ramsey began to say something, but Frost kept going.
So, don't tell me about science, and don't tell me about war. I lost my nearest friend in the one they call the Great War. So did Achilles lose his friend in war, and Homer did no injustice to his grief by writing about it in dactylic hexameters. There've always been wars, and they've always been as foul as we could make them. It is very fine and pleasant to think of ourselves as the most put upon folk in history--but then everyone has thought that from the beginning. It makes a grand excuse for all manner of laziness. But about my friend. I wrote a poem for him. I still write poems for him. Would you honor your own friend by putting words down anyhow, just as they come to you--with no thought for the sound they make, the meaning of their sound, the sound of their meaning? Would that give a true account of the loss?
Frost had been looking right at Mr. Ramsey as he spoke. Now he broke off and let his eyes roam over the room.
I am thinking of Achilles' grief, he said. That famous, terrible, grief. Let me tell you something boys. Such grief can only be told in form. Maybe it only really exists in form. Form is everything. Without it you've got nothing but a stubbed-toe cry--sincere, maybe, for what it's worth, but with no depth or carry. No echo. You may have a grievance but you do not have grief, and grievances are for petitions, not poetry. Does that answer you question?
I'm not sure, but thank you for having a go at it."
"I really loved this book, right from the start. This is my first real foray into Tobias Wolff and I can't believe I waited this long. There are lots of things that I have read in criticism of this novel (well, novella is probably more apt). The characters are probably hard for many people to identify with, there is a fairly jarring narrative shift in the last 40 pages or so, and it doesn't seem to be about much....but there is so much more going on here. This is a book for those who know what it means to fall in love with a writer, people who tried to emulate the qualities an author's characters espouse...for anyone who wanted to be like Hemingway. Old School is about the love of stories, integrity, finding your way and loads of other things. The book covers the final year of the nameless narrator's time at an East Coast Prep school that has a tradition of inviting three famous writers a year to speak. Students submit stories and 1 student is selected by the writer for a private audience during the visit. The writers in this case are Robert Frost, Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway. Wolff is a terrific writer. There are lines in here that could just about break your heart if you let them. Reading Old School made me anxious to finish and dust off my Hemingways."
"This book is for people who like reading about writers writing about writing. It's fiction, and it's an engaging tale about a boy in his last year of boarding school who wants desperately to be a writer. He competes for the attention of famous, classic authors who are visiting his school by writing stories and poems of his own. He also seems to obsess about the fact that his father was born Jewish, but he never admits it to anyone.
That last part was something I found disappointing about the book - I never quite figured out why that was at all important, even though the narrator keeps coming back to it over and over. I suppose it mirrored the theme of hiding things that are not all that important from people and feeling like they make or break your ideal of honesty, but it wasn't (in my opinion) all that similar to the headmaster's "secret" about his lack of familiarity with Hemmingway.
There are many amusing bits, especially if you have ever been or worked with teenage boys, especially smart, witty, well read ones. It might sound snobby, but I don't think people who aren't fans of the classics or haven't read any Hemmingway, Frost, or Rand would get some of the humor. If you're not a reader or a writer, you might also find it somewhat narcissistic (who wants to read about writers writing about writing?)."
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