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Old School

By Tobias Wolff

By Tobias Wolff

By Tobias Wolff

By Tobias Wolff

By Tobias Wolff
Read by Dan Cashman

By Tobias Wolff
Read by Dan Cashman

Best Seller

Part of Vintage Contemporaries

Part of Vintage Contemporaries

Paperback $15.95

Aug 31, 2004 | ISBN 9780375701498

Ebook $11.99

Aug 31, 2004 | ISBN 9781400095254

Audiobook Download $15.00

Jan 29, 2019 | 390 Minutes

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    Old School by Tobias Wolff
    Paperback $15.95
    Aug 31, 2004 | ISBN 9780375701498

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    • Paperback $15.95

      Aug 31, 2004 | ISBN 9780375701498

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      Aug 31, 2004 | ISBN 9781400095254

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    About Old School

    The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself.

    The agency of revelation is the school literary contest, whose winner will be awarded an audience with the most legendary writer of his time. As the fever of competition infects the boy and his classmates, fraying alliances, exposing weaknesses, Old School explores the ensuing deceptions and betrayals with an unblinking eye and a bottomless store of empathy. The result is further evidence that Wolff is an authentic American master.

    About Old School

    The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself.

    The agency of revelation is the school literary contest, whose winner will be awarded an audience with the most legendary writer of his time. As the fever of competition infects the boy and his classmates, fraying alliances, exposing weaknesses, Old School explores the ensuing deceptions and betrayals with an unblinking eye and a bottomless store of empathy. The result is further evidence that Wolff is an authentic American master.

    About Old School

    The author of the genre-defining memoir This Boy’s Life, the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning novella The Barracks Thief, and short stories acclaimed as modern classics, Tobias Wolff now gives us his first novel.
    Determined to fit in at his New England prep school, the narrator has learned to mimic the bearing and manners of his adoptive tribe while concealing as much as possible about himself. His final year, however, unravels everything he’s achieved, and steers his destiny in directions no one could have predicted.
    The school’s mystique is rooted in Literature, and for many boys this becomes an obsession, editing the review and competing for the attention of visiting writers whose fame helps to perpetuate the tradition. Robert Frost, soon to appear at JFK’s inauguration, is far less controversial than the next visitor, Ayn Rand. But the final guest is one whose blessing a young writer would do almost anything to gain.

    No one writes more astutely than Wolff about the process by which character is formed, and here he illuminates the irresistible power, even the violence, of the self-creative urge. Resonant in ways at once contemporary and timeless, Old School is a masterful achievement by one of the finest writers of our time.

    Read An Excerpt

    Reading Guide | Teacher’s Guide

    Read An Excerpt

    Reading Guide | Teacher’s Guide

    Read An Excerpt

    Reading Guide | Teacher’s Guide

    Listen to a sample from Old School

    Also by Tobias Wolff

    A Federal Offense
    Our Story Begins
    The Night In Question
    Back in the World
    In Pharaoh's Army
    See all books by Tobias Wolff

    Also by Tobias Wolff

    A Federal Offense
    Our Story Begins
    The Night In Question
    Back in the World
    In Pharaoh's Army
    See all books by Tobias Wolff

    Also by Tobias Wolff

    A Federal Offense
    Our Story Begins
    The Night In Question
    Back in the World
    In Pharaoh's Army
    See all books by Tobias Wolff

    About Tobias Wolff

    Tobias Wolff lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University. He has received the Rea Award for excellence in the short story, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

    About Tobias Wolff

    Tobias Wolff lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University. He has received the Rea Award for excellence in the short story, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

    About Tobias Wolff

    Tobias Wolff lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University. He has received the Rea Award for excellence in the short story, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

    Product Details

    Category: Literary Fiction

    Paperback | $15.95
    Published by Vintage
    Aug 31, 2004 | 208 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780375701498

    Category: Literary Fiction

    Ebook | $11.99
    Published by Vintage
    Aug 31, 2004 | 208 Pages | ISBN 9781400095254

    Category: Literary Fiction | Audiobooks

    Audiobook Download | $15.00
    Published by Random House Audio
    Jan 29, 2019 | 390 Minutes | ISBN 9781984887979

    Praise

    "Ingenious. . . . A tour de force. . . . Achieves a real profundity. "—The Boston Globe

    "    A sharply drawn, acutely felt novel of moral inquiry. . . . Wolff has put his readers in the landscape tracked across by writers as different as J. M. Coetzee, Philip Roth, and, going back, Conrad and Hawthorne." —The Washington Post Book World

    "The kind of deceptively quiet novel that deserves a second, slow reading. An homage to the power of story to move, to awaken and even to transform." —The Plain Dealer


    "Gentle, reserved, graceful. . . . Wolff again proves himself to be a writer of the highest order: part storyteller, part philosopher, someone deeply engaged in asking hard questions." —Los Angeles Times

    Awards

    Booklist Editor’s Choice for Young Adults WINNER

    PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FINALIST 2004

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