Name: Old School
ISBN: 9781439566015

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.From the Hardcover edition.

What Hacker News says

ciceroDec 2016

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller (recommended SF classic)

The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis (an old favorite, recommended)

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco (some interesting parts, but overall a disappointment)

Theology and Sanity - Frank Sheed (recommended; a very written description of the Catholic faith; weaknesses are it's long and it's aimed to a mid 20th c. audience)

Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensees - Peter Kreeft (recommended; a good exposition of Blaise Pascal's thought)

Catholicism: A journey to the heart of the faith - Robert Barron (recommended; a good explanation of Catholicism for the common person)

His Master's Voice - Stanislaw Lem (recommended; very intellectual look at the problem of first contact)

The Industries of the Future - Alec Ross (the robotics chapter is best; other parts are more light-weight; easy read)

Clouds of Witnesses - Dorothy Sayers (not my favorite Sayers mystery, but enjoyable)

A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle (recommended)

Why Gender Matters - Leonard Sax (recommended; most of the book is based on good science, but he does go out on a limb a time or two.)

Old School - Tobias Wolff (recommended; a world before widespread TV where high school boys actually got excited about literature)

Infinite Space, Infinite God - Karina and Robert Fabian editors (story quality varies; I enjoyed some of them)

The Sign of Four - Arthur Conan Doyle (recommended)

On Stranger Tides - Tim Powers (recommended; I love Powers, but Anubis Gates and Last Call are better. Still, if you like pirates you should like this)

The Art of Worldly Wisdom - Baltasar Gracian (interesting)

Aquinas at Prayer: the Bible, Mysticism, and Poetry - Paul Murray (recommended; this shows a different side of Thomas Aquinas)

Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy - Mortimer Adler (recommended; I almost think this should be required reading)

The Pilgrim's Regress - C.S. Lewis (I enjoyed it, but the ideas Lewis argues against are somewhat dated.)

Edit for formatting

thread

vonnikDec 2015

Anyone who refers to David Brooks as "the insightful New York Times columnist" has lost me as a reader. I can't remember the last time he had an original, or even accurate, thought.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-dont-think-david-brooks-i...

Here are two good books:

* The Korean War: A History - Little known fact: The US took the wrong side in the Korean War by putting the former officers of the Japanese imperial army in power in Seoul. It committed countless atrocities to achieve its stalemate, including fire-bombing half the country (Germany redux) and using napalm on whole villages, a foreshadowing of Vietnam.

* Old School - A novel by Tobias Wolff. If you're tired of tired prose, try Wolff. He cares about sentences.

thread

piltdownmanDec 2025

"So did Achilles lose his friend in war, and Homer did no injustice to his grief by writing about it in dactylic hexameters" - Tobias Wolff, Old School

thread