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Old School by Tobias Wolff
For students in the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences (the Arts, Biological Sciences, Humanities, Mathematical & Physical Science, Social and Behavioral Sciences, including the schools of Music and Communication)*
*Exploration Program students may choose among the three BBC books.
An Evening with Tobias Wolff
November 2, 2006
7 p.m. in the Ohio Union Ballrooms
First-year students: To register and receive credit, sign-up on the Success Series web site. Tickets for the event will be available for pick-up beginning October 19 at 120 Enarson Hall.
General public: Campus community and friends are welcome! Free tickets will be available begining October 26 at 120 Enarson Hall. Seating is limited.
Conversation with Tobias Wolff
November 3, 2006
3 p.m. in the Ohio Union Conference Theatre
An open discussion session with Tobais Wolff. Students will have the opportunity to ask questions of the author.
First-year students: To register and receive credit, sign-up on the Success Series web site.
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About Old School
(from the Random House Teachers' Guide for Old School)
Old School is the fictional memoir of an unnamed writer, who wistfully recalls his senior year at an all boys’ New England prep school in 1960-61. These are the quiet moments before everything explodes: the Kennedy assassinations; the Vietnam War; the civil rights, antiwar, and women’s movements; and most imminently and close to the narrator's heart, Ernest Hemingway's suicide. The era serves as a terrific catalyst for much of the drama in the novel.
The narrator is a scholarship student who hides the fact of his social class and his partly Jewish roots from the other students. He hasn’t even revealed himself to Bill White, his assimilated Jewish roommate of four years, but neither has Bill disclosed his family’s faith to anyone. Manner of dress, affectations and gestures, and calculated omissions all provide opportunities for the narrator, his classmates, and even a faculty member to experiment with self-invention. This proves to be a source of agony for the narrator. His fraudulence is so habitual that he loses sight of who he is, leading to devastating consequences.
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About Tobias Wolff
(from the Stanford University and Bloombury Publishing web sites)
Tobias Wolff was born in Alabama in 1945. He spent four years as a paratrooper in Vietnam. In 1972, he graduated with a B.A in English from Oxford and went on to get his M.A. from Stanford. Tobias Wolff’s books include two novels, The Barracks Thief and Old School; two memoirs, This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army; and three collections of short stories. His literary prizes include the 1985 PEN/Faulkner Award, three O. Henry Prizes, and the Esquire/Volvo/ Waterstone’s Prize for Non-fiction. He is an acclaimed short story writer and has published fiction in Esquire, Atlantic Monthly, Granta, the Literary Review, the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Wolff currently lives in in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University.
Book-Related Links
Reader’s guides: www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375701498&view=rg
www.bloomsbury.com/ReadersGroups/ReadersGuides.asp?isbn=9780747574651
Reviews:
mostlyfiction.com: mostlyfiction.com/contemp/wolff.htm
Salon: archive.salon.com/books/review/2003/12/18/wolff/index_np.html
The Guardian: books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1129185,00.html
Interviews:
Minnesota Public Radio: news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/01/14_newsroom_oldschool
Salon: www.salon.com/dec96/interview961216.html
Learn more about the issues:
1960’s American cultural history : kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decade60.html
Business Ethics Forum: www.managementlogs.com/business_ethics.html
Business Ethics Forum: www.managementlogs.com/business_ethics.html
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