INTRODUCTION:

The curve of our life gives us the idea that it is not linear and same all the time. It is extremely unpredictable and uncertain. It is a combination of good days and bad days with one thing in common: our experiences. These experiences make us who we are. They give us a sense of identity. Our life revolves around the memories of these experiences. We cannot deny the presence and influence of these experiences in our life. We are not different from what we experience. In the process of finding out the meaning of our own existence, we often rely on the memory of these life experiences.

We often assign values to the things we do with the hope of seeing a purpose in them. We search for a sense of fulfillment in our life, our relationships, our passions and our dreams. We learn and enhance the quality of our life through these experiences. We find meaning in our own experiences through our personal encounters with people, places and the environment around us. This process of meaning making is an essential aspect of our existence. Since we are fundamentally storytelling animals, our understanding of our own self and the world around us is slated through the narratives that we compose not only about ourselves but also about the world as a whole. Storytelling is a way of making sense of the world around us. It is indeed a fact that we cannot experience life in vacuum and isolation. All our actions, decisions and perspectives are guided by the intricate relationship we share with others. In telling these stories, we recount our experiences and important life episodes. There is a continual shifting in our identities and experiences and the only way by which we make sense of ourselves is this storytelling. We combine together the scrambled pieces of our lives to construct a unified whole, a narrative which paves way for a clear understanding of who we are. These stories and also the personal myths that we create about ourselves give us an opportunity to make meaning out of our lives. Our life stories are not only reflections of our personality but they are personality. The memories of these lived experiences are always fresh in our minds. They give us the power to reflect and understand the value of our life. They open a path which leads us to our past life, our past self and as a whole our existence.

There is an undeniably strong link between narrative and memory. They both describe the ways an individual represents a version of the past in the present, often for the purpose of shaping a desired future. There is a regular tendency with most of us to use memory and remembering interchangeably but the fact is, remembering is the description of the act of using language to represent the past, the technique frequently adopted by fiction writers. Fiction which is not strictly based on history or fact consists of people, experiences, and events and places. Similarly, a narrative or a story-both fictional and non-fictional-is typically understood as a representation, or a construction, based on a sequence of events in the past, that communicates something from memory of the narrator.

Martin Comway’s Self-Memory System (SMS), a conceptual framework, emphasizes the interconnectedness of self and memory. According to him memory is viewed as the data base for the self. He further states:

[…] memory and central aspects of the self form a coherent system in which, in the healthy individual, beliefs about, and knowledge of, the self are confirmed and supported by memories of specific experiences. (Comway 594-595)

This attests that fact that our experiences play a significant role in our understanding of our own self. It is clear that our experiences which are presented as stories are constructed through the agency of memory and imagination. These narratives use the episodic memory-the memory of a specific personal event or a sequence of events in retrieving the past self, the younger version of the self. Our memory acquires a special place in our lives. It is a self-reflective tool. It gives us the advantage of introspecting deeply into our own selves. Through the use of this memory tool we try to retrieve our past self, the younger version of present person, the person who we are now. Although it doesn’t prove effective in correcting past mistakes but helps establish a sense of completeness.

This paper attempts to explore this role of memory in representing the past self in the American author Tobias Wolff’s novel Old School (2003). The novel was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Prize for Fiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. It was the winner of the Northern California Book Award in Fiction. It is a genre-defying coming-of-age novel and therefore makes an interesting read. The novel is published as a work of fiction by the author but its autobiographical content and style cannot be denied since the story has close resemblance to Tobias Wolff’s life, when, after leaving Concrete he managed to get a scholarship to the Hill School, a prestigious boarding school in Pennsylvania. The novel is a seemingly thinly veiled memoir because of its autobiographical elements, the real life experiences of Tobias Wolff and fills the gap between his memoirs, This Boy’s Life: A memoir (1989), the story of his turbulent childhood and In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War (1994), the story of his life experiences in the military service in Vietnam. Old School picks up the action from the point where This Boy’s Life ends and marks the beginning of the action of In Pharaoh’s Army.

ANALYSIS:

Tobias Wolff has weaved his remembered experiences in the form of a story in this novel. Besides, the novel reads more like a series of short stories with titles. It is a careful arrangement of ten individual stories. Each story is a revelation of an important facet of the narrator’s school life and his experiences. The opening chapter, “Class Picture” sets the action of the novel. It describes the school, its literary environment, the school mates, the teachers and also reflects upon the concept of identity amidst the socio-political situation of the time. “On Fire” talks about the fire that broke out in the school, and how another fire reminded the narrator of his family and his literary pursuit. The third chapter “Frost” is the onset of the literary competition where Robert Frost is the first visiting writer of the year. “Ubermensch” revolves around the second writer, Ayn Rand’s visit to the school. This chapter also reveals the inner conflict of the narrator and his subsequent learning of life’s true values. “Slice of Life” and “The Forked Tongue” present the ecstatic atmosphere of the school on the announcement of Ernest Hemingway’s visit. The next chapter “When in Disgrace with Fortune” recounts the episode of the violation of the Honor Code by the narrator. “One for the Books” presents the narrator as a wanderer looking for his roots, eventually ending in military service in Vietnam. By the time we come to the chapter, “Bulletin”, we have the narrator, once expelled from his school, now an established writer. All these chapters are narrated in the first-person perspective except for the last chapter, “Master” which uses the third-person perspective and reflects upon the act of duplicity and the ongoing tussle which individuals face in order to fit into the whole system of social acceptance. The chapters, “Class Picture,” “On Fire,” and “Frost” have previously appeared in slightly different forms in The New Yorker as short stories. For the purpose of the paper emphasis is given to specific chapters, especially “Class Picture”, “Frost”, “Ubermensch”, “The Forked Tongue” and “When in Disgrace with Fortune.”

The novel is tinged with self-reflection and irony beneath its apparently simple story. It is set in a nameless New England prep school for boys in 1960, at the time of the Kennedy-Nixon presidential election. This coming-of-age story is narrated in the first-person by an unnamed student who is in his final year at the school. Much of the book is about literature and writing and its influence on the boys of the prep school. The narrator comes from a middle-class background while many of his classmates are wealthy. He has a Jewish father and, although he has been raised Catholic and has never practiced Judaism, he is markedly self-conscious and tries to hide his religious and class differences from his peers. The narrator's passion, shared with many of his fellow-students, is literature. He is an editor for the school's literary review and studies, writes, and reads assiduously. The major portion of the novel revolves around the literary competitions organized by the school three times in a year. During each of these competitions a famous writer visits and lectures at the school. The students submit their writings for the competition. The visiting writer picks out the best from the submissions for the competition, and the winner receives a private meeting with the visiting writer. The students compete fiercely for this honor. The competition brings the best out of them and also the worst in them. The first two visiting writers are Robert Frost and Ayn Rand while the third is scheduled to be Ernest Hemingway who appears to be an idol, a hero among the students and many of the teachers of the school. The narrator recounts Frost's and Rand's appearance at the school and the severe competition these writers’ visits generate. The students, especially the writer, tend to venerate Frost and put down Rand. Their appearances and the winning literary entries are double-edged. The narrator is determined to submit a winning entry for Hemingway's visit. In his efforts, he steps over the line of plagiarism and ends up being expelled from the school. After his expulsion from the school, the narrator wanders as a nomadic for quite some time before joining the military service in Vietnam. Towards the end of the novel, it is found that the narrator succeeds in becoming a writer and reflects on his earlier prep school years. It is a self-reflective story narrated from the vantage point of the unnamed narrator’s adulthood. It recounts the past experiences of the younger narrator, the experiences at the school and lessons of life learnt there in. The narrator’s beliefs and experiences frame the story.

The opening chapter, “Class Picture” immediately sets the context of the novel. It is an introduction to the entire story: literature’s influence in shaping individuals. This noteworthy truth sets the rest of the novel in place. The unnamed narrator straightway puts before the readers the picture of his school. The story is set in the 1960s when John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon were contesting for the Presidential elections. But interestingly, the visit of Robert Frost occupies a more significant place in the minds of the narrator and his friends in the school. The prospect of Robert Frost’s arrival cooked up more interest than the contest between Nixon and Kennedy. He further hints at the point that class, as a social concept played an important role in shaping the identities of the boys. They dreamt of their future selves as different, elevated and unique in every respect from their former selves. They could easily relate with this idea of a class apart in the lines:

Kennedy, though-here was a warrior, an ironist, terse and unhysterical. He had his clothes under control. His wife was a fox. And he read and wrote books, one of which, Why England Slept, was required reading in my honors history seminar. We recognized Kennedy; we could still see in him the boy who would have been a favorite here, roguish and literate, with almost formal insouciance that both enacted and discounted the fact of his class. (Old School 3)

The atmosphere of the prep school is completely isolated from the outside world. It has its own culture and society. The impact of the society on individuals cannot be underestimated. Everything that influences and shapes individuals comes from the society. Humans seem to do better in societies than as isolated individuals. For most of us, society is the life force. Being able to fit in well enough to survive is essential, and so most people learn to do that to some degree or another. These book-drunk heads were all engaged thoroughly in a competitive frenzy. They were all fighting a battle of existence, running after the mystical idea of becoming the best from the rest. No wonder, even after the school’s encouragement for all sorts of academic and extracurricular pursuits, a bunch of students-the narrator and his classmates-took pride in being literary competitors. These book-drunk boys were found everywhere in the school, heavy with the sole objective of winning the literary competition, held every year for the final year students. This fact is made clear when the narrator says:

There was a tradition at my school by which one boy was granted a private audience with each visiting writer. We contended for the honor by submitting a piece of our own work, poetry, if the guest was a poet, fiction if a novelist. The writer chose the winner a week or so before arriving. The winner had his poem or story published in the school newspaper, and, later, a photograph of him walking the headmaster’s garden with the visiting writer. (6)

The narrator, like Tobias Wolff, came from a middle class background and wanted to create a place for himself in the literary world as an established writer. He eagerly wanted to become a great writer. “[His] aspirations were mystical. [He] wanted to receive the laying on of hands that had written living stories and poems, hands that touched the hands of other writers. [He] wanted to be anointed.” (7) He had this strong belief that he must become a writer, his most prized vocation. He was confident of achieving this feat and therefore worked very hard. The narrator deliberately chose the school. He was always fascinated by the beauty of literature. He had not only read the works of his favorite writers but also put a great amount of effort in understanding them, in order to become like them. He saw a certain kind of respect in the vocation. He believed that writers were received by the society with respect and honor. He wanted to erase every trace of his turbulent past. He wanted to move ahead in his life. He was always haunted by his miserable and unprivileged life. He had treasured the dream of studying in such a respectable institution. He did not want to remain in the terrible bounds of poverty and mediocrity. He wanted to gather the bits and pieces of his scattered life and sew them into an eternal dream of happiness. He was too ambitious. He always wondered how the English teachers commanded such deference compared to the men who taught physics or biology, what they really knew of the world. Interestingly, he realizes:

It seemed to me, not only to me, that they knew exactly what was most worth knowing. Unlike our math and science teachers, who modestly stuck to their subjects, they tended to be polymaths. Adept as they were at dissection, they would never leave a poem or novel strewn about in pieces like some butchered frog reeking of formaldehyde. They’d stitch it back together with history and psychology, philosophy, religion, and even, on occasion, science. Without pandering to your presumed desire to identify with the hero of a story, they made you feel that what mattered to the writer had consequence for you, too. (5)

So far as the art of writing is concerned, we write from our experiences and are influenced by other writers. Unconsciously, we allow the influences to enter into our writings in form of imitations. These imitations eventually shape our writing abilities and become visible. The young boys in the novel have admiration for their favorite writers. They not only want to write like them but they also want to become like them. They do it by imitating their revered writers. There can be two possible reasons for this imitation. First, these young boys must be missing a link in their life and secondly, they must have been able to associate themselves with the works of these writers. The narrator justifies this act of imitation:

All of us owed someone. Hemingway or Cummings or Kerouc-or all of them, and more. We wouldn’t have admitted to it but the knowledge was surely there, because imitation was the only charge we never brought against the submissions we mocked so cruelly. There was no profit in it. Once crystallized, consciousness of influence would have doomed the collective and necessary fantasy that our work was purely our own.(14)

The narrator was chasing his dream of becoming a future writer. He was happy to be in the school but was astonished by its atmosphere. He had questions. Why did so many of them wanted to be writers? What were the reasons? He finally gets the answer, which surprises him as well. He understood that the mad pursuit had to do something with masculinity and femininity. Considering the school to be an all boys’ school, “the absence of an actual girl to compete for meant that every other prize became feminized” (15) For honors in sport, scholarship, music, and writing the boys cracked their heads like mountain rams and to make their mark as a writer was equal as a proof of puissance to a brilliant season on the gridiron.

The headmaster rightly said that “a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.” (47) Literature is very powerful because it allows us to reflect on the consequences and possibilities of our own experiences. It can make us understand the world around us. Most importantly, it has a transforming power which rests not in writings of great authors but also in their personalities. The chapter “Ubermensch” illustrates this power of literature. The narrator wanted to become a writer not only because he loved reading but he was always excited by the popularity of the writers. The rumor of Ayn Rand as the next visiting writer was true. It was on the insistence of Hiram Dufresne, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees that the Headmaster invited Ayn Rand as the next visiting writer. Many of the masters of the school disapproved of this visit. Mr. Ramsey went to the extent of saying that the school was “whoring after strange gods” just for the sake of fundraising for the scholarships. The masters believed that “Ayn Rand didn’t belong in the company of Robert Frost or Katherine Anne Porter or Edmund Wilson or Edna St. Vincent Millay or any other of other visitors.”(64)

Russian born Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was the controversial author of a number of philosophical works and two bestselling novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). In each of these books, a strong protagonist unswervingly pursues his own vision without regard for the views of others or the compromises demanded of him by any individual or group. The hero of The Fountainhead, for instance, is an architect who chooses to blow up his own building rather than accept any modifications in its design. Rand’s novels are especially appealing to young people, like the narrator of Old School who are often inspired by what they see as her idealism and call to personal greatness. She is not held in high regard, however, by other writers and thinkers who generally find her presentation of human nature unrealistic and her philosophical views rigid and insensitive. Her writings expound her philosophy of Objectivism, which emphasizes rationality and self-interest. It also rejects religion, altruism, and all forms of social collectivism.

The narrator becomes fascinated by the popularity of Rand and eventually pulls a copy of The Fountainhead and starts reading it. He is consumed by the novel. He feels different by reading the novel. The description of Roark excites him. He starts comparing himself with Roark “[whose] face was like a law of nature, a thing one could not question, alter, or implore. It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and steady; contemptuous mouth shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or saint.” (67) He starts comparing himself with Roark. He starts believing that a strong and great man like Roark is always treated badly by the world because of his strength and greatness. The description of Roark in The Fountainhead absorbs him. He starts judging himself against Roark:

My cheeks weren’t hollow and my eyes weren’t gray, but my mouth surely tightened with contempt over the next weeks as I read and re-read The Fountainhead and considered how shabbily this world treats a man who is strong and great, simply because he’s strong and great. A man like the architect Howard Roark, who refuses to change even one angle of a design to advance his career and who, when his finest work-a housing project-is secretly modified during construction, goes there and personally dynamites the whole thing to smithereens rather than let people live in such mongrelized spaces. His genius is not for sale. He is a free man among parasites who hate him and punish him with poverty and neglect. And he has sex with Dominique.

Dominique seems like a regular glacier as she rolls over the men in her path. With her air of cold serenity and her exquisitely vicious mouth, she treats Roark like dirt, talking tough to him, even smacking his face with a branch, but underneath she’s dying for him and he knows it and one night he goes to her room and gives Dominique exactly what she wants. With her fighting him all the way, because part of what she wants is to be broken by Roark. Taken. (67-68)

He confidently assumes that “a woman’s indifference, even her scorn, might be an invitation to go a few rounds.” The book gave him a sense that in him there was a “caged power, straining like a damned-up river to break loose and crush every impediment to its free running.” (68) He understood that nothing stood between him and his greatest desires-nothing between him and greatness itself-but the temptation to doubt his will and bow counsels of moderation, expedience, and conventional morality, and shrink into the long slow death of respectability. His behavior towards Grandjohn and Patty suddenly changes and on a vacation break, he views them with bemused pity. Aghast at their provincialism, he flees from their house at every opportunity. Armed with cigarettes, he walks the “glistening streets in a fury of derision, wet and cold, sneering at everyone except the drunkards and bums who’d at least had the guts not to buy into the sham.” (69) He starts seeing their kindness as a form of aggression. He starts believing that the two main characters, Dominique and Roark, are the perfect people. His admiration for Roark grows fonder. He says, “Like Howard Roark, I kept a cigarette clamped in my executioner's lips…What I was doing was tanking up on self-certainty, transfusing Roark's arrogant, steely spirit into my own.” (70-71) He attempts at channeling the character of Roark, right down to the facial expression. He wanted to be Roark. After reading The Fountainhead four times, he still hadn’t started writing his paper for submission. Though filled with confidence that his writing will rise above the mundane prattle of the collectivist herd, instead, he faints in class and winds up in the infirmary for almost two weeks with influenza. He is informed that Purcell has won the private audience with Ayn Rand. He feels dejected and it takes him a few days to convince himself that Purcell deserved that win. Surprisingly, it is not Purcell but his cousin Big Jeff who has won the competition for his story “The Day the Cows Came Home.” Ayn Rand praises Big Jeff in the front-page interview. She writes, “It is most gratifying, to see someone of Mr. Purcell’s youth dare to challenge the collectivist orthodoxy that tyrannizes intellectual life in this country-and nowhere more than in its colleges and schools.” (78)

In the follow-up meeting in the Blaine Hall after dinner she interacts with the boys and asks how many of them were writers? When none of the students respond, she expresses her displeasure and says, “Shame on you! You must never be meek; the meek shall inherit nothing but a boot on the neck. You must be bold! My heroes have been ridiculed for refusing fear and compromise. My critics say such people do not exist. But allow me to inform you that I am such person, and I most assuredly do exist!” (81) She discusses her idealism and personal greatness and continues to lecture the audience with her rigid and insensitive philosophical views. She believes that the world gives a certificate of virtue to people in exchange of their reason and freedom. She attests this, saying:

When your power comes from others, on approval, you are their slave. Never sacrifice yourself-never! Whoever urges you to self sacrifice is worse than a common murderer, who at least cuts your throat himself, without persuading you to do it. You must revere yourselves. To revere yourself is to live truly. (83)

The narrator felt highly persuaded and was enthralled by the philosophical views of Ayn Rand. He could feel that he had become someone different, unique and powerful. After reading The Fountainhead and understanding the characters of Roark and Dominique, his worldview had changed. He related his own self with that of Roark. He felt more dominant and clothed in immense power. He wanted to be the “Ubermensch.” (72) The Ubermensch is an independent individual who has the power to banish herd instincts from his mind and become a master of self discipline. No doubt, he was excited by the characters of Rand’s novel but when he saw Ayn Rand in the Blaine Hall, he found her completely different from the one he’d envisioned. Rather than brave, she appeared cold, and when she looked at him, still very sick, he could see her distaste:

…I saw her face…the face she’d turned on me when I sneezed. Her disgust had power. This was no girlish shudder, this was spiritual disgust, and it forced on me a vision of the poor specimen under scrutiny, chapped lips, damp white face, rheumy eyes and all. She made me feel that to be sick was contemptible. (91)

During the interaction he asks Ayn Rand, what she thinks about Ernest Hemingway, she vehemently rejects Hemingway’s ideals and his characters. She says that his characters were weak and defeated people. Her self-centered approach towards other writers and common people shattered the narrator’s fantasy world of Roark and Dominique. He became uncomfortable with the contemptuous remarks of Ayn Rand. The narrator had great admiration for Ernest Hemingway. He was his hero. This episode cleansed the narrator’s soul. He realizes the importance of kindness, sacrifice and selfless love and the overall concept of human existence. Interestingly, in the chapter “Slice of Life” we see how after Ayn Rand’s visit to the school and her subsequent despise for the narrator when he sneezed during the interaction at Blaine Hall made him feel “that to be sick was contemptible.” (91) The narrator realizes that Ayn Rand’s heroes were hearty, happily formed and didn’t have brats. “The heroic life apparently left no time for children, or domestic cares, or the exertions of ordinary sympathy. The same went for Dominique and Roark, who seemed to have no relatives, or even friends-only inferiors.” (92) This incident became an eye opener for the narrator. He realized how badly he had been thinking of Grandjohn and Patty. He felt that neither Dominique nor Roark would have ever taken care of him as his grandparents took while he fell ill. He learns the lessons of life. He understands the struggles behind the lives of these poor people. They are not “brainless slattern, frustrated imbecile.” He rejects the whole idea of Ayn Rand’s characters as the “perfect people.” (93) He acquires this knowledge that strong people come from mundane living, always struggling for survival and happy existence. He feels exposed. The willful deception he had been practicing, the way he had been hiding his true identity, all gets exposed. He confesses to himself:

I had hidden my family in calculated silences and vague hints and dodges, suggesting another family in its place. The untruth of my position had given me an obscure, chronic sense of embarrassment, yet since I hadn’t outright lied I could still blind myself to its cause. (93)

The kind of life he had been living, he never came across the likes of Roark or Dominique. All he saw were struggling, defeated and ordinary people. He points out:

Everyone I knew, even in the most privileged families, was beset by un-heroic worries. A brilliant daughter made pregnant by her piano teacher, a sweet-tempered son gone surly and secretive, flunking out of school and shedding his friends and wrecking one car after another as if with a will; nervous breakdowns and squabbles over money. I had stayed with these families during holidays and long weekends, and among even the happiest of them I had learned to efface my presence at certain moments⸺the sound of a door slamming upstairs, a husband’s dark silence as his wife poured herself yet another glass of wine. (93)

These families were incapable of staging the perfect rationality and indomitable exercise of will that Ayn Rand demanded as a condition of respect. All these people including the narrator himself, were troubled, didn’t measure up to the ideal standards set by the characters of Ayn Rand. The narrator felt that she didn’t have the grasp of human reality. This experience also changed his perceptions about reading different authors. The usual practice in the school was to draw lines between certain writers, like taking sides and playing favorites. So far the narrator had avoided this practice but now he started understanding the difference between writers. He gathered the courage to accept the truth that he didn’t want to be like the character Roark. He finally decides to take side with Hemingway for his characters reveal the bedrock fact of life.

The narrator was always fascinated by the stories of Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), who was arguably the most influential American novelist and short-story writer of the 20th century. Renowned for their unique style, such masterpieces as A Farewell to Arms (1929) and The Old Man and the Sea (1952) brilliantly evoke the physical world and the experience of the senses, and stress themes of courage, stoicism, and the need to be true to oneself. He had admired Hemingway above all other writers, mostly for his life-the legend of his life. The images of toughness, self-sufficiency, freedom from the hobbles of family and class and conventional work impressed him a great deal. The ideas of masculinity and the image of the alpha-male drew him closer towards the writer. He found that in Hemingway’s stories “hard things happened, but the people weren’t hard. They felt the blows. Some of them gave up and some came back for more, but coming back wasn’t easy.” (96) Hemingway’s characters reminded him of his personal life. The truth of Hemingway’s stories didn’t come as a set of theories but in form of real life experiences. One could feel them on the back of their neck.

In “The Forked Tongue” we find that the visit of Ayn Rand had a lasting impact on the mind of the narrator. It changed the way he perceived the world. It had cleared the clutter that was hanging on him. Now he was a different person with a lot more experience of the reality of life. His faith and trust, every individual aspect of his life was revamped. The narrator doubtlessly believed in the power and existence of God. He was a God believer and when his classmate Purcell started cutting the chapel daily, he became concerned. He tries to convince Purcell to attend the chapel regularly but his classmate believed that God was just a character in a Hebrew novel and goes to the extent of saying that if it came to that he’d rather worship Huckleberry Finn. The conversation between Purcell and narrator presents the two opposing views on the existence of God. Purcell, who believes God to be a fictional concept argues strongly his case and rejects the views of the narrator.

The narrator had come to the school with the purpose of crafting a new life for himself. After the conversation with Purcell, he is reminded once again about the whole idea behind his admission in the school. He understands that even if Purcell is expelled, which was very likely to happen in near future since he was cutting the chapel, nothing will be a problem for Purcell in life. His own future was more important, since he didn’t belong to a wealthy family and therefore securing a respectable place in the society, becoming an established writer was more essential for him above everything else. Having realized this point, he focuses more on the submission for the Hemingway visit. Winning the private audience meant a great deal to him. The very thought of winning the competition excites him and he dreams, “as Picasso and Ted Williams knew Hemingway, as Kennedy knew Hemingway, one of us would soon know Hemingway and so be raised in that company.” (107)

The feeling of not getting selected was looming over the heads of all the competitors. The narrator could not help feeling that not to be chosen was to be rejected. If being chosen was a blessing then to be rejected was a curse and that was the logic that worked for him. The narrator tries to suppress this feeling of rejection by dreaming about a pleasant future. Since he was awarded a full scholarship to Columbia University, he couldn’t stop imagining himself working with Lionel Trilling, winning the Cassidy English Prize for writing an essay on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29-When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes, attending a five weeks summer program in Oxford. All this gave him an ecstatic feeling. He wanted to be a different person, altogether with a different identity. In fact he wanted to transform himself. He realizes that over the past years he had been absorbed so far into his performance that nothing else came naturally. Now he wanted to be true and honest with himself. He could no longer bear the weight of his fake and deceptive self:

In the first couple of years there’d had been some spirit of play in creating the part, refining it, watching it pass. There’d been pleasure in implying a personal history through purely dramatic effects of manner and speech without ever committing an expository lie, and pleasure in doubleness itself: there was more to me than people knew! All that was gone. When I caught myself in the act now, I felt embarrassed. It seemed a stale, conventional role, and four years of it had left me a stranger even to those I called my friends. I wanted out. That was partly why I’d chosen Columbia. (109)

His life was going to change. He gathers all his courage to remove the mask of dishonesty that he had been wearing. He accepts how he had been faking himself, all these years:

It wasn’t exactly true that I’d told no expository lies. Most of my stories had been meant to seem autobiographical, and thus to give a false picture of my family and my life at home-of who I was. I’d allowed myself to do this by thinking that after all, they were just stories. But they weren’t real stories not like “Big Two-Hearted River” was a story, or “Soldiers Home.” It struck me that Hemingway’s willingness to let himself be seen as he was, in uncertainty or meanness or fear, even empty of feeling, somehow gave the charge of truth to everything else. My stories were designed to make me appear as I was not. They were props in an act. I couldn’t read any of them without thrusting the pages away in mortification. (109-110)

While working on the final edition of Troubadour he comes across a story named “Summer Dance” published in the Cantiamo, the review from Miss Cobb’s Academy. The story holds his attention. He reads it and sees his own self in it. He instantly relates with the story of Ruth with his own life. He recognizes and sees his true self in the story of “Summer Dance.” When he comes to the last line, Everything’s okay, he is startled. How could everything be okay when nothing was fine in the story? He goes back to the beginning and reads it again, “slowly this time, feeling all the while as if [his] inmost vault had been smashed open and looted and every hidden thing spread out across those pages. From the very first sentence [he] was looking [himself] right in the face.” (125) All his memories of his past come alive in front of him. He further acknowledges the truths in the story:

It went beyond the obvious parallels where I really recognized myself was in the momentary, undramatic details of Ruth’s life and habits of thought. The typing class, say. What could be more ordinary than spending your summer days in a typing class at the Y? That was exactly what I’d done for past of the previous summer, yet I’d never once mentioned it to my schoolmates just because it was so completely ordinary, and uncool. And taking a bus to go there! No character in my stories ever rode a bus. (125)

He realized that the whole thing came straight from a truthful diary he had never kept: the typing class, the bus, the apartment and what not. It was also about his own calculations and stratagems, the throwing over of old friends for new, the shameless manipulation of a need, a loving parent and the desperation to flee not only the need but the love itself. “Then the sweetness of flight, the lightness and joy of escape. And, yes, the almost physical attraction to privilege, the resolve to be near it at any cost: sycophancy, lies, self-suppression, the marking of ambitions and desires, the slow cowardly burn of resentment toward those for whose favor you have falsified yourself. Every moment of it was true.” (125-126) He wanted to release himself from the burden of dishonesty, falsehood and deception. He decides to accept his truth. He finds himself in a position from where he can no longer create false images of himself, construct untrue characters in his stories and be unfair with himself. He notices a cleansing effect in accepting the truth, the truth he observed in the story that he was reading, and without even realizing ends up plagiarizing Susan Friedman’s story “Summer Dance.”

Rightly titled, “When in Disgrace with Fortune,” the following chapter tells us that not winning but something else was in store for the narrator. The narrator had accepted his truth. But the dishonest life he had been living all these years makes him pay a price. The narrator is excited to see the opening of “Summer Dance” run down three columns in the school newspaper. The newspaper also contained the transcript of the telephone interview with Hemingway. It was in the form of a monologue since the questions put by Mr. Ramsey were deliberately omitted. There was enough encouragement for the students. It was an expression highlighting subtle nuances of the art of writing, a sort of message for the narrator, the budding and ambitious writer:

You can tell your boy there that this is a pretty good work. Pretty damn good work, considering. He knows what he is writing about, more than he’s telling and that’s good… The stories you have to write will always make someone hate your guts. If they don’t you’re just producing words… Don’t talk about your writing. If you talk about your writing you will touch something you shouldn’t touch and it will fall apart and you will have nothing. Get up at first light and work like hell. Let your wife sleep in, it’ll pay off later. Watch your blood pressure. Read. Read James Joyce and Bill Faulkner and Isak Dinesen, that beautiful writer. Read Scott Fitzgerald. Hold on to your friends. Work like hell and make enough money to go someplace else, some other country… Keep your friends, hold on to your friends. Don’t lose your friends… That’s the sermon for today. (135-136)

But the narrator didn’t want Ernest Hemingway’s advice, he wanted his attention. Incidentally, when Bill read the story he felt cheated and argued with the narrator. Bill argued that the narrator used his story to bully him, which was not true. The narrator wanted to explain the truth of their Jewish identities but realized that it was of no use. The headmaster calls the narrator to his office where Mr. Ramsey, Mr. Lambert and a boy named Goss, President of the student Honor Council were sitting. He is later informed that his act of plagiarism has been caught. The story “Summer Dance” that was selected for Hemingway’s visit had been originally written by Susan Friedman published five years back in Cantiamo, the literary magazine of Miss Cobb’s Academy. He is accused of violating the Honor Code and dishonoring his class. He further gets to know how the story had caused a stir at Miss Cobb’s⸺a dramatic rift between two girls, other taking sides, a great deal of unpleasantness all around.

His dream of studying at Columbia University remained just a dream. The headmaster, in order to punish him and save the school’s honor, decides to advise Columbia about his failure to complete his studies at the school. He says he could not vouch for his character. It is finally decided that he will be expelled from the school. Mr. Ramsey drives him to the station and when the train comes he lugs his suitcase on board and puts it in the luggage rack at the end of the car. His school’s journey ends in a tragic way. His dream to meet Ernest Hemingway in person remains a mere wish, never to be fulfilled.

CONCLUSION:

After his expulsion from the school, the narrator joins the military service in Vietnam for a short period and eventually fulfills his dream of becoming a writer. The story digs deep into human life. It shows the perpetual process of getting lost and messing up, and finding one’s way home. It is an account of maturing of the narrator from adolescence to adulthood. The adult narrator reflects upon his school days. He remembers his past self of youthful dreams and sees his own self-transformation in retrospection. From his memories he distills a story of failed expectations and, in the end, redemptive self awareness. He achieves his inner peace by reflecting back on his past life and coming to peace with his failures, not with guilt but with acceptance. The most remarkable aspect of Old School is this that it shows how a young man becomes more understanding and accepting of others not only through his personal encounters, but also through his encounters with works of literature. In fact identity is not a simple state of being but a continual process of becoming. Our actions and decisions make us who we are.

REFERENCES:

1. Anderson. Forrest. “The Education of a Plagiarist in Tobias Wolff’s Old School.” Fiction Writers Review. 10 Oct 2013. https://fictionwritersreview.com/essay/the-education-of-a-plagiarist-in-tobias-wolffs-old-school/

2. Beck, Julie. “Life Stories.” The Atlantic. 10 Aug 2015. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/08/life-stories-narrative-psychology-redemption-mental-health/400796/

3. Bradley, William. An Interview with Tobias Wolff. The Missouri Review. 1 Dec 2003. https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-tobias-wolff/

4. Comway, Martin A. “Memory and the self.” Journal of Memory and Language 53 (2005): 594-628. Print.

5. Doorly, Sean. Rev. of Old School, by Tobias Wolff. Reading Groups Guide. 13 Jan 2011. https://www.readinggroupguides. com/reviews/old-school

6. Gioia, Ted. Rev. of Old School, by Tobias Wolff. The New Canon. http://thenewcanon.com/old_school.html

7. Homes, A. M. “Tobias Wolff.” BOMB 57 (1996): 14-17. Print

8. Lyons, Bonnie. “An Interview with Tobias Wolff.” Contemporary Literature 31.1 (1990): 1-16. JSTOR. Web. 10 July 2012.

9. Morrison, Blake. “A Class Apart.” Rev. of Old School, by Tobias Wolff. The Guardian. 24 Jan 2004. https://www. theguardian.com/books/2004/jan/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview19

10. Peluso, Robert. Rev. of Old School, by Tobias Wolff. Jan 11 2014. http://old.post-gazette.com/books/reviews/20040111wolff 0111fnp5.asp

11. Rev. of Old School, by Tobias Wolff. Kirkus Reviews. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/tobias-wolff/old-school/print/

12. Wolff, Tobias. Old School. New York: Vintage, 2003. Print.

13. “Old School.” Interview by Caitlin Callaghan. The Oxonian Review. 1 Mar 2004. http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/old-school-an-interview-with-tobias-wolff/print/

14. “Influences.” Interview by Travis Holland. Fiction Writers Review. 5 Apr 2009. https://fictionwritersreview.com/interview/ influences-an-interview-with-tobias-wolff/

15. Zacharek, Stephanie. Rev. of Old School, by Tobias Wolff. The Salon. 19 Dec 2003. https://www.salon.com/2003/12/18/wolff/

Received on 26.04.2020 Modified on 28.05.2020

Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2020; 11(3):190-198.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5828.2020.00033.9