In a scene from Tobias Wolff’s latest novel, “Old
School,” a group of teenage boys are huddled around a fire in
the lodge of their elite New England prep school while feisty
writer Ayn Rand vehemently argues with the main character, a
student consumed by literature, on the artistic merit of Ernest
Hemingway.
Wolff, whose own adolescence mirrors that of the unnamed main
character/narrator, now takes his turn speaking to aspiring writers
in an appearance at Freud Playhouse tonight at 8 p.m. As part of
UCLA Live’s “Our Favorite Writers” series, Wolff
will be reading from his new novel and speaking with UCLA professor
and author Mona Simpson.
“Old School,” which is inspired by the
author’s own experiences, details life in a 1960s prep school
from the perspective of an idealistic scholarship student trying to
fit into high society despite his economic shortcomings.
“I had been thinking over the years about my experiences
(in prep school) and the way in which literature kind of helped me
through those times,” Wolff said.
According to Wolff, prep school in the 1960s was crawling with
literary enthusiasts. Try to find a high school today sharing such
a strong collective gusto for literature.
“God almighty, there were a lot of us who wanted to be
writers, and there was a real reverence for writers among the
students,” Wolff said. “We did indeed break out into
song all the time at night. After dinner there was a big hall where
we would go to. We would usually sing, and it was a way of letting
off steam. “¦ Somebody would start singing and we would all
join in.”
Throughout the novel, the unnamed narrator competes with his
classmates in writing competitions in which the victor scores
one-on-one conversations with visiting writers like Rand, Hemingway
and Robert Frost.
A winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Wolff authored
the memoir “This Boy’s Life,” which was made into
a critically acclaimed film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert
DeNiro. Wolff is known as the “master of the memoir,”
and “Old School” is being billed as his first novel.
Actually, his first novel, titled “Ugly Rumours,” was
published in 1975, but Wolff does not include it in his list of
published works.
The key to his success, Wolff says, is diligent practice.
“If you wait for inspiration to move you to write, you
won’t get your writing done. Inspiration always takes second
place to running an errand, going and buying a CD, meeting a friend
for lunch and having a couple glasses of wine too many. You have to
learn to view it as your work and not just something you do as the
spirit moves you,” Wolff said.
The author’s thorough research of Rand, Hemingway and
Frost allowed him to create colorful characters that shed light on
upper crust society and writers’ inspiration.
“Hemingway was the king of American letters”¦Young
men were apt to copy not just his style as a writer, but the way
his characters acted even to the point of going to Pamplona,
(Spain). And you know young Americans didn’t do that before
they read Hemingway. Now it’s a big deal to go to the Running
of the Bulls,” Wolff said.
Wolff hopes to use the “Our Favorite Writers” series
to convey the joys and essence of writing to today’s
youth.
“The beauty of writing is you get to go back and get those
things right that didn’t seem all that satisfactory when you
were going through them,” Wolff said.
For ticket information on Wolff’s appearance at Freud,
visit www.uclalive.org.