After yesterday’s post on yearning and return, I realized I had omitted something that had been on my mind for a long time. Here it is.
If you have not yet read Tobias Wolff’s novel Old School (2003), please read it before reading this piece, which will reveal some of the ending. I also encourage you to put off reading reviews until you have read the book. Though widely praised, it has been strangely misunderstood by some, including Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times. Reviewing comes with pitfalls: the best reviews draw attention to good work (or warn against the mediocre), while the worst sacrifice the book to the reviewer’s own needs and frailties. Few reviewers are consistently insightful; they succumb to their own stuff, as we all do at times. That’s how I see Kakutani’s review. Enough of that.
I am writing about this book because, from the first reading in 2003 through the third and most recent one yesterday, I have been carrying it around in my mind. I pick it up (in my hands or in the imagination) and return to favorite passages. It says more about education than many an education book; it is part of my own education. It is the ending that stays with me, though everything else builds slowly to it—an ending that seems a tangent but becomes a return and vision. I will look at this return today.
