Pl. Catalunya, 39-41 08820 El Prat de Llobregat T 93.370.51.52 b.prat.am@diba.es Horari: dilluns de 15.30 a 21 Dimarts a divendres de 10 a 21 Dissabtes de 10 a 19
March 2013
ENGLISH READING CLUB
ENJOY READING! TOBIAS WOLFF Old School
TOBIAS WOLFF (June 19, 1945, Birmingham, Alabama, USA)
-------------------------------- BIOGRAPHY Tobias Wolff is an American author, best known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life (1989), and his short stories. Born in Alabama in 1945, Tobias Wolff traveled the country with his peripatetic mother, finally settling in Washington State, where he grew up. As a scholarship student, he attended the Hill School in Pennsylvania until he was expelled in his final year, whereupon he joined the Army. He spent four years as a paratrooper, including a tour in Vietnam. Following his discharge he attended Oxford University in England, where he received a First Class Honours degree in English in 1972. Returning to the United States, he worked variously as a reporter, a night watchman, a waiter and a high school teacher before receiving a fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University in 1975. He is currently Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the Humanities at Stanford, where he lives with his wife Catherine. They have three children. Much of Wolff's memoirs—supposedly works of nonfiction—are embellished or edited versions of his personal history.
----------------------------------SELECTED WORKS
Ugly Rumours (1975), a novel. In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1981), a collection of short stories. The Barracks Thief (1984), a novella. Back in the World (1985), a collection of short stories. This Boy's Life (1989), a memoir, later made into a film, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. In Pharaoh's Army (1994), a memoir about his experiences as a soldier in the Vietnam War. The Collected Short Stories The Night in Question (1997), a collection of short stories. Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories (2008), a collection of ten new and twenty-one old stories.
--------------------------------------------- Old School (2003)
Old School is the fictional story of a young boy attending a prestigious New England prep school and, more importantly, his struggle for identity within the world around him. The book’s narrator — we never learn his name — is a student with a particularly fine reputation for literary pursuits. The school is able to attract visiting writers of high caliber, like Robert Frost and Ayn Rand, and each of the boys has a chance to “win” a private audience with the vaunted guest. Aside from its service as a sort of literary fantasy camp, the novel addresses issues of class, privilege and ethnic identity in a manner subtle enough to mask their importance to the story. The book also features an editorial curiosity: there are no quotation marks indicating speech. It was first published after three portions of the novel had appeared in The New Yorker as short stories.