--- product_id: 4105217 title: "Old School (Vintage Contemporaries)" price: "256 DH" currency: MAD in_stock: true reviews_count: 8 url: https://www.desertcart.ma/products/4105217-old-school-vintage-contemporaries store_origin: MA region: Morocco --- # Old School (Vintage Contemporaries) **Price:** 256 DH **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Old School (Vintage Contemporaries) - **How much does it cost?** 256 DH with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.ma](https://www.desertcart.ma/products/4105217-old-school-vintage-contemporaries) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Old School (Vintage Contemporaries) [Wolff, Tobias] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Old School (Vintage Contemporaries) Review: IS HE IN THE PHOTO?? - Okay, I liked the book but my curiosity about the cover photo is not satisfied since I still don't know if Wolff himself is one of the boys pictured in the photo? Since he submitted the photo, I am thinking possibly yes.... AND, could he be the boy on the spine of the book? That frustration aside, I bought this book for a couple of reasons: mainly because I really loved THIS BOY'S LIFE and hoped to be as entertained in this book, but also because I am a book-lover and always wished I had attended a prep school, so the setting appealed to me. Call it nostalgia for something I never had. This book is essentially a long short story with a couple of laugh-out-loud moments which are always greatly appreciated. But I couldn't get past the fact that I kept wondering about Wolff's life, the SALON interview notwithstanding. I am curious as to why he is so evasive about the facts of his life beyond the last page of THIS BOY'S LIFE where he seemed to be so brutally no-holds-barred honest and forthright. Did he graduate from Hill School, or did he leave just prior to graduation? The book mentions a father a few times, even rather benignly, but states that his mother was dead at the time of the writing which I believe was not true; so, what is autobiographical and what is not? I couldn't get beyond those curiousities as I read the book. I laughed out loud at Wolff's Ayn Rand diatribe. I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in college, too, and my father almost came undone, thought I had turned into a Commie or something, and was really very upset. To me at the age of 18 they were just books. I liked them well enough, but I also loved other authors. In this book I think Wolff introduces enough variance in the books and authors he discusses that we are left to find our own favorites. Okay, I skimmed through all 12 pages of reader reviews here, hoping to find one written by someone who went to school, Hill School, with Wolff so we could get some straight answers, but I didn't see anything.... It's been a lot of years, but maybe he'll open up all the way one of these days and satisfy a lot of curious minds by telling the rest of his story. Directly. Not fictionalized. Good book. I liked THIS BOY'S LIFE better. Not to mention his brother's book DUKE OF DECEPTION which I also loved. PS: I was thrilled to hear directly from Tobias Wolff today, February 20, 2009, and he says the photo on the cover of the book was taken at his school a couple of years prior to his arrival, so he is not in the picture. I'm still mesmerized by the boys in the photo, but now I can stop speculating on which one might be the real Tobias Wolff. Review: Well written novel with a couple flaws that prevent greatness - "Old School" by Tobias Wolf is a well written novel that captures the essence of the experience of a boys' boarding school in the early 1960s. It is a well told story. The characters are very believable and heart felt. While reading I did feel an emotional connection to the main character who also serves in a way as the narrator. The overall plot is that the youth is in his final year of "high school" at a private boarding school. There are guest writers that come to the school and a competition is set up where student submit works, and the winner gets a private audience with the visiting writer. The writers are Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway. Tobias Wolf does an admirable job of placing the visiting writers into the school setting and allowing those writers to "become real" to the reader. Robert Frost was done well, and led the plot along in an excellent manner. Ayn Rand, was perhaps the best written of the three and she comes off as truly a despicable person (which seems accurate from reading biographies of her). I did find it very humorous and well done that Ayn Rand selected a science fiction story "When the Cows Come Home" as the student winner. Also well weaved into the account was the main character's first impressions of "The Fountainhead" which he seems to gush over for a while until he realizes how unrealistic and substandard is that novel when compared to truly great literature. Ernest Hemingway only makes a brief tangential appearance, but his shadow looms over the plot. The major flaws I found in reading "Old School" were twofold. First is the stylistic form of using no quotation marks. What is with that? Here is an example: Quoting page 154 (hardcover) Without stories one would hardly know what world one was in. But I'm not saying this very well. Mr. Ramsey stared out over the garden. It has to do with self consciousness, he said. Though I'm no believer, I find it interesting that self consciousness is associated with the Fall. Nakedness and shame. Knowledge of ourselves as a thing apart, and bound to die. Exile. We speak of self consciousness as a burden or problem, and so it is- the problem being how to use it to bring ourselves out of exile. Whereas our tendency is to lose ourselves in the distance, wouldn't you say? The squirrel approached within a foot of us and reared up, obviously expecting a handout. Someone had been sneaking him scraps, probably a younger boy, homesick, missing his dog. That squirrel looks about ready to take us down, I said. unquote To me the style of not using quotation marks greatly hindered the flow of the story, and to me, that grammatical irregularities was a major flaw in "Old School." The second flow that prevented me from giving "Old School" five stars was the last section of the book. There is a dramatic switch from the main character to a side character, Dean Makepeace. While that is all interesting, the way the novel ended was just sort of haphazard. I had really connected to the main character, but the last section pretty much abandons him and the focus is on "Arch" previously known as Dean Makepeace. But overall, I do recommend "Old School" for the positives do outweigh the flaws. I believe you will enjoy reading this work by Tobias Wolf. It was my first time reading his work. Thanks for reading my review. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #118,404 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #783 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books) #1,164 in Short Stories (Books) #4,346 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.3 out of 5 stars 745 Reviews | ## Images ![Old School (Vintage Contemporaries) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/8183u+5BBIL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ IS HE IN THE PHOTO?? *by A***R on February 20, 2009* Okay, I liked the book but my curiosity about the cover photo is not satisfied since I still don't know if Wolff himself is one of the boys pictured in the photo? Since he submitted the photo, I am thinking possibly yes.... AND, could he be the boy on the spine of the book? That frustration aside, I bought this book for a couple of reasons: mainly because I really loved THIS BOY'S LIFE and hoped to be as entertained in this book, but also because I am a book-lover and always wished I had attended a prep school, so the setting appealed to me. Call it nostalgia for something I never had. This book is essentially a long short story with a couple of laugh-out-loud moments which are always greatly appreciated. But I couldn't get past the fact that I kept wondering about Wolff's life, the SALON interview notwithstanding. I am curious as to why he is so evasive about the facts of his life beyond the last page of THIS BOY'S LIFE where he seemed to be so brutally no-holds-barred honest and forthright. Did he graduate from Hill School, or did he leave just prior to graduation? The book mentions a father a few times, even rather benignly, but states that his mother was dead at the time of the writing which I believe was not true; so, what is autobiographical and what is not? I couldn't get beyond those curiousities as I read the book. I laughed out loud at Wolff's Ayn Rand diatribe. I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in college, too, and my father almost came undone, thought I had turned into a Commie or something, and was really very upset. To me at the age of 18 they were just books. I liked them well enough, but I also loved other authors. In this book I think Wolff introduces enough variance in the books and authors he discusses that we are left to find our own favorites. Okay, I skimmed through all 12 pages of reader reviews here, hoping to find one written by someone who went to school, Hill School, with Wolff so we could get some straight answers, but I didn't see anything.... It's been a lot of years, but maybe he'll open up all the way one of these days and satisfy a lot of curious minds by telling the rest of his story. Directly. Not fictionalized. Good book. I liked THIS BOY'S LIFE better. Not to mention his brother's book DUKE OF DECEPTION which I also loved. PS: I was thrilled to hear directly from Tobias Wolff today, February 20, 2009, and he says the photo on the cover of the book was taken at his school a couple of years prior to his arrival, so he is not in the picture. I'm still mesmerized by the boys in the photo, but now I can stop speculating on which one might be the real Tobias Wolff. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Well written novel with a couple flaws that prevent greatness *by D***R on August 6, 2011* "Old School" by Tobias Wolf is a well written novel that captures the essence of the experience of a boys' boarding school in the early 1960s. It is a well told story. The characters are very believable and heart felt. While reading I did feel an emotional connection to the main character who also serves in a way as the narrator. The overall plot is that the youth is in his final year of "high school" at a private boarding school. There are guest writers that come to the school and a competition is set up where student submit works, and the winner gets a private audience with the visiting writer. The writers are Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway. Tobias Wolf does an admirable job of placing the visiting writers into the school setting and allowing those writers to "become real" to the reader. Robert Frost was done well, and led the plot along in an excellent manner. Ayn Rand, was perhaps the best written of the three and she comes off as truly a despicable person (which seems accurate from reading biographies of her). I did find it very humorous and well done that Ayn Rand selected a science fiction story "When the Cows Come Home" as the student winner. Also well weaved into the account was the main character's first impressions of "The Fountainhead" which he seems to gush over for a while until he realizes how unrealistic and substandard is that novel when compared to truly great literature. Ernest Hemingway only makes a brief tangential appearance, but his shadow looms over the plot. The major flaws I found in reading "Old School" were twofold. First is the stylistic form of using no quotation marks. What is with that? Here is an example: Quoting page 154 (hardcover) Without stories one would hardly know what world one was in. But I'm not saying this very well. Mr. Ramsey stared out over the garden. It has to do with self consciousness, he said. Though I'm no believer, I find it interesting that self consciousness is associated with the Fall. Nakedness and shame. Knowledge of ourselves as a thing apart, and bound to die. Exile. We speak of self consciousness as a burden or problem, and so it is- the problem being how to use it to bring ourselves out of exile. Whereas our tendency is to lose ourselves in the distance, wouldn't you say? The squirrel approached within a foot of us and reared up, obviously expecting a handout. Someone had been sneaking him scraps, probably a younger boy, homesick, missing his dog. That squirrel looks about ready to take us down, I said. unquote To me the style of not using quotation marks greatly hindered the flow of the story, and to me, that grammatical irregularities was a major flaw in "Old School." The second flow that prevented me from giving "Old School" five stars was the last section of the book. There is a dramatic switch from the main character to a side character, Dean Makepeace. While that is all interesting, the way the novel ended was just sort of haphazard. I had really connected to the main character, but the last section pretty much abandons him and the focus is on "Arch" previously known as Dean Makepeace. But overall, I do recommend "Old School" for the positives do outweigh the flaws. I believe you will enjoy reading this work by Tobias Wolf. It was my first time reading his work. Thanks for reading my review. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Where Writers are Rock Stars *by B***A on February 1, 2008* Old School is the perfect book for those who truly love literature. The story takes place in an all-boys private school in the early 1960's. This book features appearances by Hemingway and Frost, discusses the philosophies of Ayn Rand, and traces one boy's evolution from impressionable and easily impressed youth to a wizened, free-thinking adolescent. The boy's education comes mainly from the literature he so reveres. I loved seeing his evolution portrayed in the scene where he becomes disillusioned with Ayn Rand. While Wolff obviously has reverence for authors and literature, he also can't help but poke fun at the personas and characters of the authors featured in the book. Robert Frost is portrayed as a pseudo-intellectual; a case of the emperor having no clothes. Wolff raises the question of why "great literature" is considered great. Is it truly great or is it imbued with greatness by what the reader reads into it or assumes was the writer's intent? Wolff's gift for arranging words is a true talent. Each word seems carefully chosen and gives the novel an old-fashioned feel. Wolff's writing is gorgeous. While Old School is a novel about literature and writing, it is also a comentary on class, religion, and social acceptance. Wolff navigates the murky waters of social injustice, class consciousness and anti-semitism with grace. There isn't a book lover alive who would not be enchanted with the idea of living in a place where literature is treated as a religion and writers as gods. There is one unforgettable scene where the headmaster is announcing to the boys that Hemingway will be visiting. In describing the scene, Wolff writes, "The headmaster watched us, enjoying the shock he'd produced. Then someone yelled Bravo! And the room went nuts - whistles, shouts, feet drumming the floor, fists pounding tables." In Old School writers are contemporary rock stars. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.ma/products/4105217-old-school-vintage-contemporaries](https://www.desertcart.ma/products/4105217-old-school-vintage-contemporaries) --- *Product available on Desertcart Morocco* *Store origin: MA* *Last updated: 2026-04-28*