(no subject)
Title: Old School
Author: Tobias Wolff
What I Thought: It was a pretty fast read, but I had a really hard time connecting with the book. It felt like reading a really long outline to me, like some parts had a little explanation beneath them and others are practically still in bulletin form. I wish there had been more focus on the characters, I think that would have made it a lot more interesting, instead of just reading this ambivalent narration of fairly unextraordinary events. Plus, I've never really read any Hemingway, Frost, or Rand. Umm. So, since a lot of the book was about them and their characters, I wasn't really impressed. The author wasn't either, I think. All of the authors were portrayed as misinterpreting the students' writing and Rand was like, a big jerk. And Hemingway was drunk? The last chapter seemed totally out of place to me... I really felt like I was reading a book that had been only half-finished before publication... And I kept waiting for something REAL to happen to the characters. Like the main character gets the flu and it's barely described. He has the sniffles. Maybe a paragraph spent on his time in the infirmirary. Also, the "big reveal" that is the last chapter is really boring. I kept expecting controversy (I totally thought that the roommate would turn out to be gay and in love with the narrator by the end of the book, or commit suicide, or SOMETHING, and instead he just kind of... faded out of the narration). So I think the ending was definitely disappointing, but I hadn't really built up any HUGE expectations anyway, so that was okay. I wouldn't call this a "bad" book, but I don't think I would call it "good," either.
Author: Tobias Wolff
What I Thought: It was a pretty fast read, but I had a really hard time connecting with the book. It felt like reading a really long outline to me, like some parts had a little explanation beneath them and others are practically still in bulletin form. I wish there had been more focus on the characters, I think that would have made it a lot more interesting, instead of just reading this ambivalent narration of fairly unextraordinary events. Plus, I've never really read any Hemingway, Frost, or Rand. Umm. So, since a lot of the book was about them and their characters, I wasn't really impressed. The author wasn't either, I think. All of the authors were portrayed as misinterpreting the students' writing and Rand was like, a big jerk. And Hemingway was drunk? The last chapter seemed totally out of place to me... I really felt like I was reading a book that had been only half-finished before publication... And I kept waiting for something REAL to happen to the characters. Like the main character gets the flu and it's barely described. He has the sniffles. Maybe a paragraph spent on his time in the infirmirary. Also, the "big reveal" that is the last chapter is really boring. I kept expecting controversy (I totally thought that the roommate would turn out to be gay and in love with the narrator by the end of the book, or commit suicide, or SOMETHING, and instead he just kind of... faded out of the narration). So I think the ending was definitely disappointing, but I hadn't really built up any HUGE expectations anyway, so that was okay. I wouldn't call this a "bad" book, but I don't think I would call it "good," either.