A writer's growth

Old School

By Tobias Wolff

Knopf. 195p $22

ISBN 0375401466

Tobias Wolff is best known as a memoirist both for This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army, as well as a fine short-story writer. Old School, his first novel, though clearly labeled a novel, takes the form of a first-person memoir about a schoolboy's encounters with books and their authors.

Indeed, the story is neatly divided into chapters, each of which centers on a different famous American author. Each is a guest invited by the headmaster to address the prep school assembly and favor with ...