Tobias Wolff's novel, Old School can be understood to pick up from where This Boy leaves off. Just as in This Boy, the protagonist in Old School is never named. The narrator joins a prestigious prep school and feels out of place as the only Jewish and scholarship student. He is intimidated by the wealth and arrogance of his classmates and finds it difficult to make a place for himself. Amongst such snobbery, he makes it his one goal to never reveal that he is unlike his peers.
The narrator struggles with the heavy workload at his new school but he develops an interest in his English classes and even finds a place for himself at the school's literary magazine. Every year the school holds a famous writing contest, the prize for which allows the winner to meet the likes of Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway and Ayn Rand. The narrator becomes fixated with winning this competition. He struggles to write a piece worthy of submission and eventually fails.
Finally, he decides to copy and submit as his own a story written by another school's student. He edited the original story which chronicled the experiences of a young Jewish girl at an elite prep school, making the girl a boy. He is lauded by his teachers and fellow students for his entry. However, on the day of the competition Robert Frost names another boy as the winner, a student the narrator considers an inferior writer. The narrator's story is praised by all, even Ernest Hemingway, and is considered the undeclared winner.
A few days later he is called into the Dean's office, his plagiarized entry has been discovered. He is expelled from school and his offer at Columbia University is drawn back. He leaves the school and is lost wandering for a few years after which he enlists in the army.
Years later, the narrator is an established writer, he is so successful that he is called back to his old school to judge a competition. At the school, he meets Headmaster Ramsey who tells him about the Dean, Makepeace. Here the novel changes its direction. Makepeace left the school as soon as he heard about the narrators expulsion because he was guilty of cheating as well. He had claimed to know Hemingway, a rumor that gained massive traction and came to be recognized as a fact. This falsity weighed on Makepeace and he leaves the school, only to return a year later.
Old School can be read as a parody or satire on the value of art and morals in society.
