Everyman--Philip Roth

Why, oh why, did I pick this up at the library? I knew it would be utterly depressing, and it was. Utterly. But I loved The Plot Against America, and I couldn't resist Everyman's compact size for throwing into my lunch bag for reading on the train to work. (Indeed, my book choices are frequently informed by ease of carrying onto the metrolink.) In brief, the story begins at a funeral of the "everyman" main character, then Roth recounts the life that was, focusing in particular on old age, which he calls "a massacre." Roth is getting old and he's not happy about it. If you love Roth you should read this because the things that Roth does well--visceral orientation to time and place--he does well here, but it is a total downer. You have been warned.

Old School--Tobias Wolff

Old School is a coming-of-age story, set in a New England prep school in the 1960s. The unnamed narrator defines himself by his association with the prep-school literary elite--the editorial board of the school literary magazine. In the narrator's senior year, the school hosts Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and the most admired author of the students--Ernest Hemingway. He and his classmates contend for a personal audience with each author through writing contests, in which they try to best themselves and each other.

I was surprised at how much I liked this novel. I picked it up at a library branch we don't usually frequent unless it's cold and Ben needs to get out of the house (it has an overwhelming amount of toys for a library), and I managed to read about 50 pages while he played. I love how Wolff describes being in love with literature, and the creative inspiration of youth. He makes palpable the feeling that nothing is better than writing the perfect sentence. Granted, it is one of too many novels about the white, privileged, east coast elite, and it loses points for that, but what is good about Old School outweighs what isn't.