IT’S NOT A SECRET IF I DON’T TELL ANYONE…

OLD SCHOOL by Tobias Wolff

Knopf, 208 pages

I started worrying aloud about Tobias Wolff as soon as the last pages of ‘The Night in Question’ passed me by. I read this collection of short stories in one sitting and had a stunned and amazed reaction at this ridiculously talented writer. The only reason this book made it to my nightstand has to do with the arresting cover image. Knopf published the first story from that collection in a stand-alone collectors edition. A very nice person whose name I can’t remember sent it to me, and it’s been sitting next to the rest of his books, on my shelf for years awaiting the next book. You can get a good idea of a writer’s productivity by looking at his past books and Wolff is no slouch when it comes to a backlist. If you’re looking for some back-story on this prodigious writer, try ‘In the Garden of North American Martyrs’ or ‘Back in the World’. However these collections hold nothing in terms of power in comparison to the first story in ‘The Night in Question’, which should leave you wondering why people aren’t walking down the street jumping with glee about this man’s narrative powers. My worry about Tobias Wolff came to an end when ‘Old School’ landed on my front steps. Knopf publicity works magic every day, and I thank them.

Mr. Wolff has finally written a novel; sadly it’s just not long enough. In ‘This Boy’s Life’ we’re endeared to the coming of age of Toby Wolff as a young man living in Washington State. Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro captured the books manic qualities in the screen adaptation. So far you’ve not heard much about Tobias Wolff the writer. Until Entertainment Weekly picked up on him, with one of their author bio’s and then a few weeks later in their “must” section, where they review in blurbs some of the more cutting edge and non-mainstream pop culture. Which is followed a few pages later by Stephen King and his monthly diatribe.

Diatribes aside.

‘Old School’ is just that. Old school story telling and a veiled sequel to ‘This Boy’s Life’, where we find an unnamed narrator (Tobias Wolff for sure) attending an east coast boarding school for boys. Our narrator has found exciting ways to dance around his heritage, (Jewish, maybe?) and try to fit into a very competitive literate world where the sons of privilege surround him in droves. Wolff describes this life as a child who’s found himself caught in the candy store of his dreams. The literary life is something of a fantasy for most of us but Wolff makes it all come true for his hero, or himself, however you choose to look at it. The headmaster, who’s a literary wannabe himself, decides a little inspiration in the form of living writers would be the best course of action for his students. First up? Robert Frost. Legend, poet, and generally an unscathed member of the literary elite, is sent up nicely here as the first visiting writer to grace the mess hall of this self-indulgent school. Then again, private schools are meant to indulge their students because they’re private. The thing is, our narrator, unnamed as he is (which makes him more of a viewer than participant, on purpose), always seems to lionizing these literary superstars that fill the world around him. Little does he know that once you’ve left school and lived outside those walls, these writers are just like everyone else. Sadly, there is no room for reality in this story; Wolff sanitizes these pages with a narrative flow that can only be described as colloquial, to put it mildly. Then again the reality that comes to our hero like a bolt of lightning is reality, and lying, a part of that reality has penalties attached. Wolff tries to get us through the years following the experiences at school but sadly I feel like he’s veiling his own life and calling it fiction. Which is just fine, since he’s a writer whose life can be imagined on page. There are two other “writers” that make it onto Wolff’s barbeque, but I’ll save those for your eyes only. Spoiling it here would be a waste of my time. Tobias Wolff tries to imagine a life worth living is not a life worth writing about.

I couldn’t disagree more.

This life he’s lead is nothing short of spectacular, and is surpassed only by his fiction. This novel could have been three times as long. Since it’s his first, why not make it a doorstop?

WHACKING JIMMY by William Wolf

Villard, 240 pages.

For some unknown reason this galley sat on my shelf for five years before I thought enough of it to give it a read. William Wolf is a pseudonym of a journalist and author who’d rather remain unknown.

Why?

This book wouldn’t shed any light on him or his proclivities, which include grade “D” mafia rehash, or should I say, “diet mafia”. What reason will suck you into this book? If you still can find one, it’s the arresting cover with bold type blasting the title across it, and then a smiling picture of Jimmy Hoffa in a bull’s-eye circle. It’s implied that Jimmy Hoffa will take a dirt nap at the end of this trite after school special. We’re introduced to our characters just around the time that Hoffa was passé, and before he “vanished like a fart in a blizzard”, to quote one of my favorite lines from ‘Shawshank Redemption’ (anyone know when that 10th anniversary DVD is coming out?). Let’s run through these characters like the commercial literary laxatives that they are.

There’s Bobby Tucci, kid of Annette Tucci, who’s daughter of Tommy “No Neck” Tucci, of the Detroit mafia family, and there’s a Don in here somewhere who dies leaving young Bobby a fortune. But he’s busy getting high all the time, (it’s the seventies, so it’s par for the course), and playing in a band that is inspired by the African American sounds that were all the rage on the street, back then. The whole time you’re reading this book you’ll wonder aloud how it ever got published. Or how they spent the money on this, or decided to, and regularly reject books that that take chances and live in the margins? These characters that Wolf creates are periphery Mario Puzo cardboard send-ups, at best. There’s a battle over the family fortune and someone wants to get famous by making his or her bones by whacking Jimmy. Sadly I forgot I read this book almost as soon as I read it. None of these characters are anything important and carry no physical presence in the world they live in. The author of this book should be ashamed of himself for relying on such stiff stereotypes. But then again, there’s a reason they’re called stereotypes. This book was printed in hardcover to the tune of 35,000 copies. Quick question: How many got remaindered? I’ll bet all of them. ‘Whacking Jimmy’ was published in 1998 and I’ll bet it graced our shelves for only a minute or two, pre-Soprano’s. This book isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Sadly this story, told ham-fistedly by Wolf, is insulting to the memory of the mafia legends it’s cribbed from.

Desert Diaries: Photojournalists on the War in Iraq

Channel Photographics, 192 pages, photographs

Certainly, the war in Iraq is not over. I myself have tried as hard as I can to ignore this conflict, but the local news flashes across my television screen nightly as the body count rises. Personally I don’t understand how the United States can end up in a situation, actually one we’ve been in before, for only one reason. Oil. You can talk to me all you want about WOMD, but that’s just window dressing. We looked for a fight, figured out the bearded cave dweller was out of reach, and decided to pick on the next bully we came across. It’s a sad, sad state of affairs, and it’s getting worse. One year from now we’ll have the same old problem occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as we do now. I don’t think Howard Dean, as special a candidate as he is, has a chance to change that. ‘Desert Diaries: Photojournalists on the War in Iraq’ confirms this. Channel Photographics has compiled a collection of photojournalism that is extraordinary if not overly sympathetic to the Iraq people. This book is divided between the photographs and the words describing the photographer’s experience that took them.

Simply put, this book will make you sad for these people. Why are doing what we’re doing. There are pictures of dead citizens with their shoes still on. Puddles of blood in the street. Saddam’s pictures and statues being defaced by freedom hungry citizens. None of this will shock you. Because you’re desensitized to the images of horror shown in this book. Tommy Franks marches through this book like a kid on a mission. He’s got all the other kids in the neighborhood behind him and he’s gonna get those bastards. Meanwhile his army? They’re busy missing home. Reading Hustler magazine, reading their mail, and wondering how long it will be before they can get back home to the land of Big Mac’s. These soldiers don’t know whether they’re coming or going. And Rumsfeld and Franks, who celebrate towards the end of the book, don’t know whether to shit or go blind from their excitement. I don’t know why we’re doing what we’re doing. This book doesn’t offer an answer; it only plays witness to this war. This conflict is interchangeable with one we’ve fought before; “Iraq” can also be spelled “Vietnam”. We stuck our nose in a civil war both times. Would it be interesting to see the effects of this war from our home front? But how would we do that? Take a picture of an SUV filling up at the local gas station?

Thanks, man. Have a happy New Year, and that goes for everybody.

"Moriarty" out.