A Big Disappointment

After reading the novel Old School, I had mixed feelings about it. There were many parts that I enjoyed yet there was not a strong, progressing plot throughout the book. Although the novel was written very well, I felt that it was truly empty. The main problem was that all that it portrayed was the everyday life of students in a private school during old times without effectively developing an incredibly strong relationship between characters, a convincing conflict, or an interesting plot twist.

The relationships between the characters in the book are all lacking any true emotions and any exciting struggles. The majority of the interaction between the students is the petty talk to one other having to do with writing poems to be submitted to Robert Frost or Ayn Rand or Ernest Hemmingway which was not exciting. The novel is problematic because the only meaningful character in it is the nameless narrator and all he does is simply describe his surroundings in the private school with intuitiveness. The peak of excitement was reading on to find out whether or not another student would get kicked out of school, such as whether Purcell would continue not going to church and let Big Jeff throw his education away too. Other than that, the novel is too slow paced and does not contain enough emotion between the students to truly captivate readers.

The book has no interesting conflict. I am a person that enjoys reading books that involve suspense, action, and maybe even a little romance tied in between. Old School did not do it for me. I believed there were not any major scenes or passages that personally captured me because it practically just summarizes the lifestyle of an average PCDS student, but during the olden days. The setting is too happy and nothing really goes wrong. The highest form of disappointment towards the narrator was not winning the meeting with Robert Frost and he does not even throw a tantrum or maybe go through an interesting cycle of depression. The novel is just too bland without any building tension.

Although I disliked the novel overall, there was one specific character that I really enjoyed that gave something back to me. That was Ayn Rand. When she comes to the school to speak to the students, she is portrayed as a self-centered egomaniac. During the speech, she is asked which novel she thinks is the best and she says “Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead.” It just so happened that she wrote those books. I got glued to book during her passage because it was outright hilarious to me. No one in the world should ever have such a ridiculous sense of confidence. She is the opposite of how I believe people should be, yet for some reason I liked and appreciated her character in the book for bringing some excitement into the lives of the boring students.

When I picked up Old School I was expecting an interesting story with a character similar to Holden Caufield. When I was done reading it I was severely disappointed because all I ended up with was a mild story of everyday school life back in the day. I believe if I was thirty-five when I read it then i would find the book enjoyable to reminisce on similar experiences. The problem was the book took place in a different generation and it was difficult for me to appreciate their times because such experiences do not exist any more.
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