She's resting on my lap while I write this. Clearly my little mutt has recovered from her spaying surgery and the infection that followed. She's shown her true, spunky nature the last few days. I had forgotten how much energy a puppy has, even a 7.5 pound puppy.
Last night she practically put herself to bed, walking into her crate and snuggling down. What's cuter than a sleepy pup? Okay, a sleepy baby, but the pup runs a close second.
While she snoozed, Maddie curled up next to me and rested her head on my legs as I read Tobias Wolff's 2003 novel Old School. I fell asleep before finishing it, but not because the book was a bore. No, indeedy, it was fabulous, and I could not wait to finish it this morning.
The narration of this novel was even and spare, a style of voice that I strive for in my writing. For most of the novel, Wolff lingers at a boy's school, letting the narrator tell us about the coveted six-level prize: an audience with a favorite author. We watch the narrator as he attempts audiences with Frost, then Rand, and finally Hemingway. As he considers what a stroll in the garden would mean to him in each case, we see the narrator face his identity–the one he has constructed in his efforts to fit in and to grow up, and the one that feels truthful to him. His story is juxtaposed by that of Arch, the dean of the school. Only after our narrator is grown and an author in his own right does he find out about Arch's layered identity that reflects his own.
My favorite line in the novel occurs when the narrator, as an adult, meets the woman whose story he plagiarized in his efforts to meet Hemingway. The story, by all accounts, was startling and rich with emotional truth, but Susan, the real author of it, no longer writes; in fact, she dismisses writing as frivolous. The narrator reflects: "This actually shocked me. We know what is sacred to us when we recoil from impiety, and Susan's casual desertion of her gift had exactly that force." The truthfulness of this struck me. Recently confronted with a careless attitude about writing where I didn't expect it, Wolff articulated what I could not.
This is a compelling read, one which is not only about writing, but about growing up and seeking our individual truths. Five stars from me!
