Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway, with each of whom the narrator crosses paths, appear in the story, dispensing wisdom, pseudo-wisdom, vitriol.

The Penguin Random House publisher's blurb describes the book thus: The protagonist of Tobias Wolff's shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960.

As the fever of competition infects the boy and his classmates, fraying alliances, exposing weaknesses, Old School explores the ensuing deceptions and betrayals with an unblinking eye and a bottomless store of empathy.

[4] Michael Upchurch of the Seattle Times suggested that despite being written as a novel, "in period, place and emotional feel, it's clearly the link between This Boy's Life and Wolff's Vietnam War memoir, In Pharaoh's Army.

[5] He notes that the epigraph contains lines from the poem "Elegy for my Father" by Mark Strand hinting at why Wolff chose to write a novel.