Old School

Old School is the current theme, and only coincidentally because of the Will Ferrell film of that title. Annika and I took the train to Oregon (Old School transportation) for my 20th year High School Reunion (Old School nostalgia) and the 29 hour trip just happened to allow me to read a Tobias Wolff novel titled... yep, Old School.
All three of these (transportation, reunion and novel) seem to be relating. The novel is set in a boys prep school of up-state New York, with an emphasis on literature that screams stereotypical east coast privilege. Robert Frost, Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway figure prominently for Wolff's protagonist and reading as I passed Salinas, Gilroy and Martinez in N. California added to the flavor of the trip. And, since I don't know literature like the Old School boys, I mostly channeled Steinbeck's East of Eden while looking out the window. The acres of lettuce rolling past, interrupted by the occassional warehouse or barn, each individually stylized by corrugated tin patches and brilliantly colored graffiti. In this consistent scenery we get a little bit of Frosts' love of (insistence on?) form and structure as the only thing that gives meaining to an unchanging world. We see Hemingway's vulnerability as each town fails to dress up its station beyonds its means. And we see, perhaps, the inevitable result of Rand's narcisssism as the local mini-storage of each town passes by, the local altar of "getting for me what I want, all else be damned".
And at this point, I can only be curious about the nostalgia. Stay tuned...