Old School: Chapter 8: One for the Books Summary & Analysis

The narrator doesn’t return home; instead, he gets off the train in New York. He can’t get a job at any of the newspapers, so he gets a job busing tables at a tourist restaurant near Times Square. Ernest Hemingway never visits the school—he is too sick to travel—and he kills himself soon after. Afterward, the narrator works as a waiter, a picture framer, and a plumber’s assistant, among other jobs. After three years of working odd jobs, he enlists in the army and ends up in Vietnam.

The narrator notes that this looks like “a certain kind of author’s bio,” but during this time in his life he actually writes very little. After leaving the army, the narrator attends college and works hard, learns to be alone in a room, and his deepest pleasures become familial ones: hearing his wife sing, making his children laugh, and a enjoying a few years of friendship with his father before his death. He notes that it’s a very boring story. The narrator explains that the life that produces writing can’t be written about. He explains that there is no moment where anyone can say that this is when they became a writer, and that meaning in life is often cobbled together later.

The narrator then recalls a story: in the fall of 1965, he begins a training course at Fort Holabird, Maryland. As he packs to move to Maryland, he comes across a copy of “Summer Dance.” He decides to write a note of apology to Susan Friedman—he assumes she’s heard about what happened. Susan writes back, explaining that she was flattered by his plagiarism and amused that Ernest Hemingway liked her story. Noting that Susan lives nearby, the narrator then decides to ask her to dinner; she replies that lunch is better and includes her phone number.

Susan and the narrator meet at an Italian restaurant soon afterward. He pretends that he just wants a good meal and interesting discussion, but in his heart the meeting feels momentous to him. He thinks if they fall in love and end up together, that something more than bad luck had led him to “Summer Dance” and his story could be neatly wrapped up.

Susan is very late. She is astute and pretty, and they make conversation about why the narrator joined the army. He is very careful with his answer, afraid of sounding false, and he explains that he felt it was something he had to do. Susan then talks about her own life: after attending Miss Cobb’s, her mother was diagnosed with cancer and soon passed away, so Susan worked while finishing her degree at Ohio State. She is now in her second year at Georgetown Medical School, and the narrator sees that she is an extraordinary person and that he has nothing to offer her but company for lunch.

Susan and the narrator talk about their schooldays. Susan criticizes the boys, many of whom emphasized their importance when they met her and often forced themselves on her as though she had no choice or opinion. She also calls the use of her story a good joke on the narrator’s old school, on Hemingway, and on the idea of literature as a “phallic enterprise like bullfighting or boxing.” She asks what made him think of the joke, and he can’t bring himself to tell her that he loved his school and Hemingway and hadn’t meant to play a joke.

Susan then asks why the narrator kept the name Levine, wondering whether he is Jewish. When he starts to say that it depends what she means by Jewish, she says then he must not be Jewish. She then signals the waiter, explaining that she has to get back to class. She thanks him again for the flattery of plagiarizing her story. When he says that the story was brave and honest, she asks how he knows it was honest. He says he doesn’t.

As Susan and the narrator say goodbye, he says he would read anything she wrote. She says she doesn’t write anymore, explaining that writing cuts a person off and makes them selfish and doesn’t really do any good. The narrator is shocked by this response. Later, in a bar, the narrator thinks that just because a writer needs solitude doesn’t mean he’s cut off—he likens writers to monks praying for others. And as he stands there “half-drunk,” he gives thanks for all the good writing has done for him.