The Old School Tie

Because Arthur Tuckerman is a fairly good and very glib writer, his first novel will be on the best seller lists for many weeks. When the Old School Tie pretends to very little, it is an entertaining if innocuous comedy about an American boy in an English prep school, but when it hints at a dying generation, a dying Europe, and impending doom, the novel descends to unattractive superficiality.

Set in pre-World War I Europe, The Old School Tie is more or less an autobiography of the author's schooling at Cheltenham College and later at Oxford. Tucerkman's parents, especially his father, are presented as archetypes of American tourism in the grand old largesse days. They are the dying generation, the professional travelers, whose era ended in the summer of 1914. Throughout, the rather unpolished symbol of the father's increasing blindness, paralleling the increasing threat of war, attempts to give the book an air of gravity. Yet such devices--and there are many--seem merely pasted on to an essentially light story; I have the feeling that they do not belong here, that they are an awkward bow to something that Tuckerman cannot handle within the scope of his novel. Well worn phrases constantly appear, as when Teuckerman talks of an English boy, "He never did understand them (the French), although with thousands of his own kind he gave up his life on French soil a few years later." Of course the thought is sympathetic and rightly reverent, but it has been said so many times before in just those words.

In direct contrast to the strained, heavy quality of Teuckerman's moralizing is the easiness of, "Again that ominous silence in the classroom while all the minions waited breathlessly to find our which way the wind would blow. Little Dog (a teacher) asked courteously whether he might inspect my galoshes. I peeled them off, and with that slight curl to his lips he examined them. 'Very curious. Do all Americans wear these objects?' I said I believed most of them did."

The Old School Tie is a mode for all aspirants to the best seller ranks. It reads easily, it shows a fine, light wit. And to escape the label of giddy, it spoon feeds serious overtones to its readers with the subtlety and originality of an Evangelist preacher.