A National Endowment for the Arts initiative, The Big Read returns to Kansas City in April 2009 to bring readers the Tobias Wolff novel Old School.

Through the combined efforts of the Libraries of Greater Kansas City, there are more opportunities than ever to join The Big Read – and the Kansas City Public Library is doing its part with a series of discussions focused on themes presented throughout Old School. Get acquainted with the novel or enhance your understanding of its meaning through these presentations.

The deeper meanings of the novel are examined in The Forked Tongue: Truth and Fiction in Old School as presented by Christie Ann Hodgen on Wednesday, April 22, at 6:30 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.

Tobias Wolff’s novel is about more than a prep student’s literary aspirations. It is also a novel about the writing process itself. Essentially a work of realism, Old School’s treatment of the writing process brings to the novel a sense of the postmodern and the metafictional, in the tradition of Borges and Roth. This presentation examines how Wolff and his characters attempt to find truth by creating their own fictions.

Hodgen teaches creative writing and contemporary literature at UMKC and is author of Hello, I Must Be Going.