Tobias Wolff and Murakami?

So a little while ago, we went over a plot element of 1Q84 in class. What stuck out to me was the mention of the main character plagiarizing a poorly written essay with strong content to win a contest of some sort. It reminded me almost exactly of the novel Old School by Tobias Wolff, but it took me a while to remember the name of the book and author.

I haven't read 1Q84, so I can't say exactly how close this plot element is to Old School, but I can say a little about Old School. In the boy's boarding school where the novel takes place, there is a school tradition where famous authors come talk. Alongside that tradition is an essay contest that students compete in to speak to these authors personally. The protagonist wishes to speak to a specific author but cannot come up with an essay he feels will work. Instead, he finds a poorly written essay written by a girl in another school concerning her secret Jewish heritage. While the student finds the writing unremarkable, he feels the content is good, and he of course writes the winning essay. After his plagiarism is discovered, he is expelled. Near the end of the novel, he meets the girl. She is largely ambivalent about his plagiarism despite having reported it when she saw it.

So that's the plot in a paragraph. I did a little research to look for a connection between Tobias Wolff and Murakami, but I didn't find anything direct. I did find out, however, that Tobias Wolff and Raymond Carver were colleagues in Syracuse, so,  if there is a connection, it may be there.