The Stories Of Tobias Wolff by Tobias Wolff

Despite their dried-up souls, vague remnants of Judeo-Christian morality still rattle around inside their rib cages, haunting them with the specter of moral choice (Wolff himself is a Roman Catholic).

Although most of them do not hope for much, many still have troubles separating their fantasies from reality. Despite their dishonesty and drug use, most of his characters fall within the range of a very shaky middle-class respectability or what passes for it in contemporary America. No overriding theme, message, or agenda seems to unite Wolff’s work-only his interest in people, their quirks, their unpredictability, their strivings and failings, and their predicaments as human beings. The influences on his work-his friend Raymond Carver and earlier masters such as Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and Flannery O’Connor-indicate the company Wolff intends to keep. For the reader, the result is full of surprises, insights, humor, and other line-by-line rewards, particularly in character portrayal and style. He has said, in interviews, that he needs time to get to know his characters but that the finished story no longer holds any surprises for him. Working slowly, sometimes taking months and countless drafts, he polishes each story into an entertaining, gemlike work that reads with deceptive ease. Tobias Wolff (born June 19, 1945) is an outstanding contemporary craftsman of the American short story.

The Stories Of Tobias Wolff by Tobias Wolff