Short storyYes, I liked it ... though I'm learning I'm not a fan of the short story. If I focus solely on the writing, I do best - none of that "I want more to it."Like the family in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" "Bullet in the Brain" has its main character Anders in the wrong place at the wrong ...
REVIEWI had never heard of Tobias Wolff before randomly finding this book in a thrift store, but a little internet research pre-read told me I should have. It turned out he was heavily lauded and showered with awards and adoration, and also published some semi-classics, such as In Pharoah's Army....
Tobias Wolff must drive writing instructors nuts. His prose is easy, lucid, and wonderfully effective... but its sheer easiness, lucidity, and effectiveness makes it impossible to crack. Like George Orwell's, his style is a zenlike no-style -- no splashy effects, no tricky wordplay, nothing you...
At Donald Hall's house, he talked quite a bit about formalism and style in literary traditions. He told me that a person can't really move into the contemporary unless they have read pre-1800's writing and beyond. In Charles Simic's classes, he taught a more delicate, elegant modern aesthetic. hi...
(FROM MY BLOG) Tobias Wolff teaches English and creative writing at Stanford University. I first learned of his writing when I was sent his fictionalized childhood memoir, This Boy's Life, as part of a subscription to works by Stanford faculty. I liked it, having as yet no inkling that it woul...
Pete was a Foreign Service officer, educated at Groton and Harvard, very talented, very accomplished. He already spoke French, German, and Italian, and while everyone else was still rendering Vietnamese as if it were some absurd mutation of English he’d begun learning its poetry. He was athletic ...