TOBIAS WOLFF

(1945-)

BACKGROUND

  • born in Birmingham, Alabama
  • divorced parents
    • he with mother
    • brother with father
  • moved from Florida, to Utah, to Washington
    • (abusive boyfriend)
  • neglectful stepfather

BACKGROUND

  • Vietnam
  • Oxford University (BA)
  • Stanford University (MA)

THEMES

  • Fate = consequences of choices made (Greek tragedy)
  • good people making bad moral decisions
  • search for meaning, the meaning of life beneath the surface of daily existence
  • salvation through connection (see Alice Walker)
     

THEMES

  • TONE:
    • compassion
    • understatement (deceptively casual narrator)
       

STYLE

STYLE:

  • humor
  • vivid, evocative, descriptive
  • plain prose, informal (Tim O’Brien)
  • precise
  • realism (“dirty realism”)

GENRES:

  • memoir, autobiographies
  • read like short stories, though
  • no self-pity regarding his abuse & neglect
  • short story (realism)

 STYLE

SUBJECTS =

  • ordinary people
  • dealing with problems of late-20th-century life
    • (see also):
    • Flannery O’Connor
    • Tim O’Brien
    • Alice Walker
  • VIETNAM:
    • soldier
    • maturation process at war
    • returning home & dealing/coping
    • power of telling stories (romanticizing own life)
      • see Tim O’Brien “Things Carried”
      • (Vietnam, storytelling, ways to cope/deal)

NOTES

"Powder"

"Say Yes"

 NOTES

“Hunters in the Snow”

 

LINKS LINKS