Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

After hearing the author's name for many years, and being unfamiliar with his works, my curiosity prompted me to buy this collection of stories. Mr. Wolff has certainly mastered the use language and all its subtleties. This may be impressive on its own, but when I read a story, I want a plot that has an ending, and characters that span a wide range of emotional responses, all of which should generate a degree of empathy within me. This is where he fails completely as a writer of fiction. All stories need a denouement and some sort of recognizable message/theme for the reader. However, Wolff falls into the trap that so many others do of championing the "non-ending" of a tale. I saw this in the so-called "avant garde" fiction I encountered in college as a confused English major, 50 years ago. It's past time for authors to post-modernize fiction. In addition, I cannot relate to any character, real or imaginary, who is pathetic and depressed, whether creating his/her own reality, or a victim of fate. We used to call these "protagonists." Wolff's characters need heavy doses of medication and a bed in a psychiatric ward. If you are looking for uplifting stories with some degree of hope for mankind, then stay away from this author.

Perhaps in the tradition of Raymond Carver's decision to compile in 'peak-career' his 'greatest hits' compilation of short stories in Where Im Calling From, out comes Tobias Wolff with this fantastic book. These stories are short-short (more in the length tradition of Barthelme than Carver), but you will be amazed on the clarity, load of the subject, conciseness, and impact. The tone and style can shift between stories as well--humurous to morose, declarative to imperative, relaxed to upfront, 'heavy' themes to moderate/light--perhaps testifying to how careful Wolff plans, writes, edit, and re-edit his stories before publishing. The craftiness or perhaps sheer natural talent of Tobias Wolff in working with shorts is astounding. He makes it look easy. Read BULLET IN THE BRAIN first, then follow with Hunters in the Snow and The Liar.; you'll immediately be paid back of the book's total price.

Tobias Wolff's latest collection of short stories, written over a period of thirty years, contains twenty-one previously published in book form with ten new stories added. The characters and situations are diverse although a good many stories take place in the snow; as one character says, however-- and I tend to agree with him-- snow is much overrated. I also agree with the writer Edward P. Jones whose definition of a good short story is one that "the world, for even one character, has shifted, whether to a large or a tiny degree." These stories (at least practically all of them) would interest Mr. Jones. In some of them the shift is enormous: a bank customer is shot in the head by a robber; one hunter shoots a friend, a fellow hunter; a young man in an act of definace paints a white picket fence red; a professor, having learned that she has been duped into interviewing for a teaching position that the search committee has already decided on, veers from her canned lecture on the Marshall Plan into an extemporaneous speech about the barbarism of the Iroquois. In others the world moves inside the head of the character. In "Awaiting Orders" a sergeant realizes that he is ashamed to take a woman and her child home with him, not because he has a male lover, but because she will see that he doesn't care for the lover as much as the lover cares for him. "What he feared, what he could not allow, was for her to see how Dixon [his lover] looked at him, and then to see that he coud not give back what he received. That things between them were unequal, and himself unloving." A man at the death watch for his mother no longer knows how to be a son but can be a father. Mr. Wolff writes about relationships, the "shakiness" of families, young love, betrayal, characters who are down and out although they seldom whine-- in a word often decent people. One of my favorite stories is "The Night in Question," a beautiful moving account of a brother and sister who had an abusive father. The siblings are worlds apart because the brother has gone off the deep end with religion but still so close because of their love for each other. It bears reading again and again. Wolff's seamless transparent prose is for the most part free of metaphor although older people have "wintry smiles" and a "wide woman" on a bus has flesh under her arms that "swings like hammocks." These stories are not for the lazy reader for they are as subtle and complex as anything Henry James ever wrote although Mr. Wolff certainly is a master of the short story himself.

"I think that this is a great set of stories and it gives me - from my European point-of-view - a fascinating insight view into the lives of more or less `ordinary' American citizens. And that in a very unorthodox, `alert" style. So every time I end one of the brilliant stories in this collection I think: "How does Mr Wolff do it, how can he make such masterly stories with the help of such a clean-cut choice of words and terms? And conversations and settings? But then I give it up; Tim O'Brien is right: this phenomenon cannot be explained. And I? I simply go on reading these great stories."

It's hard to find a writer who strives to write straight ahead stories that have such simplicity and force. This is a great retrospective coupled with a lot of new stories.

Let me say it straight out -- Tobias Wolff is an absolute genius in crafting stories. This collection -- ten absorbing new stories combined with twenty-one of his anthologized works -- is pitch perfect in every regard. These are not stories that forces the reader to dig deep for symbolism and didacticism. Each is accessible, but each also presents a universal truth that somehow, someway, burrows its way straight into the reader's own mind and heart. This reader kept pausing and thinking, "But how did he KNOW that? How an he possibly be so empathetic and get it so darn RIGHT?" There's the at-loose-ends professor with a one hopeful chance, who finally finds the courage to give back as much as is dished out to her. The hunters in the snow who stand up to a bully. The American in Rome who feels a strange connection with the gypsy who picked his pocket. A night in question, where filial connections are explored. A first love that never stops haunting the now successful man. Many of these stories are ordinary occurrences that rise to the extraordinary. Many involve regular folks who gain the authenticity to truly become themselves...or to discover the meaning behind their lives and their actions. I know I will not soon forget many of these characters, who in ten or fifteen pages, solidly come to life. For anyone who wants to explore the human condition -- our cowardice, our selfishness, our dreams, our connectiveness -- I urge you to read Tobias Wolff. He's the real thing.