Magnificent!

Reading “The Writer’s Library”, in an interview with Richard Ford, the name of Tobias Wolfe is mentioned as one of his favorite authors. As it happened, this book was in the Plus Catalog. So this has been my first introduction to this author. I found the stories sheer and beautiful as gossamer wings, beautifully spun, wise, insightful, intimate and multilayered. Delightful.

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Mostly unsatisfying, but one absolute gem

The gem, I think, is a haunting little story, just three or four pages long, called “Bullet in the Brain.” When it appeared in the New Yorker many years ago, a friend – a professional fiction editor – phoned me and excitedly urged me to read it. It’s a beauty. However, to be honest, it probably works better in print than read aloud, even though Anthony Heald (you remember him as the smarmy prison psychiatrist in “The Silence of the Lambs”) does his usual brilliant job.

And now, from here on, SPOILER ALERT!

The rest of this collection was, for me, pretty unsatisfying. I’m aware Woolf is a highly respected writer (and teacher of writing), but all his stories seemed typical of the sort of work that comes out of college fiction classes: You know in advance that their view of humanity will be a sour one, that they’re going to end a little too soon, on a note of incompleteness and ambiguity, and that before the tale ends, someone is going to be revealed as weak or duplicitous or cruel.

And they also seem a little dated. The first story, for example, pretentiously titled “In the Garden of the North American Martyrs,” features some ridiculously caricatured academics, and it's so off the mark, or at least so out of date, that the main character, a woman professor interviewing for a job at another college, learns to her disappointment that the hiring committee has already decided that only a man is actually going to be considered, and that she is merely the token woman. I don’t think that was remotely true even fifty years ago.

The second selection, “Next Door,” recounts the narrator’s puzzlingly mild, low-key reaction to some brutal, noisy, drunken neighbors who, among other things, beat their dog almost to death. In the third, “Hunters in the Snow,” a dog is shot dead, and the hunters of the title are revealed to be so absurdly selfish and callous that two of them stop for coffee in a roadside snack bar and chat about a love affair while their wounded companion lies outside freezing to death. You get the feeling that these tales are deliberately unpleasant, and they don't even have the virtue of ringing true.

“The Rich Brother” presents two brothers being nasty to each other on a long road trip, one a naive screwup, the other successful and somewhat protective but also possessed of a cruel streak. It’s not bad, but then they pick up a hitchhiking con man whose obvious tall tale – about a Peruvian gold mine – seems annoyingly cartoonish and cliched. The next story, “Leviathan,” is just a catty conversation, over wine and drugs, among two couples, all four faintly objectionable and not very nice to one another.

“Desert Breakdown, 1968,” as in many a movie, offers us a dusty nondescript gas station down an empty desert road, with four guys in cowboy hats sitting around outside, and you know immediately that they're going to be menacing, threatening, and unfriendly to a couple who drive up, unlike actual human beings in Arizona or pretty much anywhere. (One even flicks a cigarette butt at the car.) This sort of thing is fine in a genre story -- horror, crime, whatever; you expect it. But in mainstream fiction, it just feels tiresomely fake.

One story, “The Chain” – in which yet another dog is shot! – starts out fairly intriguingly, but by the end it has turned into a preachy parable about racial injustice. “Two Boys and a Girl” is about the betrayal of a friend, as well as disappointment in love. I could go on, but you’ve already gotten the idea: Aside from the admirable “Bullet in the Brain,” this collection gave me barely a moment’s pleasure.

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Story titles missing.

Good book but the lack of chapter titles is a big problem. A lot of audible books do this but it’s a bigger irritation here because each chapter is another short story.

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4 people found this helpful

Quick transitions

My complaint about this audio book is that each of these stories has absolutely no pause between them. The listener will be unaware that one story has ended and the next begun unless one pays extra attention or is utterly confused.

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5 minute walk

Wolf can make a five minute walk last 30 minutes and each step an adventure.
This book is like reading the leftovers of a prolific author where even the cast-off is mesmerizing. Some stories leave you hungry. But, so does life.
A perfect reader for his work.

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3 people found this helpful

excellent writing, but the reality too grim

The writing, and the narration were excellent, but the grimes of the stories were to much, didn't finish.

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1 person found this helpful

Wonderful stories and a good reader

I loved this book. My only complaint is that they should have included five or ten second gaps between the stories. One story ends and then you immediately hear the title for the next story.

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10 people found this helpful

Glance into Real Life with Wolff

Tobias Wolff's stories are always interesting, often a little strange. But, at least to me, they feel real, like covert peaks at the real lives people are living underneath pretense and costume. The characters are never noble or enviable, but they are enticing and likeable. They feel like people you almost know, or maybe the true selves under the people you think you know .

Great book.

David

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amazed at his skill witb words

He can craft a life experience with a few well chosen words that can take you to another world

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Great

I have very little experience reading Tobias Wolfe. I tried "Old School" a few years back, but got bored with it. However I gave this collection of short stories a shot and am glad I did. What amazes me is how different each story is. Its almost as if a different person wrote each story. They are all very engrossing and have strong characters. I enjoyed this audio and will definitely listen to it again in the future

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29 people found this helpful