Tobias Wolff
Tobias Wolff
Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolffis an American short story writer, memoirist, and novelist. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Lifeand In Pharaoh's Army. He has written two novels, including The Barracks Thief, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and an array of short stories. Wolff received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in September 2015...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 June 1945
CityBirmingham, AL
CountryUnited States of America
Memory is funny. Once you hit a vein the problem is not how to remember but how to control the flow.
Most of us dont live lives that lend themselves to novelistic expression, because our lives are so fragmented.
What writers do is they tell their own story constantly through other people's stories. They imagine other people, and those other people are carrying the burden of their struggles, their questions about themselves.
Writers cannot let themselves be servants of the official mythology. They have to, whatever the cost, say what truth they have to say.
We each after a while have to become reconciled to what it is that our talents and appetites lead us to.
I recall that my workshop leaders were tactful in their ways of acquainting me with my shortcomings as a writer. So much so that I hardly realized they were doing it. I want always to keep that sort of thing in mind when I'm teaching. The way you get better in everything in this life is to make mistakes. Otherwise you're probably doing it right by accident. But you have to do everything wrong before you can really start with some authority to do it right.
There are writers who do start doing the same thing again and again and almost inevitably fall into self-parody.
But a lot of writers - and I'm one of them - do tend to feel dissatisfied. It makes you a little hard to live with, but it's a goad and does keep you alert and restless.
In writing you work toward a result you won't see for years, and can't be sure you'll ever see. It takes stamina and self-mastery and faith. It demands those things of you, then gives them back with a little extra, a surprise to keep you coming. It toughens you and clears your head. I could feel it happening. I was saving my life with every word I wrote, and I knew it.
To be a writer you need to see things as they are, and to see things as they are you need a certain basic innocence.
Reasons always came with a purpose, to give the appearance of a struggle between principle and desire. Principle had power only until you found what you had to have.
I teach one semester a year, and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester, a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s, people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.
Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing.
When your power comes from others, on approval, you are their slave. Never sacrifice yourselves - never! Whoever urges you to self-sacrifice is worse than a common murderer, who at least cuts your throat himself, without persuading YOU to do it.