Tobias Wolff

This Boy's Life is author Tobias Wolff's coming-of-age memoir. After his parents divorced, Wolff remained with his mother while his older brother lived with their father. There was almost always an abusive man in his mother's life. She wasn't the only one who suffered from the abuse. Tobias (who preferred the name “Jack”) suffered, too. With little parental supervision, Wolff unfailingly hooked up with the wrong crowd with every move. Deceit became second nature to Wolff. He lied, stole, show more and engaged in other delinquent behavior, likely for self-preservation. While I was moved by Wolff's circumstances, I also couldn't help wondering how deeply ingrained these habits are in Wolff's character. Might he be an unreliable narrator of his own life story? show less

Judging by the majority of the reviews here, I'm going to chalk up my experience to autism, childhood trauma, and a lack of affection for my parents because I just read an extremely short story about a selfish and ignorant father who, inspite of it being Christmas Eve and his marriage being on the rocks, stayed late on the slopes, drove in dangerous conditions while pontificating about himself and denigrating his son. Yeah, he has a moment or two of brief solipsistic thought about his show more feelings about his relationship without actually considering his partner or child or list don't to them, but that doesn't mean he actually cares or cares enough not to respect her time and the safety of their son.

Cis men need to be held to a higher standard because this wouldn't read the same or be treated anywhere near the same if this was a character of any other gender or experience. I mean, sure he only thought about himself all day and put him and his son in serious danger, but he really wanted to get back and everything to be OK. What a guy!

Honestly, getting myself a bit worked upwriting this and I can't tell if it's the dad being a total arsehole, reminding me of my crap folks, or getting all in my head about the positive and deep emotional reactions I'm seeing in other reviews.

I seriously thought this was going to end with a horrific accident.

OK. I'm really losing it now. People are saying the message is to live in the moment and not care about the future? That the organised kid (who to me seriously reads as neurodivergent and possibly grasping on to whatever stability he can with his parents splitting up) is finally loosening up and seizing the day? What in the fresh privileged, devil may care, cisheteronormative neurotypical masc hell are we talking about here? Screw your wife and her plans for Christmas Eve. Yours and your son's safety and likelihood of ending up in the back of a squad car, ambulance, or hearse before you get home. Seize the day, baybeeeeeee! EVERYONE! GET UP ON YOUR DESKS!!!

I get the kid idolising the rebellious, read: reckless, father. What's everyone else's excuse?

I'm leaving the review at two, as the prose is great, but I want to give it a one so bad.

(Oof. I am really tired, grumpy, and neurodivergent tonight with that nightmare chronic pain. This must be my most autistic review yet.) show less

I’ve grown weary of a certain type of fiction. Fiction that presents itself as fiction. Better said, fiction whose language strives (w/o precision) for poetry’s vague enchantments, and whose stories and details are of the kind that fruity old professors speak about in succulent terms, terms like pieces of brownly broiled chicken, these professors smacking their lips maddeningly on nothing but their ideas of something juicy. Somewhere a saucy Shakespearean actor shouts the word, show more “acting,” pronouncing it “ahkh-teen!” and shakes a soft fist at the audience. Anyway, et cetera. It’s unseemly, this kind of fiction. The fiction I like now is more like non-fiction. Tobias Wolffe’s fiction isn't like this; it's both real and precisely poetic. Wolffe is funny and exacting. He goes after hard detail and doesn’t repeat himself. His stories’ structures are intricate and interesting. He seemed to me to reveal in his stories the basic structure of life, as if opening the hood of an exotic sports car and slowly taking apart the engine, piece by gleaming piece. And he’s very funny, not just haha funny. And he’s wise. I’m certainly going to read him again. show less

A second read, the first was more or less when it was published, thirty years ago. Tobias is ten and he and his mother are fleeing Florida and yet another of her bad relationships, headed for Utah; it is the early 50's. When she and Tobias's father split, each took one child. The other, Geoffrey Wolff is also a writer and among other things wrote about their father in The Duke of Deception- a handsome, brilliant, charismatic man who was unable, basically, to ever tell the truth. He tells the show more story of this six or so year period of his life in a series of connected stories in sections--each section focussed around a place and a situation and that are further divided into separate vignettes.

If possible the memoir was even more rewarding the second time around because my understanding of both the emotional difficult and the writing 'craft' that went into the creation goes so much deeper. Wolff achieves (what is more or less impossible) writing a memoir about that specific (and critical) period between pre- and late-adolescence not as a narrative but as a series of stories, dialogue and all, that is utterly convincing as a memoir. While it is written as if fiction, it feels and is, surely, the truth of that period of his life. Perhaps only his truth, but truth. One could discuss why this works for days or weeks. Wolff himself says in his preface: "I remember the past in terms of stories. That's how I think of it, how I talk about it, and how I've written it here." I've written plenty of stories that are based on my life experiences, but I deviate from the facts knowingly to shape the story the way I want it to go. Most of us can't help doing that, interfering with and remaking our past in that way. Here, Wolff ruthlessly re-imagines the past exactly as he remembers it, I say ruthlessly because he doesn't spare himself for one second. He is his father's son and lying and subterfuge come naturally to him, sometimes with (some) justification, sometimes not. Also he re-inhabits the mind of the boy he was, with no judgement from his adult self about the things he did (and didn't) do. Such as regret, yes, or even something like disbelief at his stupidity or naivete but never judgement. He was a kid, this is how I coped. The self-awareness that went into the work is blinding. ***** show less