Tobias Wolff, The "One Of A Kind Author"
Tobias Wolff has a unique style of writing, and a certain voice that makes him stand out from others. He usually writes his stories with the setting being in nature, or the outdoors. He writes a lot about characters who are undergoing some type of change, and he writes without a definite closure. His works are written about realistic events that could happen in real life. Wolff has a significant writing style that is, without a doubt, one of a kind.
Tobias Wolff was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on June 19, 1945, to Rosemary Loftus and Arthur Saunders Wolff. In 1949, his parents separated and he moved to Washington State with his mother. In 1961, he began prep school at The Hill School in Pottstown,
…show more content…
Pennsylvania but was expelled in 1963. He served four years in the U.S. Army being trained as a Green Beret and a conversant in Vietnamese. He received a bachelor of arts degree from Oxford University in English language and literature in 1972. In 1975, Wolff married Catherine Dolores Spohn. Also, in 1975, he took is master of arts degree from Oxford, and his only novel, Ugly Rumors, was published in England. He served as a reporter for the Washington Post for a short period of time. Wolff began teaching creative writing at Syracuse University in 1980, and remained there until 1997. Being a slow and methodical writer, Wolff admits to being his own critic, and he published his first short story collection in 1981. He has earned numerous awards such as the PEN/Falkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rea Award for the Short Story, The Story Prize, Whiting Awards, Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US and Canada, and the Ambassador Book Award for Biography and Autobiography (Hannah 1-4). Wolff tends to write his stories with the focus being on characters who are undergoing change.
For example, in his short story "Hunters in the Snow," Tub is a character who gets bullied by one of the other characters about his weight and a few other reasons. Throughout the story, Tub slowly starts to stand up for himself more and more and he becomes more confident. In “That Room,” the young boy goes from living a normal life as a teenager in high school, to getting his first adult job as a helper on a farm. The boy fears for his life when an intoxicated man pulls out a gun and points it toward him, which changes him and his outlook on life.
Wolff writes his stories with an indefinite closure, leaving the ending of the stories for the reader's intuition. This leaves the readers thinking and they use their imagination to predict what happens at the end of the story. In “Hunters In the Snow,” Tub and Frank told Kenny that they were taking him to the hospital for his gunshot wound, but they purposefully keep taking the wrong turns. The story never says what ends up happening to Kenny, but the last lines of the story read "’I'm going to the hospital,’ Kenny said. But he was wrong. They had taken a different turn a long way
…show more content…
back.” Wolff’s stories are written realistically, meaning that they are all written about events that could happen in real life. Both “That Room,” and “Hunters in the snow” are written realistically. They both portray real life events that could actually happen, and they do not seem to be make believe. All of the characters in both of the stories go through struggles that normal people go through each and every day, and the settings of both of the stories mostly take place in nature. Another reason that his works are said to be realistic, is because he does not force happy endings on any them. All of his stories stick to being realistic, and they do not stray off of that path, because not everything in everyday life has a happy ending (Sova 1). Wolff is said to be a “slow and methodical writer” (Hannah 1).
He takes his time when writing his stories, and he writes them in a fashion that makes the reader want to keep reading until they find out what happens. His stories are all written in a certain order that adds suspense to the plot. For example, in “Hunters In The Snow,” Kenny teases Tub throughout the whole story, and the readers have a feeling that Tub is going to react to Kenny’s teasing at some point, but never actually see it until towards the end of the story when Tub accidentally shoots Kenny.
Tobias Wolff is a unique writer. His realistic stories are usually centered around a character who is undergoing some type of change. His slow and methodical way of writing not only draws the reader in and keeps the reader’s attention, but his stories also finish off with an ending that leaves the reader questioning what happens after the story ends. These are just a few traits that make his works significantly stand out from
others. Page Break Works Cited James, Hannah. Tobias Wolff: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Macmillan, 1996. Macfee, Laurie. On Writing: Tobias Wolff. blog.sierranevada.edu/sierranevadareview/2013/09/19/on-writing-tobias-wolff/ Sova, Dawn B. “Wolff, Tobias.” Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds, Third Edition, Facts On File, 2011. Bloom’s Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=16498&itemid=WE54&articled=475267. Accessed 9 Apr. 2018. Wolff, Tobias. “That Room.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, edited by Michael Meyer, 11th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017, p. 810. Wolff, Tobias. “Hunters In The Snow.” www.classicshorts.com/stories/huntsnow.html
Devin Friedman is a creative storyteller who incorporates observant details in his writings, which makes the readers feel like as if they are part of the adventure. Devin attended the University of Michigan, and he was awarded as the winner of the Hopwood Contest. This contest was hosted by the university committee who appoints experienced judges and the Ann Arbor community to select winners in different writing divisions. In his recent years, Devin wrote for numerous publications such as The Best American Crime Writing, The Best American Travel Writing, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Esquire, People's Stories, and GQ. Out of the many articles Friedman has written in the past, “The Best Night $500,000 Can Buy,” “Famous People: James Franco,” and “The Unbearable Awkwardness of Being” are the ones I have chosen to read because of the interesting subject matters and the different writing styles.
In On Writing’s section titled “On Writing,” Stephen King iterates multiple times, his true feelings for writing by telling his story. The central point that he uses to say that writing is his passion and what he truly feels joy in is how he writes. King at one point says, “When I am writing, it is all the playground…”(King 149), this is the best example of how he translates his feelings. He uses the playground as a metaphor to intensify the joy he gets from writing, as a playground or park is something we can all relate to. It is not just that one quote, but it is also his tone as a whole, rather than being some distanced writer not showing emotion, he creates a tone of a proud father, pushing a child to love what he does, and not to take it for granted. King accomplishes this tone by giving small tips and tricks that he has used over the years, almost as a mentor to give the sense as it is not just a book, but a guide to becoming a better
The beauty of his artistic ability is what put him into kinetic movement of the creativity of writing. His writing inspired into movie productions, films, screenplays or reinactment. His published novels still moves on in the world today and lead to more inspired writers of mystery and suspense.
Personal experiences always have a different impact on the readers as well as the writers. Kate Chopin and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing styles derive from their personal experiences. For example, some of Chopin’s personal experiences include her growing up surrounded by intelligent and independent women, her being widowed at the age of thirty-two and
Many people think that reading more can help them to think and develop before writing something. Others might think that they don’t need to read and or write that it can really help them to brainstorm things a lot quicker and to develop their own ideas immediately (right away). The author’s purpose of Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, is to understand the concepts, strategies and understandings of how to always read first and then start something. The importance of this essay is to understand and comprehend our reading and writing skills by brainstorming our ideas and thoughts a lot quicker. In other words, we must always try to read first before we can brainstorm some ideas and to think before we write something. There are many reasons why I chose Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, by many ways that reading can help you to comprehend, writing, can help you to evaluate and summarize things after reading a passage, if you read, it can help you to write things better and as you read, it can help you to think and evaluate of what to write about.
Tobias Wolff is a strange writer whose work is "so absolutely clear and hypnotic that a reader wants to take it apart and find some simple way to describe why it works so beautifully"(Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life [back cover]). Although sometimes taking place in such foreign locations as Vietnam, Wolff's stories are predominantly based on banal situations and people. The magic in his writing though is the fact he draws the reader into the story at all times. He does so by connecting his characters and their conflicts to the reader, be it through quirks, qualities or quandaries. Wolff perfects these concepts by writing in his own lucid, terse style. "The tales in Wolff's [books] are seamless, their characters relentlessly ordinary"(Joan Smith, "Spelunking "). Through personal experience and careful observation Wolff gathers the necessary insight to piece together novels that clearly dealt with the "normal" man and woman, their problems, and their accomplishments. Wolff's stories do not consist of big drug deals or heated love triangles, but instead of prosaic situations. One such is when Wolff's older brother sent him some writing he had done and Wolff considered turning it into his English teacher as his, but dismissed the idea knowing he would never get away with it (Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life 200-201). Although occurring in hackneyed settings, many of Wolff's characters find themselves in situations they would never have thought possible: "The characters of these stories are basically decent people who discover that they're capable of things they never expected -- and can never again believe themselves worthy of being considered decent.
After reading an essay, ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King, I was highly interested in King’s opinion about the necessity of reading and writing frequently in order to become a good writer. In King’s essay he talks about how he does not read to study and that he simply reads just to read; however, King does point out that though he is not reading to study there is still a learning process happening with everything he reads. “Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.” (King) Why does King have this opinion about books?
many different forms to show how sophisticated and overall just great stories that he has
Wolff builds up the story on the platform of cold weather and the impact of the cold on each character slowly builds up. Kenny and Frank walk on one side of the creek and Tub walks on the other bank. All the way on their hunting path they had problems with the snow, especially Tub, who tends to swim in the deep snow, sometimes breaking through the hard crust that supports the lighter weight of the two other men. The frozen crust collapses under his weight, therefore he soon stops looking for traces and only tries to keep up with his friends (51). Their hunt was unsuccessful, they find no sign of deer and start returning to the trail that Tub has broken.
In this quote, Porter pretended himself as a porter of hell gate. This is considered as one mysterious writing style. Many details in the story are described as supernatural events which pointed the ostensible win of Macbeth is unrealistic. Macbeth is on the way of the hell, his guilty murdering will crash him forever. It is also one beginning symbolize of tragedy.
... well to portray how life actually was in those times. Most of his elements are true and add to the validity of the story and personality of the characters in it. He gives his readers a look into the world of a Southern style of life in the given time period.
Theodore Dreiser was a writer whose dramatic life shown through into his works indirectly. He led a life that could be considered a “typical American” one by the standards of persons reflecting back upon his upbringing and his climb to literary greatness. Dreiser was influenced by the social and political changes during his lifetime, as well as his family and upbringing and the impression those around him had on his life. Born in 1871 in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was the ninth of ten siblings born to a German father and Mennonite mother. Unfortunately, Dreiser’s family had suffered great losses before he was even born. His father, who had started his own business in wool, suffered a great loss when his mill caught fire and was severely injured and left disabled for life (Smith). This is not something that the family could ever recover from, and so Theodore Dreiser grew up impoverished and with a Father, whose own mental stability undoubtedly not only influenced his writing, but his own mental well-being. Dreiser never finished high school, and did one year at University before leaving his formal education behind him completely. He began his writing in the 1890’s as a journalist for the Chicago Globe. Although his writing did not elicit a “by line” that created a following for him through the newspaper, his experiences there are another aspect of his life which shaped some of his writing (Rizzio). He was a naturalist writer who was influenced by the popularity of social Darwinism at the turn of the century. Dreiser’s first novel, “Sister Carrie” is one that was controversial for its time, but would not be considered as such now. Publishers were hesitant to promote this novel, but were not successful in squandering its p...
What is writing style? I started out thinking that writing style is a personal thing and that all writers have their own style. But, this way of thinking is really just a simple way to answer the question. After more careful thought, I realized that style is actually quite the opposite of personal and original. Style is a form of standardization. As writers, we all follow certain rules and guidelines to make our point. Style is these rules and guidelines.
Nicholas Sparks is considered to be one of the greatest American authors of today. He provides love, romance, passion, drama, tragedy, comedy, triumph, and mystery in all of his novels. His stories are heartwarming and inspiring. Nicholas Sparks does not have a specific writing style. His writing style is flexible and liberal, and can be described as romantic, imaginative and engaging, and varies depending on the theme of the novel. The theme of the novel is the main thing that affects his writing style. Even though the themes of each novel mostly deal with love, each novel takes on different perspectives of love. His novels can be described as romantic, compassionate beach reads with real, relatable characters.
My author william sydney porter had a astonishing life changing experience while he was in prison. William Sydney Porter, later known as O. Henry wrote in a dry, but yet very humorous style as suggested in “The Gift of the Magi.” He generally used coincidences and many surprise endings. As a child he had a rough time working multiple jobs. He had a life changing experience that lead his work to be well known in american literature. His legacy all began from a crime he committed as a bank teller.