Life > April 10, 2008

By Kyle Lawrence | Staff writer

Awash in this modern, globally-intertwined world where multicultural fashions, cinema and literature become progressively more chic and vogue, the average American consumer may find themselves wishing for more.

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Or, to be correct, less.

While extravagance in embellishment can be pleasing in a frivolous way, it’s often the blunt, concise and poignant drama that leaves the most lasting impression.

Tobias Wolff’s new collection of short stories, Our Story Begins, successfully gives his readers just this type of fresh, gritty and accessible American literature, all at once heart-wrenching and morally affecting.

Wolff has gained literary accolades with several volumes of short stories in the past decades, including In the Garden of North American Martyrs, Back in the World and The Night in Question.

He has received the O. Henry Award, the only annual recognition for excellence in short story writing, on three separate occasions.

His new collection, the first in a decade, features 21 old and 10 new stories.

Many of the new stories center on a single, astonishingly well-drawn character. Each seems a little gem of candid American life. Wolff sets his scope on the simpletons of our society who are so often overlooked, illuminating them with refreshing vigor.

“That Room” is narrated by an unnamed teenage boy who, as he describes, “got a case of independence.” The boy, who works on a farm during the summers between high school years after hitchhiking away from his family, encounters other young males of differing backgrounds. A straight-laced son of a farmer and two other Hispanic farmhands make the tale deeply atmospheric. This story proves to be emotionally charged with tension, and small ambiguities in the plot allow varied interpretation and reward mindfulness and close reading. “Awaiting Orders,” is a story of a career military man, Sergeant Morse, and his strained interactions with the common citizenry as he tries to aid the impoverished sister of one of his Iraq-bound soldiers.

It skillfully exhibits Wolff’s ability to allow readers to peer through windows of American minds that typically remain latched shut.

Wolff aptly conveys the secret feelings of a military man, a type who is so often guarded and hard to crack.

“He had spent twenty of his thirty-nine years in the army,” Wolff wrote.

“He was not one of those who claimed to love it, but he belonged to it as to a tribe, bound to those around him by the lines of unrefusable obligation, love being finally beside the point. “He was a soldier, no longer able to imagine himself as a civilian – the formlessness of that life, the petty choices to be made.” “Her Dog,” another new story, is a touching, tender insight into a widower’s psyche. John, whose wife Grace died years earlier, now tends to Victor, the dog that she left behind. Though during Grace’s life John found the dog a nuisance, he now regards Victor with love. Struggling and clamoring through all of the memories left behind by his former partner, John reveals a rare tenderness with Victor, and a conversation between the man and dog crops up in the story. Though outlandish and unorthodox, the conversation exacts a prickly fate upon the reader; whether desired or not, audiences are forced to confront the dark, secret sentiments and regrets felt after losing a loved one.

Ultimately, Wolff’s collection of stories suits the reader searching for something substantial, meaty and fulfilling.

Certainly not every story is cheerful, and some are downright depressing.

However, anyone seeking modern literature that keenly unveils the fundamentals of the contemporary American ought to delve into Wolff’s works. His stories, showcasing an acute talent, dissect the lives of those we so often find to be our neighbors, family, friends and enemies.