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TOBIAS WOLFF
(6/19/1945-)

BIOGRAPHY:
o born in Birmingham, Alabama
o divorced parents; he with mother, brother with father
o moved from Florida, to Utah, to Washington (abusive boyfriend)
o neglectful stepfather
o Vietnam
o Oxford University (BA)
o Stanford University (MA)
 TONE:
o compassion
o understatement (deceptively casual narrator)
 STYLE:
o humor
o vivid, evocative, descriptive
o plain prose, informal (Tim O’Brien)
o precise
o realism (“dirty realism”)
 THEMES:
o Fate = consequences of choices made (Greek tragedy)
o good people making bad moral decisions
o search for meaning, the meaning of life beneath the surface of daily existence
o salvation through connection (see Alice Walker)
 SUBJECTS =
o ordinary people
o dealing with problems of late-20th-century life
o (see Flannery O’Connor, Tim O’Brien, Alice Walker)
o VIETNAM:
 soldier
 maturation process at war
 returning home & dealing/coping
 power of telling stories (romanticizing own life)
 see Tim O’Brien “Things Carried” (Vietnam, storytelling, ways to
cope/deal)
 GENRES:
o memoir, autobiographies
 read like short stories, though
 no self-pity regarding his abuse & neglect
o short story (realism)
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"HUNTERS in the SNOW" (1980)