I've been reading Tobias Wolff's short stories since the early 1980s. He must be, with John Cheever, my two favorite short story writers.
With his latest collection Our Story Begins (sadly it omitted "The Missing Person"), we find a good common thread: Our pathological lies and self-deceptions. Here are my two essay options:
We read in Judith Shulvit's Slate book review of Our Story Begins the following:
To read a collection of Wolff's work that spans the years is to realize that he is obsessed with the act of lying. Asked in an interview why so many of his characters lie, Wolff replied, "The world is not enough, maybe? … To lie is to say the thing that is not, so there's obviously an unhappiness with what is, a discontent." A recent outbreak of faked memoirs has set off a storm of outraged pontification about why people pass off false histories as their own, so it's satisfying to read about liars who lie for interesting reasons rather than the usual despicable ones. Wolff is, in fact, a genius at locating the truths revealed by lies—the ancient and holy tongues, you might say, the otherwise inexpressible inner realities that lies give voice to.
In a six page paper, typed and double-spaced, develop a thesis that analyzes the characters' need to lie in Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins. Address at least 4 stories in your essay. For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Option 2
In one of his darker moods, our instructor McMahon said this about the human race:
"We are a lost and sorry lot, hopelessly imprisoned by self-deception: false narratives we rely on to define our identities; tantalizing chimeras that assuage the boredom of our banal existence, and willed ignorance that prevents us from seeing the grotesqueries roiling just underneath the facade that we present to the world and to ourselves. As a result, we are crazed and deformed creatures forever lost in a world of solipsism."
In a six-page essay, analyze McMahon's remarks in the context of no fewer than 4 stories from Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Comments