Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Wolff, Tobias - Dean Flower (review date summer 1982)

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Dean Flower (review date summer 1982)

SOURCE: Flower, Dean. “Fiction Chronicle.” Hudson Review 35, no. 2 (summer 1982): 278-79.

[In the following excerpt, Flower offers a mixed assessment of In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, lamenting Wolff's use of both physical and mental “gratuitous cruelty” in the stories.]

Tobias Wolff's short stories [in In the Garden of the North American Martyrs] depend so heavily on dialogue and limited points of view that they remind me of the early J. D. Salinger. Wolff has a fine ear for the clichés of hippie wisdom, the jargon of academic types, the formulas of parental criticism, and the evasions of the unhappily married. Children appear frequently in these stories, but the focus is more often on insecure and immature adults. The effect is less Salinger than, say, Raymond Carver, with its special emphasis on passivity and sublimation. Several of the stories are a delight to...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Valentine Cunningham (review date 14 March 1975)
   2. Bruce Allen (review date spring 1982)
   3. Richard Orodenker and Welch D. Everman (review date June 1982)
   4. Dean Flower (review date summer 1982)
   5. Bruce Allen (review date 7 June 1985)
   6. Thomas DePietro (review date autumn 1986)
   7. Linda Taylor (review date 6-12 November 1987)
   8. Richard Eder (review date 8 January 1989)
   9. Jeff Danziger (review date 16 February 1989)
   10. Geoff Dyer (review date 28 April 1989)
   11. John Clute (review date 12-18 May 1989)
   12. John Rechy (review date 5 November 1989)
   13. Peter J. Bailey (essay date summer 1991)
   14. John F. Desmond (essay date 14 May 1994)
   15. Richard Eder (review date 16 October 1994)
   16. Tobias Wolff and Nicholas A. Basbanes (interview date 24 October 1994)
   17. James Hannah (essay date 21 November 1994)
   18. Amanda Hopkinson (review date 9 December 1994)
   19. Michael Wood (review date 23 December 1994)
   20. Michael O. Garvey (review date 19 May 1995)
   21. Pat C. Hoy II (review date summer 1995)
   22. Jay Rogoff (review date summer 1996)
   23. James Hannah (essay date 1996)
   24. James Hannah (essay date 1996)
   25. Erin McGraw (review date summer 1997)
   26. Tobias Wolff and Elizabeth Glass (interview date July 1997)
   27. Daniel D. Challener (essay date 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright