Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Wolff, Tobias - Linda Taylor (review date 6-12 November 1987)

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Linda Taylor (review date 6-12 November 1987)

SOURCE: Taylor, Linda. “Disarmingly Armed.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4414 (6-12 November 1987): 1227.

[In the following review, Taylor discusses the vulnerability and appeal of Wolff's characters in The Barracks Thief.]

When the father leaves, at the beginning of this novella [The Barracks Thief], family life is devastated at a stroke. The brothers, Philip and Keith, in their early teens, are instantly divided: Keith who cries all the time (“He could not stop grieving”) is on the road to becoming a loser; Philip becomes hardened—he “learns to get along without his father, mainly by despising him”.

In 1967, with the war in Vietnam at its height, Philip, whose grades are too bad for him to get into college, on impulse joins the army. His story is about rawness, symbolized by the nettle-stung right hand of Lewis, a fellow-recruit and the archetypal boorish...

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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