Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Wolff, Tobias - Michael Wood (review date 23 December 1994)

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Michael Wood (review date 23 December 1994)

SOURCE: Wood, Michael. “What You'd Call a Good Man?” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4786 (23 December 1994): 22.

[In the following review, Wood offers a mixed assessment of In Pharaoh's Army, complimenting Wolff's style and skill but questioning the tone of the memoir.]

At the end of Tobias Wolff's short novel, The Barracks Thief, the narrator looks back on his life and sees in his army service an emblematic moment, a place where three once-raw recruits came to represent radically different destinies. One became a thief, another a deserter, while the narrator became “a conscientious man, a responsible man, maybe even what you'd call a good man—I hope so”. Disavowals haunt this wary self-congratulation. “But I'm also a careful man, addicted to comfort, with an eye for the safe course.” He won't ever bother his neighbours, “or expect them to be my friends”.

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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