Wolff, Tobias - James Hannah (essay date 1996)
James Hannah (essay date 1996)
SOURCE: Hannah, James. “In the Garden of the North American Martyrs.” In Tobias Wolff: A Study of the Short Fiction, pp. 3-44. Boston: Twayne, 1996.
[In the following essay, Hannah studies each of the twelve stories that compose In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, focusing on how each reflects themes about changing one's life for the better.]
INTRODUCTION
It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; it's one of the affirming arts. It's one of the most intimate things that people do together. … A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act.
Tobias Wolff, from an interview with Jean W. Ross
In 1981, such an “optimistic act” as Tobias Wolff describes above took place with the publication of...
[The entire page is 18789 words long]
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