This Boy’s Life (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Tobias Wolff
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: Memoir
- Time of Work: 1955-1963
- Setting: Salt Lake City, Utah; Seattle, Washington; and Chinook, Washington
- Principal Characters: Tobias (Jack) Wolff, Rosemary, Dwight, Geoffrey Wolff
- Genres: Nonfiction
- Subjects: Family or family life
- Locales: Seattle, WA
When Tobias Wolff was ten years old, he and his mother fled their home in Sarasota, Florida, both drawn by fantasies of a new life in a new place. In exchange for promising to attend catechism classes, Wolff persuaded his mother to call him “Jack” instead of Toby. To him, his new name evoked Jack London and implied a masculine world of adventure, guns, courage, and combat. He was eager to live a boy’s life, as suggested by the name of the scouting magazine popular during his youth. This Boy’s Life: A Memoir, winner of the 1989 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for...
[The entire page is 2200 words long]
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