"I was a liar myself when I was a kid. I'm still a liar, really, and I don't mean just in terms of telling stories and being a story writer. I wouldn't ever want to be held to a literal version of the facts when I tell people a story," Tobias Wolff told Jean W. Ross in a Contemporary Authors interview. "I don't know that I'm really capable of it."
Unlike a naughty child inventing stories, or an executive falsifying credentials, Wolff is praised and lauded for his imaginative lies. As enthralled critics have so often observed, Wolff is a master storyteller. His short stories, novels, and memoirs (which are, in themselves, expertly packaged collections of stories) have earned him an assortment of sought-after fellowships and grants, three O. Henry short story prizes, and the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Despite his success in telling lies, however, truthfulness, or at least truthfulness as interpreted through memory, is important to Wolff as well.
