Tobias Wolff Critical Essay | Critical Essay by John F. Desmond

Critical Essay by John F. Desmond

SOURCE: Desmond, John F. “Catholicism in Contemporary American Fiction.” America 170, no. 17 (14 May 1994): 7, 11.

In the following excerpt, Desmond examines Wolff's preoccupation with liars in “In the Garden of the North American Martyrs” and The Barracks Thief, and comments on the influence of Catholicism on these works.

Writing an essay about contemporary “Catholic” fiction may seem an exercise in creative anachronism. After all, more than 30 years ago Flannery O'Connor wrote: “The very term ‘Catholic’ novel is suspect, and people who are aware of its complications don't use it except in quotation marks. If I had to say what a ‘Catholic’ novel is, I could only say that it is one that represents reality adequately as we see it manifested in the world of things and human relationships.” O'Connor added that such writing “will be a strange and, to many, perverse fiction … which gives us...
(read more)