Tobias Wolff Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Martin Scofield

Critical Essay by Martin Scofield

SOURCE: Scofield, Martin. “Winging It: Realism and Invention in the Stories of Tobias Wolff.” Yearbook of English Studies 31 (2001): 93-108.

In the following essay, Scofield argues that realism and experimentalism in literature are not mutually exclusive concepts.

What is the best way to get a critical purchase on the stories of Tobias Wolff? Inevitably, he has hitherto been put in the critical filing cabinet in one of the sections of the drawer marked “Realism.” As long ago as 1963 Gordon Becker wrote in the introduction to his Documents of Modern Literary Realism: “Certainly it would add to ease of discourse in the future if whatever happens next should be given a new name, and not be tagged with some variant or permutation of the word ‘realism’.”¹ But this has not prevented the persistence of the (more or less serious) permutations: “Dirty Realism” (Granta, 8 [Summer 1983], a volume that...
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