Four Stories and Me

Four Stories and Me
(This essay retraces some of the ground covered in this post. It was written for the competition held by Thresholds and as they didn't appreciate it I thought I'd inflict it on you. Thresholds have lots of interesting essays on the short story if you feel like reading more.)

Sometimes it seems that a short story can embed itself deep inside the memory, into crannies that novels can’t fit into. Some stories are forever curling and uncurling deep inside my own head. Why have these particular stories burned so deeply into my mind? It seems to me that many of those that have managed to establish themselves in my mind depict an absurd world where actions are dictated by chance and prejudice and the frailty and insignificance of human life are foregrounded.

Old School

Old School - Tobias Wolff

There are not many better books about writing than this. The narrator  goes to a boarding school where writing is taken very seriously. During his final year Robert Frost, Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemmingway all accept invitations to visit the school for readings. The final year students compete for a one on one meeting by submitting some of their own writing. The narrator is one of the " boys who aced their English classes and submitted work to the school lit mag and hung around with other book-drunk boys." He is one of the editorial team on the school's literary magazine Troubadour.

The book is about truth and lies, loyalty and betrayal and much else besides. It is both wise and funny. It is unusual in Wolff's canon in that it is a novel that covers the period between his two memoirs, This Boy's Life and In Pharoah's Army. Indeed towards the end of  This Boy's Life Wolff tells us how he faked supporting letters from his teachers to help him get a scholarship to the exclusive Hill School.