In the Garden of the North American Martyrs

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In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (eBook) Pub. Date: 10/13/2009 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
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In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (Reissue) Pub. Date: 10/28/1996 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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In the Garden of the North American Martyrs Pub. Date: 10/28/1994 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1st ed) Pub. Date: 10/1/1982 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
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In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1st ed) Pub. Date: 10/1/1981 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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Overview

Among the characters you'll find in this collection of twelve stories by Tobias Wolff are a teenage boy who tells morbid lies about his home life, a timid professor who, in the first genuine outburst of her life, pours out her opinions in spite of a protesting audience, a prudish loner who gives an obnoxious hitchhiker a ride, and an elderly couple on a golden anniversary cruise who endure the offensive conviviality of the ship's social director.

Fondly yet sharply drawn, Wolff's characters stumble over each other in their baffled yet resolute search for the "right path."

What People Are Saying

Annie Dillard

"Tobias Wolff is a captivating, brilliant writer, one of the best we've got."

Joyce Carol Oates

"One of the strongest short story collections to appear in recent years."

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780880014977
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 10/28/1996
Edition description: Reissue
Pages: 192
Sales rank: 484,815
Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.25 (h) x 0.48 (d)

Meet the Author

Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University. Author of the recent novel Old School, he has received the Rea Award for excellence in the short story, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. His collection of short stories, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, is also available from Ecco.

Biography

Although Tobias Wolff has described his own youthful self as a liar and an imposter, he has achieved in his writing a level of honesty so unflinching it is almost painful to read. The author of two groundbreaking literary memoirs and several volumes of autobiographical fiction (short and long), Wolff is not just willing to lay bare his pretenses and self-deceptions; he feels an obligation to do so. Like Rumpelstilskin, he has spun experience, memory, and a remarkable gift for storytelling into literary gold.

Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, Wolff barely knew his largely absent father, a man he and his older brother Geoffrey (also a writer) have described as a con artist and a compulsive liar. While he was still young, Wolff's parents officially split up. Geoffrey went to live with his father; Tobias stayed with his mother, who moved around from state to state in a steady, westerly progression that finally landed them in Washington. Never a good judge of character where men were concerned, his mother married an abusive martinet who made her son's life miserable. Wolff recounted his misspent, miserable youth in This Boy's Life, a groundbreaking 1989 memoir that later became a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Barkin, and Robert De Niro.

Wolfe escaped his troubled home environment by falsifying an application to a private boys' school in the East and fabricating a resumé so remarkable it got him in. He flunked out before graduating, enlisted in the military, and was sent to Vietnam -- an experience he chronicled in a second memoir, In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War, published in 1994. When he was discharged from service, he visited England, fell in love with the country, and studied, with the help of tutors, to gain entrance to Oxford. He graduated with honors in 1972 and received a scholarship to Stanford, where he received his master's degree.

A three-time winner of the O. Henry Award, Wolff is widely respected for his short stories. His first collection, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, was published in 1981 and received rave reviews from such past masters of the genre as Annie Dillard and Joyce Carol Oates. Subsequent anthologies have only served to solidify his reputation as a preternaturally gifted storyteller. His 1984 novella The Barracks Thief won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; and in 2003, he published his first novel, Old School, a shrewdly observed, heavily autobiographical coming-of-age tale set in an elite boys' boarding school.

Nearly as famous for his teaching as for his books, Wolff served on the faculty of Syracuse University for 17 years before accepting a position at Stanford in 1997 as a professor of English literature and creative writing. He is also a crackerjack editor and has shepherded several short story anthologies through to publication.

Good To Know

Leonardo DiCaprio beat out 400 hopefuls from Los Angeles, New York, Florida, and all places in between to star as Tobias Wolff in the film version of This Boy's Life.

Separated at a young age by their parent's divorce, Tobias and Geoffrey Wolff both grew up to become successful writers. Geoffrey's 1979 memoir of life with his con-artist father is called The Duke of Deception.

In an interview with The Boston Book Review, Tobias Wolfe discussed the phenomenon of selective memory this way: " Memory is something that you do; it is not something that you have. You remember, and when you remember you bring in all the resources of invention, calculation, self-interest and self-protection. Imagination is part of it too."

1. Also Known As:
  
  Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff (full name)
2. Hometown:
  
  Northern California
1. Date of Birth:
  
  June 19, 1945
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Birmingham, Alabama
1. Education:
  
  B.A., Oxford University, 1972; M.A., Stanford University, 1975

Customer Reviews

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mickelsson

Posted October 3, 2010

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An excellent first collection

First published in 1981, this was the debut of Tobias Wolff, who--along with writers such as Gina Berriault, Raymond Carver, and Andre Dubus--created a renaissance of the American short story in the 1970s and 80s. A number of the settings are academic, which may be off-putting to some readers, but the characters are deep and complex. All inhabit a world in which the comforts of family, friendship, and civility are constantly being eroded. In direct but elegant language, we follow these characters' struggles to maintain dignity. If you enjoy short stories, this is a must-read.
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BJStarr

Posted October 8, 2009

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Good short stories...

The best, tremendous, practically perfect, one of my favorites? Thats what everyone seem says in their reviews about Tobias Wolff''s short stories.

"In the Garden of the North American Martyrs" is a quality collection, but alot of the writing is dry and outdated.

Compared to other collections of short stories, Wolff's collection just doesn't match up.

These stories were written between 1976 & 1981 and that explains alot in my opinion. Several of the stories are really dull and the topics really leave off without grabbing your attention.

Those stories that I did enjoy:

Wingfield
Poaching
The Liar

Although this book didn't wow me, I'm looking forward to reading his newer short story collection "The Night in Question"

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