Saturday, March 14, 2015

This Boys Life Through This Boys Eyes




A closer look at the very amazing and talented Tobias Wolff, and his master piece, This Boy's Life, arguably one of the greatest books of all time.


By:  Frank Grosso
 To take a good look at this boy’s life, we must start with the author himself, Mr. Tobias Wolff. Tobias was born in June of 1945, in Birmingham Alabama that will make him 70 years young come the 19th of June this year. Tobias is best known for his writing of this boy’s life, which first became available to the public in 1989. This boy’s life is a memoir that Tobias wrote of his childhood, having grown up in the North West, and having what some would call a gypsy for a mother and a very abusive step-father. Tobias maps out his childhood with some comedy and a whole lot of drama, but it all comes together to make for an excellent read, we will get into all this later in the blog. Wolff spent 4 years in the Army which included a tour in Vietnam, Wolff also attended and graduated from Oxford University, though after this Tobias was awarded a Writing fellowship at Stanford University, this is when he put out his first set of short stories, and of course both The garden of north america and Back in the world, were loved very much by many. But it was the one and only This boy's life that made Tobias the famous writer he is today. This boys life was made into a movie in 1993, and had a cast that you might not expect. It had Robert DeNiro playing Dale, and a very young Leonardo DiCaprio. He since all this has published a number of different short stories and also a memoir about his time in Vietnam. Along with the book writings Tobias has also had dozens of magazine pieces published.
The year was 1955 and Toby Wolff and his mother are on their way to Utah to make their fortune by mining uranium. While in Utah, Toby changes his name to Jack in honor of the           author Jack London and also because he did       not like his father at all because, he left them   right after Jack was born. Jack is very close to   
 who, because of her own abusive childhood, is always involved in some sort of violent and volatile men. First,there is Roy, Rosemary's second husband, Roy eventually leaves them, and Rosemary moves with Jack to Seattle, where she meets Dwight, who is an ok guy until Jack moves to Chinook to live with him, this is when Dwight shows his true colors and is very cruel and down right mean.

                                                                                                                                 Dwight is always putting jack down for real and imagined    flaws,this meanness weighs heavily on jacks mind day in and day out.  Dwight also forces Jack to deliver newspapers and takes the money Jack earns for himself.The only time Dwight is nice to Jack is when he teaches Jack how to fight. Dwight is excited when he finds out Jack is getting into fights, especially because it is with Arthur Gayle, a boy everyone calls "sissy" . 

The only place Jack finds real happiness is in his head in his thoughts. Dwight being the way he is only adds to everything Jack is going through. Jack wants nothing more than to be gone, he just wants to start over, but being stuck almost helped fuel all the imaginary stories he had going on inside his head. Although Jack didn't choose the best people to hang out with, and the kid was always in trouble, he knew he had to put different for his applications to private schools, Jack put down that he was an A-student, star athlete, and good citizen. Jack imagined, and obsessed so much about being this person, he had no trouble at all believing it. Jack always wanted to run away, he wanted freedom, well as much as he thought about it, it never happened except for once, well kind of. His plan was to run away after a big scout get together with Arthur. But Jack ended up meeting some again not very good boys at a carnival, he ended up getting took for all his money at the games in the carnival. So as much as Arthur tried to get Jack to leave, there was no leaving now since Jack had no money. Jack instead tried to bunk up with his brother at Princeton, but then this plan went all wrong when Jack was almost caught forging a bank check by the local cashier at the grocery store. Jack was after all excepted in to the                
elite Hill school, where a Mr.     Howard helped Toby try to 
succeed, him and his wife
even had Jack a new word-
robe fitted to him, Jack 
loved this it made him feel
very warm and wanted.
These are some things jack
has not had the opportunity
to experience very much in 
his life, so he was grateful.
Rosemary did end up leaving
Dwight after he shoved Jack in 
front of her. Rosemary arranged for Jack to stay with a friend of his, and of course he promised to be on his best behavior, but they was not followed through with, and Jack was caught stealing gas from the whelch farm, even though Jack feels terrible about this, he just cant seem to bring himself to apologize. This had made Jacks friends father so mad that he told Jack he had to go work for the whelches, but they were so mad at jack they refused his help.

The summer before Jack is due to begin at Hill, he goes to stay with his father in California to spend some time with his father and his brother. Immediately after Jack arrives, his father leaves for Las Vegas with his girlfriend. When Jack's father returns, he is arrested and later committed to a sanitarium, where he remains for the rest of the summer. Not surprisingly, Jack cannot make the grades that Hill demands, and is expelled midway through his senior year. After he is expelled from school, Jack joins the army and serves in the Vietnam War.

I made the decision to write about Tobias Wolff and his memoir This Boy’s life because it hits home on so many levels for young American boys. Sure we all don’t grow up with a gypsy type mother, or an abusive type father. But most boys do grow up struggling to find ourselves. Trying to figure who we are, what we are supposed to be in life. Tobias does a great job of really letting you into his life, and feeling as though you were a friend of his, walking beside him as he got into numerous different acts of just being a teenage boy. As I read this boy’s life, I often caught myself stopping and reminiscing back to my teenage years. Tobias does an amazing job of balancing his writing, from drama to comedy. This book will forever stand the test of time strictly because it has to. This is a must read, I myself have already told all my family about it and that they have to read, although this book was to take place back in the 50’s and 60’s, it really does not seem that way. A young man today could relate it to his life just as easy as a 90 year old could relate it to his. And that is another reason this book will forever be in the hands of eager readers.

At one point Rosemary, Jack And Dwight seemed like a happy family.



Outside sources used, or areas I invite everyone to check out on there free time. Tobias Wolff is amazing, I think everyone would not only enjoy reading some of his other things but could also possibly benefit from it.




Source Citation   
C      Conarroe, Joel. "Fugitive Childhoods." The New York Times Book Review (15 Jan. 1989): 1. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Roger Matuz and Cathy Falk. Vol. 64. Detroit: Gale Research, 1991. Literature Resource Center. Web. 14 Mar. 2015.... This here is an articular written for the new York times book review. it was published march 14th 2015, so as you can see its not old at all, this book is still being reviewed by some of the biggest names in the game. Basically what is covered in this article is a summery of the book its self and so insight of what the author of this article thought.
kl
 k      Source Citation  
      Wesley, Marilyn C. "Tobias (Jonathan Ansell) Wolff." American Short-Story Writers Since World War II. Ed. Patrick Meanor. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 130. Literature Resource Center. Web. 14 Mar. 2015.
This is a very neat and interesting page, if you would like to know more or really anything about Mr.Wolff, here are all his writings listed, really anything he has even just helped with is in here. There is a long history of wolff. I must warn though this is a long page. There is a lot of information, But all very good information.


                Adams, Phoebe-Lou. "This Boy's Life: A Memoir." The Atlantic Feb. 1989: 83. Literature Resource Center. Web. 14 Mar. 2015.
This is a very short and almost pointless page. it is considered a review and that's why im throwing it in here everyone has the right to make there own decision about things, but it did not even really make since to me

 

This is a positive review of This Boy’s Life. It talks about Tobias as a writer, His memoir, then it has some quiz questions on the memoir for good fun, towards the end of the memoir the site gives fans a chance to give there feedback on the writings. Me I didn't comment even though I do love this book. But I can’t help but wonder if Mr. Wolff ever stops in any of these to see what his fans are thinking or better yet saying.




Mark Illis is the writer in this review for London review of books. Although you have to sign up to gain access to this page, I believe it is well worth it to read Mr. illis’s insight, and summary of this memoir. I would encourage most anyone to take the 2 min it takes to register and do it, read it and see if you see what I’m talking about.




This is an amazing interview/video of Tobias and him talking about his writings, and his life. You know it is one thing to sit and read something he has wrote, but to see the man himself speak it, that really kind of makes it all ring home. It really adds a new level of well I’m not real sure, but for me it was very exciting.

This is a look into Tobias’s work, not just his work on This Boy’s Life, but most all of his work. This kind of gives you a chance to see Tobias as a whole, not so much a whole person but as a whole writer. You can see what other interest he has had, and how well he can write about almost anything, with what seems like such little effort.


truthtellers-of-our-time-1445728.htm
This I believe at first is speaking of Tobias’s father Arthur Saunders Wolff III, he was quit the story teller and, some might even say a down right dishonest man, that a lot of people had turned their back on and not even deal with anymore. But it goes on to say this is how toby got his start, and continues with discussing Tobias’s different writings and times in his life.

http://fictionwritersreview.com/interview/influences-an-interview-with-tobias-wolff/  Travis Holland talks with fiction master Tobias Wolff about the pleasures and anxieties of influence, the changing societal role of writer-celebrities, and the reasons Wolff has "always been attracted to the incisiveness, velocity, exactitude, precision of the short story."

This is a little further away from the Tobias Wolff author of This boys life, but more as though of an interview after he had contributed 6 short stories to the Atlantic as they put it here in this interview. I really enjoyed the reading basically because, since this boy’s life I feel a sense of closeness with Tobias, almost like a kinship, and really I enjoy learning more about him and what he had done throughout his life time






















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