Tobias Wolff, a master of the short form, speaks to Vima.

Tobias Wolff, a master of the short story form, gave a very interesting interview to the newspaper *To Vima* and to Grigoris Bekos to mark the publication of the book *The Warrior’s Joy and Other Stories* (translated by Tassos Anastasiou & Yannis Palavos). The American author talks about the art of short story writing, explains why literature is intertwined with problematic situations, refers to the Homeric epics and expresses shame regarding the new US president.The interview was published on Sunday 6 August and you can read it below: In his first email – the reply – he wrote to us: ‘Of course we’ll do the interview! We’ve got a bit of work on our hands these days, of course: my second son is getting married here at our house this Saturday. But I think your questions will be a pleasant break for me.” In his second email – let’s call it an apology – a few days later, he wrote to us: “Please forgive me! Immediately after the wedding, I had to travel with my family to Mexico, with the result that both my time and my concentration vanished.” But it was for the best and well worth the wait. Because this particular author, apart from being an authentic writer, is also a kind man. And he was not only consistent but also friendly in his conversation with ‘To Vima’. The 72-year-old Tobias Wolff is no stranger to the Greek reading public. In 2008, Polis Publications released his semi-autobiographical novel *The Old School* – that unforgettable portrait of the poet Robert Frost, among others! – and a year later the wonderful novella *The Camp Thief*, for which he had won, in 1985, the prestigious Pen/Faulkner Award. However, the publication by Ikaros of his exceptional collection *The Warrior’s Joy and Other Stories* came as a necessary complement. Precisely because Tobias Wolff, now a professor at Stanford University, is considered one of the leading short story writers in the US, a master of the short form, which proves to be larger than life when handled by the right hands. The recent Greek edition is a well-balanced anthology of ten of his short stories, ranging from his first collection, In the Garden of North American Martyrs (1981), to a piece published a few years ago in The New Yorker. Stories such as ‘Hunters in the Snow’, ‘An Episode in the Life of Professor Brook’, ‘The Liar’ and the later ‘A Bullet in the Head’ – what a text indeed; in a single, dense paragraph we see what goes on in a man’s mind when a bullet practically pierces his brain! — are not only technically flawless but also create a narrative depth that even voluminous novels would envy. However, if we consider the case of Tobias Wolff in terms of his representativeness in the domestic literary scene, we find that there are outstanding issues worth addressing, namely his two autobiographical works: This Boy’s Life (1989), in which he describes the eventful coming-of-age of ‘Toby’ —this book was adapted for the cinema by Michael Caton-Jones, starring Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Helen Birkin—and *In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War (1994), in which the author gives a harrowing account of his involvement in the Vietnam War, a traumatic experience for the US.  Mr Wolf, as you are something of a reclusive writer, it is worth asking: are you writing anything at the moment? ‘Indeed, I am currently writing a new book, a novel. I’ve been working on it for a few years now and I hope to finish it within the year, by Christmas – but for writers, deadlines (as Lenin once said of promises in general) are like pies, their crusts are made to be broken’. I know you don’t like being classified within the literary movement of ‘dirty realism’. But what do you think they mean, especially by the word ‘dirty’?Honestly, I don’t know. Realism as a literary style – not to say almost by definition – has always dealt with the most difficult, brutal and dark aspects of human nature and experience. Contemporary writers who have been categorised in this way, who have been – who we have been – labelled with this mysterious tag, suggesting we belong to such a movement, did not – and do not – do anything more strikingly ‘dirty’ than our predecessors. What can I say, it seems it’s still used simply because it’s catchy. We can discern personal experiences in your fiction, but also recurring themes in your work. I wonder, however, about the two memoirs, the autobiographical texts: did you write them because you believe they are unique experiences, or because you consider that they more broadly cover an important part of the American experience in the 20th century?The structure, the very form of my experience – the way in which my life took shape and as described in these two autobiographical narratives — always seemed to me to be inherently fictional in itself, that it needed none of the inventions of fiction, that it required neither the reconstruction of reality nor any embellishment. And I did, in fact, think it would be worthwhile to express and record all of this, to describe the events that make up the coming of age of a young American and, subsequently, to follow that same person to the front lines of a war. My other works – and those you allude to – although also based on certain personal experiences of mine, required me, the writer, to approach them more through my imagination. And that, I must tell you, is an instinct one develops when writing.” The United States has a long tradition of the short story, dating back to the 19th century. To what, I wonder, is this largely attributable? To the writers themselves or to the readers? ‘In reality, very few Americans read short stories. Even today, the most popular reads here are those multi-page ‘bricks’—the highly sentimental and extremely poorly written books that also have pretentious, bombastic titles, the so-called ‘blockbuster’ books. Every now and then something good pops up, a literary work of substance stands out, but it’s usually a novel. Short stories – like poetry – appeal only to a minority of readers.” Something that holds true everywhere, I think… “Yes, and it’s a shame because the short story is a very exciting genre and rewards the reader in many ways. The short story is a lofty, noble form. Besides, it is also a highly diverse form; there are so many different kinds of short story — from the Italian Calvino to Raymond Carver, from Ernest Hemingway to Jorge Luis Borges and Alice Munro — that only a fool would impose prerequisites and rules on their writing. In any case, the best one can say about short stories is that they must be interesting, and linger in the reader’s mind for quite some time after they have closed the book. In your short story ‘The Liar’ we read that ‘a solipsist is someone who believes that they create everything around them’. Is a good writer a solipsist? ‘Far from it; a good writer is the opposite of a solipsist, his gaze is unwaveringly fixed on a world that is ceaselessly charming and captivating by its very nature, and the good writer honours through his work both the complexity and the harsh underpinning that exist in the reality of this world. Furthermore, the good writer is the opposite of a liar. He is the one who seeks the truth, the one who understands that we must expand and use our imagination in order to discern and confront the truth, as far as we are allowed to. In the same short story, Dr Murphy says something strange, that ‘perhaps unpleasant things are more interesting’. And the question is: can there be literature without problematic situations?It is very difficult to imagine literature without problematic situations. It is problems that make literature happen, precisely because they force people to make their choices, for better or for worse. In this way, in any case, people reveal themselves or become themselves. Problems are the stories. Just imagine for a moment an ‘Iliad’ in which Agamemnon sails in great comfort and arrives quickly at Troy – at Ilion, in any case – the city walls come tumbling down like a house of cards, a wonderful peace is immediately made with Priam, Hector and Achilles become the best of mates, and Menelaus simply gives Paris a friendly pat on the back and returns with the lovely Helen to their home, where, thereafter, they lived happily ever after. How boring! Where is the moment when, just before the duel with Achilles, Hector’s young son frightens everyone with his father’s helmet? Where is Patroclus, killed by Hector whilst wearing Achilles’ armour? where is Priam, begging for the dishonoured body of his dead son, where is the Trojan Horse, where is the city engulfed in flames? But how much do we love these tragedies in the end – these problems!’ In the short story ‘Sleepless’, Richard reads the ‘Odyssey’ and gets bored. Has that ever happened to you? “No! I really like the ‘Odyssey’, but the ‘Iliad’ is perhaps the literary text I love most of all genres, from all eras, timelessly. Once I drove all the way from Athens to Mycenae, in an incredible heatwave, just to show my daughter—who had also become obsessed with the ‘Iliad’—the famous Lion Gate. She considers the photograph I took of her standing near the Gate to be one of the most precious gifts I have ever given her, and she is very proud of it. I love ancient Greek drama very much; in fact, I taught it at university, particularly Aeschylus’s ‘Oresteia’ trilogy. And to turn to more contemporary figures: Elytis, Cavafy, Kazantzakis, George Seferis and Yannis Ritsos are some of the Greek writers who have more recently found a place on my bookshelf.” At this stage of your life, do you return to certain authors, rereading them? “In the past, I used to return more and more to certain authors – Dickens, Melville, Hemingway, and Katherine Anne Porter, whom I personally consider a leading figure in American literature. However, in recent years I have been reading more history books; I do not return to literary texts, but rather I am looking for a different perspective on the same historical period that interests me; I am trying to see how another historian interprets the same set of events.”  Can technology, the so-called digital age, have a substantial impact on literature, on the way we write and read? ‘I’d rather not answer that; I’ve no idea what we mean by the digital age; I’m not in the know.’ In 2015, you received the National Medal of Arts from then-President Barack Obama. What was it like? “It was a wonderful day for me and my wife, but also for the friends who accompanied us to the ceremony, because we already had great admiration for both President Obama and his wife Michelle. At the end of that day, I remember, we were overwhelmed by a sense of sweetness, a tenderness.” Are your fellow countrymen interested in writers’ opinions? Does the public discourse articulated by writers in the US have any influence? “I hope so! Because literature allows us to step into lives other than our own, to enter other souls. When we manage to imagine ourselves as someone else, we become more cautious about judging and condemning others. Because we see in them a reflection of our own human condition, and this deepens our understanding of humanity as a whole; we see it as a community rather than a war of all against all.” I now think that many of your heroes – ordinary people testing their limits – might have voted for Donald Trump, if they were real. That doesn’t mean they would necessarily all be bad people. But they would have... Why? ‘Donald Trump’s election is a disaster for our country. I’m still trying to come to terms with it and accept it. I really cannot understand what could possibly drive someone to vote for a proven bigot, a man who – by his own admission – mistreats women, someone who mocks the public with his so-called ‘university’, a common thief not only of his employees’ hard-earned labour but also of their personal belongings, a pathological liar, an admirer of the most bloodthirsty tyrants, an ignoramus who believes that climate change is a hoax orchestrated by China, and so much more... But all this was known on election day. I mean, this is Donald Trump. And he is consistent with who he is – I’ll give him that, he is consistently dishonest and repulsive. He has managed to completely disrupt our daily lives in the United States and has made us the laughing stock of the rest of the planet. I feel deeply embarrassed and ashamed about this.”