11 February, 2002: In Pharaoh's Army
Tobias Wolff reminds me of a morally outraged Raymond Carver. His best stories have the same kind of minimalist purity that Carver seemed to deliver so effortlessly, but where Carver seemed to let a sneaking affection for his characters shine through, Wolff seems to feel a barely contained rage, as in his portraits of moral breakdown, "Leviathan" and "Hunters in the Snow" -- particularly the latter, with his merciless depiction of the characters' essential weaknesses. I'm not sure I could take an entire novel of Wolff lashing out at a world that fails to live up to his standards, but his memoir of Vietnam, In Pharoah's Army, is not as much concerned with others' failings as with his own.