The Stories Of Tobias Wolff by Tobias Wolff

Naturally, he was the right person to entertain inquiries about eschewing safe paths and seeking a life that matters to one’s fellow beings. Prior to becoming an acclaimed author and professor, Wolff held various jobs: working on a ship, serving in Vietnam, reporting for the Washington Post, being a waiter and night watchman and teaching at a high school, not to mention finishing memoirs, short stories and novels in between these stints. This past spring, as part of a course on public service at Stanford, I had the chance to interview Wolff about vocation and morality. This question is surely not a life-or-death decision, but the amount of misery it has produced among bright young graduates does remind me of the existentialist knots that often surface in Wolff’s stories. Many elite college students in America face a less extreme moral dilemma: whether they -intelligent, high-achieving students - should pursue lucrative offers in Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the like, or follow their true calling-which might not necessarily mean financial data-crunching and manufacturing flawless PowerPoint slides for corporate clients. In 'The Night in Question,' as with a few of Tobias Wolff’s other short stories, there was a man mired in a moral quandary: he had to choose whether to prevent a train from crashing into the river or to save his little son from a fatal engine room nearby.

The Stories Of Tobias Wolff by Tobias Wolff