Spirits of '76

By R.Z. Sheppard

Some say that the American short story is back in style because television has reduced our attention spans. Others argue that the return of the literary sprint began as a marketing strategy: publishers could reissue old collections by brand name writers much as art museums mount retrospectives. Perhaps, but there may be a simpler explanation. The short story does what many so-called serious new novels rarely do: it tells a story.

In his latest collection, Tobias Wolff tells ten of them, superbly. Tales of a priest, a real estate broker, a shoplifter, Viet Nam veterans, California coke heads, and even a young writer whose manuscript is returned by a publisher with the comment "Are you kidding?" Wolff, 40, a former U.S. Army officer in Viet Nam and an associate professor at Syracuse University, might have called his book In Our Time had not a former World War I ambulance driver used the title for his first collection 60 years ago.

Wolff's time is the '70s, a decade of convalescence, navel watching and delayed-stress syndrome. In Soldier's Joy, one veteran of the lost war tries to get another to surrender a rifle after he threatens to shoot himself. The would-be savior complains about the confusion "back in the world," vet talk for home. But he too is deeply disturbed. "You think you've got problems," he says to the distraught man. "There's nothing wrong with you that a little search-and-destroy wouldn't cure."

In The Missing Person, Father Leo sees action in Las Vegas. Ironically, the gambling town offers him better spiritual opportunities than the Star of the Sea convent, where he is chaplain: "The director of novices described herself as a 'Post-Christian' and at Easter sent out cards showing an Indian god ascending to the clouds with arms waving out of his sides like a centipede's. Some held jobs in town. The original idea had been for the nuns to serve the community in some way, but now they did what they wanted to do. One was a disc jockey." At the same time, deejays and other civilians were flocking to new religious experiences. One group followed its service with a questionnaire: "What did you feel during the liturgy? a) Being, b) Becoming, c) Being and Becoming, d) None of the Above, e) All of the Above."

Most of Wolff's characters have lifestyles, not lives. Ted, Mitch and Bliss celebrate Helen's 30th birthday with cocaine, love circles and chatter like "I was into a serious good-works routine back then. I wanted to be a saint," and "I used to paralegal with this guy in the city and he decided that he couldn't live without some girl he was seeing." The story is called Leviathan, and it concludes with a Me-generation version of Moby Dick, an insipid recollection of a California whale watch."'He was a monster,' Helen said. 'I mean that. He was hostile and huge and he stank.'"

Fraudulence and self-delusion are strong themes in Wolff's work, as they are in books by his brother, Geoffrey Wolff, whose Bad Debts and The Duke of Deception deal with the misdeeds of the authors' con-man father Arthur Samuels Wolff, alias Arthur Saunders Wolff III, alias Saunders Ansell-Wolff III. In The Rich Brother, Tobias handles raffishness with affection. The hustler wearing the red blazer and Roman-emperor toupee, who hitches a ride with a Century 21 realtor and his blissed-out brother, is in the grand American tradition. "'I am by training an engineer,' Webster began. 'My work has exposed me to all but one of the continents, to desert and alp and forest, to every terrain and season of the earth.'"

Some of the stories in Back in the World are little more than personality sketches. But in the best entries, the author commands a range of styles that recall the captivating doldrums of Chekhov and the eerie menace of Paul Bowles. Wolff also demonstrates a stinging wit. An old Irish priest likes to tell his parishioners and colleagues that he does not have time to die. "One night he said it at dinner and Father Leo thought, Make time." That is a line worthy of Oscar Wilde. --By R.Z. Sheppard