I just finished reading the memoir of his teenage years, which was published in 1989. I had meant to read it months ago having been emailed twice by the Menlo librarian that the book was overdue. Because of the start of basketball or my increased academic workload or my lack or literary commitment I didn't get around to the book until about three weeks ago.
Once I got started though, Toby didn't let me down. This Boy's Life was a raw and poignant memoir that led us through his rough childhood until the end of high school. Tobias, or Jack as he called himself, lived with his mom and an abusive stepfather Dwight for much of the story.
One way I know this book was good that on some nights when my reading time was limited This Boy's Life made the cut over the likes of ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated. That's when you know this book has some pull, it's tough to pull me away from my sports.
While reading I found myself rooting for young Toby. I was actually surprised by his outlaw youth. He spoke at Menlo about not being proud of his youth and I just assumed it to be a product of his poor upbringing. But he was no saint of a child himself. Despite his transgressions as a minor through Wolff's writing style and his own flawed self I fell in love with his character. Even though you knew it all ended up well with him becoming a successful writer you couldn't help but root for Toby to find himself and get accepted into a prestigious east coast boarding school.
Wolff was also really funny without trying too hard to be. He never wrote about any experiences that were designed to make the reader laugh, but would always slip in a witty line at the end of a paragraph. With a nod to my English teacher Ms. Pugliese, Tobias Wolff was adept at having the emphasis be at the end, in this case the funny part, was placed at the end of the paragraph.
My favorite part of the memoir was when Tobias Wolff attempted to right his life trying to get accepted into an elite boarding school on the east coast. When confronted by the fact that he needed multiple letters of recommendation he got his friend Arthur to swipe some official school stationery. Toby wrote fake letters of recommendation from his teachers.
I declined to say I was a football star, but I did invent a swimming team for Concrete High. The coach wrote a fine letter for me, and so did my teachers and the principal. They didn't gush. They wrote plainly about a gifted, upright boy who had already in his own quiet way exhausted the resources of his school and community. They had done what they could for him. Now they hoped that others would carry on the good work.
I wrote without heat or hyperbole, in the words that teachers would have used if they had known me as I knew myself. These were their letters. And on the boy who lived in their letters, the splendid phantom who carried all my hopes, it seemed to me I saw, at last, my own face.
In this section of the book Tobias Wolff momentarily finds himself through his own writing. His whole life he has been struggling to discover his true self through the mask of a tough guy charade and by writing gross exaggerations about his accomplishments he sees a glimmer of his true self. And that's all it is, a glimmer. Wolff does not devote a bulk of the story to this mini-revelation and it's not even a moral turning point for our protagonist. He gets rejected by multiple schools before finally being accepted.
In the story Wolff's "plain" writing style, "without heat or hyperbole" is symbolic of the person he strives to be, and deep down, is inside. His mom can't help Toby find himself, she's constantly busy trying to find a new job to support the two of them, he hates his stepdad Dwight and slowly is growing apart from his friend Arthur. Toby can't even really help himself on his own, but this "splendid phantom" who comes alive when he writes can. It took his own writing that crafted an angelic twin of himself for him to briefly look inside his heart and find that a better person somehow existed beneath his paunchy chest.
The young Wolff's life was also entertaining in enough of itself to make a good book. I was curious about how he went from a troubled teen to a brilliant writer, but an explanation never came. This was a memoir of his boyhood, but it still would have been nice to have had some gaps filled in. The last section "Amen," skipped through some years quickly to fill us in, but it wasn't enough.
Tobias Wolff was also so eloquent at laying his finger on his emotions and why he acted as he did. He summed up beautifully his teenage self's emotions and we really got into his head as a boy. But I also liked how he wasn't afraid of saying when he didn't know why he acted certain ways or had certain thoughts.
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