SOURCE: Hannah, James. “Part 1: The Short Fiction: Back in the World.” In Tobias Wolff: A Study of the Short Fiction, pp. 45-102. Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1996.

In the following essay, Hannah examines the ten stories in Back in the World and compares the collection to In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, concluding that, while the two share some subject matter and style, Back in the World is notably less optimistic about the possibility of improving one's situation.

Introduction

The desire to subvert and to probe and to question and to dig the foundations out from under everybody and to represent fraudulent selves to the world, all that is contained and legitimized in imaginative acts. What is destructive and also self-destructive is transformed. You don't give it up. You just find a way of using it.

Tobias Wolff, from an interview with Bonnie Lyons and Bill Oliver

Between...