SOURCE: Kelly, Colm J. “Affirming the Indeterminable: Deconstruction, Sociology, and Tobias Wolff's ‘Say Yes’.” Mosaic 32, no. 1 (March 1999): 149-66.

In the following essay, Kelly uses Wolff's short story “Say Yes” to help delineate the nature of a deconstructive approach to literature, as opposed to a sociological-contextualist one.

Addressing the current emphasis on broadly sociological-contextualist approaches to literature, this essay uses Tobias Wolff's short story “Say Yes” to explore the viability of three possible interpretations and attempts to delineate the nature of a deconstructive approach.

Deconstruction in literary studies is now frequently understood to be a type of formalism in contrast to approaches such as new historicism and cultural studies, which give renewed emphases to the various contexts of literary works. At the same time, these latter approaches have absorbed or been touched by deconstructive themes, so that they seem to share a certain tone and terminology with deconstruction. In...