I haven’t started recommending authors yet to my oldest son,
and I believe that I could be coming in late on this move…can’t recall if my
father recommended books/authors to me when I was my son’s age, but I feel that
if I’m going to start attempting to lay down some examples for him, now would
be a great time. We are working at nurturing a book-reading habit in them, but
now perhaps would be a good time to stoke his interest in reading by offering suggestions
of writers that I think he might enjoy.
As I’ve written over the years, this series has opened my
eyes, heart, and mind to authors I am sure I would have never come across on my
own. Of course, I will offer my copies up to the boys to read in a couple of
years, but now, perhaps I’ll just stick with authors that I think they might
find enjoyable.
Tobias Wolff is, without question, a writer that I’d recommend
to my sons. I’ve had the chance to comment on his stories a number of times on
this platform, and I always find comfort in turning the page and seeing that
his story is next up.
A 2004 interview with him in the Paris Review, which I wrote about here back in 2011, gave meaning to this BASS project, and I’ve returned
to his thoughts about reading and writing over the years.
Looking over my spreadsheet, I see we won’t encounter Wolff
again until the 1997 BASS. He’ll surface again in 2006 and then again in 2008. Given
my reading habits, I’m not necessarily pleased with the space between his
stories – but that’s on me.
A part of Wolff’s short stories that I always look forward
to usually lands in the last few paragraphs of the last page, and in this
story, “Firelight,” Wolff delivers again.
“I watch the fire, watch the changing light on the faces
of my family. I try to feel at home. And I do, mostly. It is a sweet time. But
in the very heart of it I catch myself bracing a little, as if in fear of being
tricked. As if to really believe in it somehow make it vanish, like a voice
waking me from sleep.”
I enjoyed this story as it provided me with an interesting look
at a young man’s relationship with his mother. It allowed me to step into a
fictional character and gain a different perspective on a mother/son
relationship.
And that, right there, is why reading fiction and short
stories is so important.
In his contributor’s notes at the back of this issue, Wolff
states, “The origins of my stories are always hard for me to pin down
because the act of writing them inevitably tangles history and imagination in a
way impossible for me to untangle later on.”
With that statement, we can see that a bit of fact might
always seep into fiction – perhaps just enough at the right time to give us (perceive)
that perspective we would not be afforded if we did not read the story…and become
that boy.
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