This Writer's Life, Part One

A conversation with writer Tobias Wolff about war, family, memoir, and the ethics of storytelling.

Tobias Wolff at an event at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, Calif., for his short-story collection Our Story Begins, April 28, 2008. Photo by Mark Coggins.  

By Michael Judge

On Memorial Day weekend I got an email from Tobias Wolff, one of my writing heroes as a young man. I first met Wolff at a 2017 tribute to his friend, my teacher, Denis Johnson, whom we both loved like a brother. We’d exchanged a few emails over the years—mostly after I excitedly (and embarrassingly) sent him something I’d just written—but still, I was surprised to get his email calling my Memorial Day piece “In Flanders Field” a “fine column” about a “great poem.” The poem was written in 1915 by Lt. Col. John McCrae, a Canadian poet, soldier, and physician who tended to wounded soldiers during World War I in some of the bloodiest battles on the Western Front, where at least four million perished.

Wolff’s email continued:

I can’t help thinking of a poem by Wilfred Owen, who was killed in the last days of WWI. He tells t…