This Writer’s Life, Part Two

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

Last week, in Part One of my conversation with Tobias Wolff, author of the acclaimed memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army, we discussed the art of memoir writing and, in Wolff’s words, how the writer must “practice a kind of restraint and not artificially cushion” the person they were in the past. Why? “Because they were on their own then. They didn’t have you looking over them and seeing how things were going to end up later. So you have to preserve in some way the—how can I put it?—the independence of that young person you’re writing about or younger person from your present self.” It’s that kind of insight that has earned Wolff numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor the U.S. government can bestow upon an artist. Wolff received the award from President Barack Obama in 2015 “…