Left an hour early to hear Tobias Wolff read at Powell's last night. Arrived to four silver-haired, mustachioed men sitting patiently. "Bizarre," I thought. "I'll never win this look-alike contest." I took a seat, and the crowd quickly filled out.
Wolff read two stories, "Say Yes," and "Her Dog," from his new collection, Our Story Begins. He was funny, composed, and very gentlemanly.
Afterwards, during the Q & A:
Wolff talked about memoir; discussing how memory is a matter of perspective: "Put it this way," he said. "Imagine you are sitting around a table reminiscing with your family. You begin your story and immediately you're corrected. That's not how it happened, your mother blurts out. Everyone contradicts your story." Wolff went on to say that we all think of ourselves as the main character of a story; an event may seem different to these many different perspectives. Wolff also talked about using small fabrications as a "binding agent" to hold the story together.
One person asked him to recount an anecdote about Raymond Carver (I can't imagine having a famous friend that people always want to hear stories about. It made me wonder if this drives him crazy, if he likes it or is rather indifferent.) Generally, the story went like this: After Ray quit drinking, he became addicted to expensive Swiss chocolates. One Halloween, my boys and I went over to his house, trick-o-treating. Ray's shades were shut and the house was dark, but I knew he was hording the good stuff. My boys and I screamed until finally Ray came out and gave up his stash.
There was a touching moment where a man in the crowd stood up to thank Wolff about an article (Sorry, I can't remember which article. If it was fictional or an essay, I'm not sure) he wrote surrounding the Vietnam War. The man said it was the truest account he ever read. He clipped the article and reads it weekly.
