Analysis Of This Writer's Life By Tobias Wolff

This Writer's Life

We are all influenced by the world around us, and have unique, individual experiences that affect our personality. In the same way, an author is influenced by his past when he writes. Therefore, the more you know about the author, the better you can understand the messages of the author's work. Wolff influenced American literature by exploring his difficult childhood in a memoir, This Boy’s Life, and through his other short stories which greatly influenced himself as a person and a writer.

From a very young age, Wolff’s parents shaped Wolff to the writer he is today both in positive and negative ways. His mother, Rosemary Loftus Wolff, was the daughter of a navy man who beat her every day. She worked as a waitress and secretary (Pennsylvania). Tobias Wolff's father, Arthur Samuels Wolff, was a charming and talented liar who concocted a false history for himself and settled down with Rosemary Wolff in Connecticut (Newsmakers). “He worked as an aeronautical engineer at the time of his birth and later became an executive by faking the necessary credentials.” Rosemary Wolff gave birth to Tobias Wolff on June 19, 1945, in Birmingham, Alabama (Pennsylvania). Although she provided security for Wolff, she also accepted a number of violent, unstable, or

Wolff and his wife Catherine, a social worker from San Francisco, married in 1975 (Campbell). "I am deeply blessed in my marriage above all things," Wolff said (Contino). Along with his wife, Geoffrey, his older brother, became a role model for Wolff and inspired him to take writing seriously (Pennsylvania). Family was a strong influence in his writing process, “This Boy's Life began as a collection of memories I was putting down so that my children would know how I grew up,” Wolff says (Campbell). As Wolff demonstrates in his memoir, This Boy's Life, his childhood was difficult, but ultimately rewarding