Today’s story, “In the Garden of the American Martyrs”, the title story in the collection of that name, by Tobias Wolfe, is my first venture into his work.
Three things motivated me to purchase this collection. I greatly admire George Saunders and I recalled Tobias Wolfe was his creative writing teacher. Saunders talked about him in a few podcasts on YouTube. I after that listened to three podcasts by Tobias. He sounded smart, funny, and like a perfect teacher. When I saw his first collection of Short Stories, In The Garden of The North American Martyrs was for sale in Kindle format for $1.95 I hit purchase now.
There are thirteen stories in the collection. I decided to start with the title story.
The central character of the story is middle aged unmarried female college professor. One day the president of the school calls a a big meeting. It seems the comptroller of the school made highly speculative investments with the school funding. Everything went badly and now the school must close. She is in shock, after fifteen years to be out of work. She does find a teaching job at an experimental college in Oregon. She does not like it much and is very happy when a former colleague at her old school, now a professor at a highly prestigious women’s college in Pennsylvania sends her a plane ticket to fly in for a job interview. She learns she will have to teach class to be observed by other professors. Then she finds out that she is just being used. The school has already decided on a male candidate but the school charter requires a woman be interviewed for all positions. She is just there for show. Of course she is livid but her false friend tells her she must still give the class and that she should be grateful for the free trip.
She does give the class, only not the one anybody expected. The ending was just a lot of fun. The central character is very well done. This story is a lot fun. For sure I will read the other twelve stories.
TOBIAS WOLFF lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University. Author of the recent novel Old School, he has received the Rea Award for excellence in the short story, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/ Faulkner Award for The Barracks Thief. from the publisher
I enjoyed reading your review, Mel, and am glad that you're still reading a lot of short stories! Starting with the title story of a collection seems like a good idea, unless you prefer to save the title story for later reading. I wonder if other stories in this book also focus on teachers and school matters.
ReplyDeleteSuko, I just read the first story in the collection and it did not.
ReplyDelete