You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

My name is Michael Silverblatt. Today, my guest

is Tobias Wolfe. He's the author most recently of a book of short stories called The Nighting

Question published by Knopf. He's the author as well, of Inferro's Army and This

Boy's Life, two memoirs, as well as three other books, two other

books of short stories back in the world and in the Garden of the North American Martyrs.

Now, I wanted to begin by asking you something that seems to be intimated when people talk about you. There's something special

that defines a Tobias Wolf short story. And I wondered what it is that must happen in a story

by Tobias Wolfe, for it to be a story.

I try, and it is the hard thing to do in writing a story,

to write something other than an anecdote.

For me, a story, what I would call a short story, has to bring someone to a decisive moment of some kind where it is possible to recognize

themselves for who they really are, and it is possible to refuse to make that recognition or to make it and perhaps be altered by it.

But it really is an ineffable thing.

There's just a, I keep working at a story until, until there is some sense of a door

opening into the, into, I have, I'm guided always, I'm groping my way through different chambers

as I write a story until I finally find some door that I get my hand on

and I open it up and I see things that I didn't expect to see. I have to surprise myself

...