Wolff, Geoffrey 1937–

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Wolff, Geoffrey 1937–

(Geoffrey Ansell Wolff)

PERSONAL: Born November 5, 1937, in Los Angeles, CA; son of Arthur Samuels (an aeronautical engineer) and Rosemary (a secretary; maiden name, Loftus) Wolff; married Priscilla Porter (a teacher), August 21, 1965; children: Nicholas Hinckley, Justin Porter. Education: Princeton University, A.B. (summa cum laude), 1961; attended Churchill College, Cambridge, 1963–64. Politics: Independent. Hobbies and other interests: Sailing, listening to jazz, fiction writing, autobiography, literature of exploration.

ADDRESSES: Office—University of California, 410 Humanities Instructional Bldg., Mail Code: 2650, Irvine, CA 92697; fax: 949-824-2916. Agent—Amanda Urban, ICM, 40 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Novelist, biographer, and essayist. Robert College, Istanbul, Turkey, lecturer in comparative literature, 1961–63; Istanbul University, Istanbul, lecturer and chairman of department of American civilization, 1962–63; Washington Post, Washington, DC, 1964–69, began as reporter, became book editor; Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, lecturer in aesthetics, 1965–69; Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC, lecturer, 1968–69; Newsweek, New York, NY, book review editor, 1969–71; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, visiting lecturer in creative arts, 1970–74; Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, adjunct associate professor, 1977–78; University of California, Irvine, serves as professor of English and director of fiction MFA program.

Fannie Hurst Visiting Lecturer, Washington University, 1978; William Jovonovich Lecturer in Fiction, Graduate Writing Program, Columbia University, 1979; Ferris Professor of Journalism, Princeton University, 1980, 1992; visiting professor, Brown University, 1980–81, 1988, Graduate Writing Program, Boston University, 1982; Brandeis University, writer-in-residence, 1982–. Faculty member, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 1976–80, 1985, and Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, 1982–84, 1993; member of board of trustees, Warren Wilson College Program for Writers, 1981–84; Policy Panel in Literature, National Endowment for the Arts, 1982–85.

AWARDS, HONORS: Woodrow Wilson fellow, 1961–62, 1963–64; Fulbright scholar, 1963–64; Guggenheim fellow in creative writing, 1971–72, 1977–78; National Endowment for the Humanities senior fellow, 1974–75; National Endowment for the Arts fellow, 1979, 1987; nominee for Pulitzer Prize in biography, 1980; American Council of Learned Societies fellow in biographical research, 1984; Distinguished Visiting Scholar, University of Rhode Island, 1987; Rhode Island Governor's Arts Award, 1992; Lila Wallace—Reader's Digest fellow, 1992.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Bad Debts, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1969.

The Sightseer, Random House (New York, NY), 1974.

Inklings, Random House (New York, NY), 1977.

Providence, Viking (New York, NY), 1986.

The Final Club, Knopf (New York, NY), 1990.

The Age of Consent, Knopf (New York, NY), 1995.

OTHER

Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby (biography), Random House (New York, NY), 1976.

The Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father (biography), Random House (New York, NY), 1979.

(Editor and author of introduction) The Edward Hoag-land Reader, Random House (New York, NY), 1979.

(Guest editor and author of introductory essay) The Best American Essays, 1989, Ticknor & Fields (Boston, MA), 1989.

A Day at the Beach: Recollections (personal essays), Knopf (New York, NY), 1992.

The Art of Burning Bridges: A Life of John O'Hara, Knopf (New York, NY), 2003.

The Edge of Maine, National Geographic (Washington, DC), 2005.

Contributor of essay to Telling Lives: The Biographer's Art, edited by Marc Pachter, New Republic Books, 1979; contributor of stories, essays, and profiles to American Scholar, New Leader, New Republic, Esquire, Atlantic, Paris Review, Saturday Review, and other periodicals.

Literary critic, New Times, 1974–79; contributing editor, Esquire, 1979–84, literary editor, 1979; literary critic and contributing editor, New England Monthly, 1986–89.

ADAPTATIONS: Film rights to The Duke of Deception were purchased by Warner Bros.; Providence has been optioned by Warner Bros. for a movie.

SIDELIGHTS: Essayist, biographer, and novelist Geoffrey Wolff is known for his incisive, often satiric characterizations, his ear for dialogue, and his skillful manipulation of style.

The main character of Wolff's first novel, Bad Debts, is loosely modeled on the author's father, a consummate con artist who would be portrayed directly ten years later in the biography The Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father. Bad Debts follows the misadventures of Benjamin Freeman, a spendthrift who lies and cheats to cover up his misbehavior and that of his wife and son, both of whom are equally degenerate. The scenes of confrontation between the characters "are in the same league with the best bitterly comic writing of recent years," remarked Richard P. Brickner in the New York Times Book Review. In the Yale Review, Paul Edward Gray called Bad Debts "a rigorously moral novel without a clear moral focus," adding that "it is also, improbable as this may sound, extremely funny, and its appearance provides promising evidence of a new comic talent."

Wolff's biography Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby "is a timely document," noted James Atlas in the Village Voice, "unsentimental about the '20s and determined not to elevate the importance of his subject." Harry Crosby, the rich and privileged nephew of J.P. Morgan, Jr., shocked his family and Boston society by eloping with a married woman and devoting himself to poetry, finally committing double suicide with one of his many lovers. New Republic contributor J.M. Edelstein described the biography as "a good story, with all the elements of a spellbinder: the passionate rich, Paris in the '20s, sex, sometimes kinky, scandal in high society and the foreordained ending of tragedy. Geoffrey Wolff makes the most of these exciting elements, writing in a cool and skillful way."

Wolff returned to biography with The Duke of Deception, an intimate portrait of the man who drifted through various jobs, debts, and scams and left his son with affectionate if ambivalent memories. "A Jewish doctor's son, expelled from a series of boarding schools and rejected by the Army for dental problems," Wolff's father, noted Francine Prose in the New York Times Magazine, "reinvented himself as Arthur Saunders Wolff, an Episcopalian, a Yale alumnus, member of the secret society Skull & Bones, an R.A.F. fighter pilot and O.S.S. man who'd served with both the Yugoslavian and the French resistance." When Geoffrey was twelve, Arthur Wolff and his wife separated; Geoffrey stayed with his father while his younger brother Tobias remained with their mother. Tobias Wolff's own memoir of growing up, This Boy's Life, appeared in 1990.

"To write about one's father—anyone's father—is apt to be an oedipal act," commented Harold Beaver in the Times Literary Supplement, "a bid at working him out of the system." Recalling Wolff's earlier, fictionalized treatment of his father in Bad Debts, the critic asserted that "ten years later, [Wolff has] come to terms with his [father's] ghost. His second try is triumphant." In telling the story of the man who produced such conflicting emotions in him, "Wolff writes with care and craft, and also with a certain exhilaration, as if this were a story he had wanted to tell for a good long while," observed a reviewer in the Atlantic.

Time contributor Paul Gray found that "Wolff's account of this misspent life is absorbing throughout. It is not just the story of 'a wreck of a desperado,' as he calls the Duke at one point; it is an engrossing, often moving search for the troubled bond between sons and fathers that is known as love." This bond is illustrated throughout the author's narrative, for as John Irving explained in the New York Times Book Review, The Duke of Deception "is a book abundant with the complexities and contradictions of family sympathy. Keenly perceptive of family ties and family shame, Geoffrey Wolff has succeeded in being true to his emotionally complicated subject while also being divinely easy to read." The critic added that "in the delicate telling of his father's story, the son manages to bring all versions of Duke Wolff to light."

Several reviewers also remarked on Wolff's ability to avoid the pitfalls inherent in portraying difficult family relationships. "The problem in writing this book was a problem of tone," explained Donald Hall in the National Review, explaining that "if we see the old man through the mature Geoffrey, we see him through the mature Geoffrey watching the young Geoffrey, necessarily a distorting lens." Despite this hazard, Hall believed that Wolff "handles this problem with delicacy, restraint, and intelligence, so that we are able to feel compassion for the old man while the young man rages, at the same time as we feel compassion for the young man saddled with this impossible father."

The novel Providence grew out of Wolff's experience with a burglary at his own Providence, Rhode Island, home. Providence relates the troubles of Adam Dwyer, a criminal lawyer whose house is robbed shortly after he learns he is dying of leukemia; also appearing are Baby and Skippy, the two hoods who rob Adam, Skip-py's girlfriend Lisa, and a cop who becomes involved with both Lisa and the local mob. "In this, his fourth novel, [Wolff] has taken the sense of drama and irony that made [his previous] works so stunningly effective and fused it onto a well-plotted sociological/psychological/moral tale," commented M. George Stevenson in the Village Voice. "It is difficult to describe exactly how artfully everything is interconnected." While this "might lead you to believe that Providence is a humorless, arcane and stultifying 'high art' novel," the critic continued, "it ain't." There is a sense of pure reality to these passages," commented Bruce Cook in Chicago's Tribune Books. "Wolff creates the feeling that this is truly the way a man like Adam Dwyer would react." In telling the story of the corruption of these characters, "Wolff has deliberately employed a wacky, loose and often wonderful style that breaks most of the rules of grammar known to man," stated Ross Thomas in the Washington Post Book World.

"Providence is distinguished both in conception and execution," claimed Stevenson in the Village Voice. "As a narrative, an essay in novelistic effect, a meditation on degeneration, or a stylistic tour de force, there is little in recent fiction that can equal it."

An autobiographical element is also clearly present in Wolff's next novel, The Final Club, which deals with a young man's education at Princeton and two decades of his subsequent career. "Those familiar with [The Duke of Deception] will recall that [Wolff], like his hero Nathaniel, attended Princeton in the late 1950s. Indeed, a reading of that memoir and this novel affords glimpses of the human miracle: transmuting the raw material of life into the relatively finished product called art," wrote John Meredith Hill in America.

As the novel begins, stated Arthur Salm in the San Diego Tribune, "young Nathaniel Clay, descendant of blue blood on his father's side and immigrant Jewish roughnecks on his mother's, heads east from Seattle for Princeton University" to join the class of 1960. Before he arrives, he witnesses the exclusion by other passengers of a young black man traveling on the same train. Discrimination, both good and bad, and the need to discriminate between the two, emerge as central concerns of the novel as Nathaniel vies for acceptance by Princeton's exclusive clubs, even as he comes to despise himself for buying into the mentality they embody. Nathaniel is eventually accepted by one of the most prestigious clubs, but only after an article appears in the New York Times suggesting that the clubs have been systematically excluding Princeton's handful of Jewish students. The latter third of the novel traces Nathaniel's subsequent career through his twentieth college reunion and his own son's application to attend Princeton.

Reviewing The Final Club in the Voice Literary Supplement, Alberto Mobilio noted Wolff's insight into the workings of class consciousness in America. "Wolff deftly captures our lifelong anxieties about Getting In, although the obsession with gatekeeping wears thin," the critic found. "Fortunately," he added, "an energetic sense of irony keeps the ball in play." The Final Club, Mobilio concluded, manages to "impart a sense of real drama to the social rites of young men and women too fortunate to know all clubs are fragile, their members sapped by the price of admission." Mobilio added that the author's writing is "muscular" and "telegraphic,"

Wolff's next novel, The Age of Consent, was published in 1995. The novel revolves around a tragedy that occurred during a utopian community's outing one Independence Day, when fifteen-year-old resident Maisie Jenks, standing on a promontory in full view of her fellow picnickers, strips off her bathing suit and dives head-first into the shallow pool beneath her. Her resulting head injury causes total amnesia, leaving her family and friends—particularly her younger brother, Ted—to wonder what prompted her action. Ted's quest for answers is divided between the novel's two sections: "Then Was Then," which covers the year of Maisie's intentional, near-fatal fall; and "And Now Is Then," which finds Ted, Maisie, and their parents Ann and Jinks ten years into the future as Ted returns to the community to become a school teacher. As Ted's investigation progresses through the intervening decade, readers become aware of the motives behind Maisie's act—one involves possible abuse at the hands of community founder Doc Halliday, a close friend of her father. Meanwhile, Maisie has withdrawn from both the community and her family, and gone to live in New York City, while her parents remain, perhaps intentionally, uncomprehending of her actions.

In the New York Times Book Review, contributor Ron Carlson noted that at the book's center is the conflict between the community's 1960s counterculture philosophy and Ted, a "conventional young man who finds himself its heir." The community and its founder, Doc Halliday, are "a paradigm for the '60s, and Mr. Wolff perfectly renders a sense of the texture of this town's life, the web of moods and motives that becomes more complex and contradictory as its citizens and their children grow older."

In 1992 Wolff again produced a work of nonfiction, this time a memoir, a book of essays titled A Day at the Beach. The nine essays in this collection constitute an episodic autobiography touching on the author's early enchantment with literature; his teaching days at a boy's school in Istanbul and his apprenticeship as an obituary writer, cub reporter, and finally book editor at the Washington Post; a failed friendship and a bout with the bottle; open-heart surgery; and subsequent adventures in mountaineering and ocean sailing. The title essay recounts the episode that provided the impetus for Wolff's memoir: a nightmarish vacation on the Caribbean island of Saint Maarten in 1985 that culminated in a near-fatal heart attack.

Critiquing A Day at the Beach in the Washington Post Book World, Mordechai Richler commented that Wolff's "prose is literate, yet enriched by a finely tuned colloquial bounce. He manages to be tender while eschewing sentimentality. His insights into family flow effortlessly through this memoir, never demanding that attention be paid."

Wolff published The Art of Burning Bridges: A Life of John O'Hara in 2003. A critical biography of John O'Hara, the book praises the writer as underrated because of his difficult personality. O'Hara shared this sentiment, often complaining about the lack of medals and awards garnered by his work. O'Hara's dreams of upward mobility were devastated by his father's death, and throughout his career he spoke often of his many setbacks and struggles. As an adult, his self-destructive alcoholism ruined his career in newspapers, and he turned to writing fiction, which usually focused on three central themes: social class, drinking, and sex. Though The Art of Burning Bridges appears to want to cast a positive light on O'Hara, "Wolff himself seems to throw up his hands and acknowledge O'Hara's insufferable loutish behavior," commented Tom Deignan in America. In Harper's, contributor Jonathan Dee called Wolff "unfashionably forgiving" of O'Hara. Although three biographies of O'Hara were published prior to Wolff's, John Updike observed in the New Yorker that "Wolff evidently judged O'Hara ripe for a more personal treatment, a kind of interactive biography, in which his own voice and opinions freely vie, like a post-Freudian psychiatrist's, with those of his subject."

In Town & Country, Simone Girner described Wolff's next work, The Edge of Maine, as "part essay, part historical account, part memoir," and "above all, a love letter to the wild land and seascapes" of the state. Wolff, who owns a small house in Bath, Maine, examines Maine's history from the first settlers, through the famous lobster subculture, to his own personal experiences living and sailing along Maine's coast. Less like a definitive travel guide, The Edge of Maine is an ode to the state's beauty and mystery. In fact, Wolff begins the book with an anecdote about sixteenth-century explorers confusing the foggy coast for Norumbega, a mythical, magical land. In Booklist, Ray Olson pointed out that Wolff jumps from "history to memoir to reportage so abruptly that it nearly causes whiplash," but admitted, "this is all good stuff."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 41, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1987.

Wolff, Geoffrey, The Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father, Random House (New York, NY), 1979.

Wolff, Geoffrey, A Day at the Beach: Recollections, Knopf (New York, NY), 1992.

PERIODICALS

America, May 18, 1991, John Meredith Hill, review of The Final Club, p. 544; February 16, 2004, Tom Deignan, review of The Art of Burning Bridges: A Life of John O'Hara, p. 22.

Atlantic, May, 1974, review of The Sightseer, p. 129; September, 1979, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 91; February, 1986, Jack Beatty, review of Providence, p. 86; September, 2003, Benjamin Schwarz, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 139.

Book, September-October, 2003, Elaine Szewczyk, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 22.

Booklist, August, 2003, Bryce Christensen, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 1945; January 1, 2004, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 773; June 1, 2005, Ray Olson, review of The Edge of Maine, p. 1748.

Bookwatch, January, 2004, James A. Cox and Diane C. Donovan, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 1.

Book World, August 31, 2003, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 2.

Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, March, 2004, R.H. Solomon, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 1300.

Harper's, November, 2003, Jonathan Dee, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 79.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2003, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 904

Library Journal, July, 2003, Charles C. Nash, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 83; May 15, 2005, Janet Ross, review of The Edge of Maine, p. 137.

Los Angeles Magazine, September, 2003, Ariel Swart-ley, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 142.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 22, 1992, review of A Day at the Beach, p. 1; September 7, 2003, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. R8.

Nation, November 3, 1979, Ben Sonnenberg, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 440.

National Review, November 12, 1976, review of Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby, p. 1241; October 26, 1979, Donald Hall, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 1371.

New Leader, July-August, 2003, Brooke Allen, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 23.

New Republic, April 27, 1974, review of The Sightseer, p. 29; November 6, 1976, J.M. Edel-stein, review of Black Sun, p. 25; March 11, 1978, review of Inklings, p. 33; August 18, 1979, Jack Beatty, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 36; June 16, 1986, Celia McGee, review of Providence, p. 42.

Newsweek, November 17, 1969, review of Bad Debts, p. 127; February 18, 1974, review of The Sightseer, p. 95; September 6, 1976, review of Black Sun, p. 64; August 27, 1979, Peter S. Prescott, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 67.

New Yorker, October 8, 1979, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 178; May 5, 1986, review of Providence, p. 133; September 22, 2003, John Updike, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 184.

New York Review of Books, February 26, 1970, review of Bad Debts, p. 35; February 17, 1977, review of Black Sun, p. 47; September 25, 2003, Larry Mc-Murtry, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 33.

New York Times, November 12, 1969, review of Bad Debts, p. 45; February 11, 1974, review of The Sightseer, p. 33; September 6, 1976, review of Black Sun, p. 13; September 24, 1976, review of Black Sun, p. C18; January 2, 1978, review of Inklings, p. 19; August 13, 1979, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of The Duke of Deception, p. C16; February 10, 1986, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Providence, p. C16; September 10, 1990, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of The Final Club, p. 3; August 19, 2003, Michiko Kakutani, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. E8.

New York Times Book Review, February 1, 1970, Richard P. Brickner, review of Bad Debts, p. 46; March 3, 1974, review of The Sightseer, p. 4; August 22, 1976, review of Black Sun, p. 1; January 8, 1978, review of Inklings, p. 14; August 12, 1979, John Irving, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 1; February 16, 1986, James Carroll, review of Providence, p. 7; March 1, 1987, Patricia O'Connor, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 34; April 19, 1992, Helen Bevington, review of A Day at the Beach, p. 7; February 19, 1995, Ron Carlson, review of The Age of Consent, p. 13; August 24, 2003, Charles McGrath, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 1; December 7, 2003, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 71.

New York Times Magazine, February 5, 1989, Francine Prose, "The Brothers Wolff," p. 22.

People, May 18, 1992, review of A Day at the Beach, p. 32.

Publishers Weekly, June 30, 2003, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 66.

San Diego Tribune, September 12, 1990, Arthus Salm, review of The Final Club.

Saturday Review, January 21, 1978, review of Inklings, p. 51; September 29, 1979, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 46.

Stanford Daily, January 29, 2004, Nancy Wang, "Prof. Wolff's Brother Speaks and Reads from His Writing."

Time, January 5, 1970, review of Bad Debts, p. 58; September 6, 1976, review of Black Sun, p. 73; August 13, 1979, Paul Gray, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 71; July 7, 1986, review of Providence, p. 62.

Times Literary Supplement, June 11, 1970, review of Bad Debts, p. 631; January 14, 1977, review of Black Sun, p. 33; July 4, 1980, Harold Beaver, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 754; November 28, 1986, review of Providence, p. 1357; May 19, 1995, Hal Jensen, review of The Age of Consent, p. 20.

Town & Country, August, 2005, Simone Girner, review of The Edge of Maine, p. 82.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), March 2, 1986, Bruce Cook, review of Providence; December 29, 1991, review of A Day at the Beach, p. 1; March 12, 1995, review of The Age of Consent, p. 3; September 28, 2003, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 1.

Village Voice, November 12, 1976, James Atlas, review of Black Sun; September 17, 1979, review of The Duke of Deception, p. 46; March 18, 1986, M. George Stevenson, review of Providence, p. 46; April 28, 1992, Jeff Brown, review of A Day at the Beach, p. 65.

Vogue, September, 2003, Kate Bolick, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 548.

Voice Literary Supplement, October, 1990, Alberto Mobillo, review of The Final Club.

Washington Post Book World, February 23, 1986, Ross Thomas, review of Providence; March 22, 1992, Mordechai Richler, review of A Day at the Beach, p. 1.

Wilson Quarterly, autumn, 2003, James A. Morris, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 120.

World Literature Today, September-December, 2004, Marvin J. LaHood, review of The Art of Burning Bridges, p. 105.

Yale Review, March, 1970, Paul Edward Gray, review of Bad Debts, p. 686.