Part coming-of-age narrative, part morality tale, and part dress rehearsal for the stories and novels Wolff would write later in his career, this novella is the story of Philip Bishop.

And – as always – I am a little behind on reading them. You will be pleased to know that I own 25 books by authors named Wolfe, Wolf, Woolf, Wolff, and Wulff. Have you ever noticed how many famous writers have variations of this name – and that they all spell it differently? I never really thought about it until last year when I was cataloging all of my books in an Excel document. And another reason was this: Woolf and Wolff. So I slammed my way through How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, finished A Room of One’s Own at long last, and then picked up The Barracks Thief because it was short and because there was a good chance it would be good (and it was, with a couple of qualifications) and because it has been sitting on my shelf unread since sometime in the month or two after the movie adaptation of This Boy’s Life came out in 1993, when I – along with much of the reading public – figured out who Tobias Wolff was. I was feeling bummed that the list of books I’ve read so far this year is so short and that I hardly ever finish books anymore. Stories included are: 'The Missing Person,' 'Say Yes,' 'The Poor Are Always With Us,' 'Sister,' 'Soldier's Joy,' 'Desert Breakdown,' 'Our Story Begins,' 'Leviathan,' and 'The Rich Brother.I’ll say it so you don’t have to: I broke out the short books this weekend. As he moves among these unfortunates, Wolff observes the disparity between their realities and their dreams, in ten stories of exhilarating lucidity and grace. An aging soldier is distracted from a night of philandering by a gun-toting neighbor and a suicidal enlisted man. A show-biz hopeful undergoes a dubious audition in a hearse speeding across the California desert. A gentle priest finds himself in a Vegas hotel with a hysterical, sun-burned stranger. Unfortunately, the men and women in these gripping, pungent, and wonderfully skewed stories have only the vaguest notion of what normal is. To Tobias Wolff's characters, Back in the World is where lives that have veered out of control just might become normal again. To American soldiers in Vietnam, 'back in the world' meant America and safety.

The rich brother tobias wolff