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The Barracks Thief
by
Tobias Wolff
The Barracks Thief is the story of three young paratroopers waiting to be shipped out to Vietnam. Brought together one sweltering afternoon to stand guard over an ammunition dump threatened by a forest fire, they discover in each other an unexpected capacity for recklessness and violence. Far from being alarmed by this discovery, they are exhilarated by it; they emerge fro...more
Paperback, 112 pages
Published
January 1st 1990
by Ecco
(first published January 1st 1986)
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I was really groovin on this little book until the last page when I was thinking "no, no, no" as Wolff tied everything up very swiftly and blatantly.
*note: unless you are a teacher filled with bitterness due to being made to attend hours on end of mindless, time wasting inservices, this review isn't for you.
hey sarah, remember when we read this book as a staff and then we had discussions regarding Wolff's narrative style. and remember how passionately people spoke of his switch from 3rd person t...more
*note: unless you are a teacher filled with bitterness due to being made to attend hours on end of mindless, time wasting inservices, this review isn't for you.
hey sarah, remember when we read this book as a staff and then we had discussions regarding Wolff's narrative style. and remember how passionately people spoke of his switch from 3rd person t...more
Jun 07, 2011
Ryan
added it
The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff
In this novella Wolff targets adult males with knowledge of the Vietnam War and recently graduated high school males who are interested in a military career. This book is not directed towards younger age groups because of the adult content and language used by the author. The author’s objective in writing this book is to give information about the roughness that can occur in the military and that you can’t trust everyone.
In this book, Wolff shifts between third...more
In this novella Wolff targets adult males with knowledge of the Vietnam War and recently graduated high school males who are interested in a military career. This book is not directed towards younger age groups because of the adult content and language used by the author. The author’s objective in writing this book is to give information about the roughness that can occur in the military and that you can’t trust everyone.
In this book, Wolff shifts between third...more
Wolff, Tobias. THE BARRACKS THIEF. (1984). ****. Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, this first novel from Wolff deals with three men – new recruits in the airforce based at Ft. Bragg – who are thrown together on a duty on camp. They are assigned to stand guard over an ammunitions dump that is later threatened by a forest fire. During this duty they discover in each other and in themselves an unexpected capacity for recklessness and violence. After a period of introspection – to various degrees –...more
David Sedaris recommended this book to me--me and the other few hundred people who paid to hear him read. Sedaris always makes a book recommendation at his readings. I've seen him read dozens of times, but this is the first one I actually took him up on. I'm so glad I did. It's a delightfully short character study of three men on the verge of being shipped off to Vietnam just as the war began to escalate domestically. The narrative perspective shifts from one character's first person point of vi...more
Read, but the edition is unavailable, "The Barracks Thief and Selected Stories." Liked "The Barracks Thief," but loved loved loved the other stories, especially "The Liar." Got more attached to the characters, to their self-deceptions. "The Liar" is an interesting choice for a last story because it is the only one in which a character knowingly and purposefully creates these deceptions. But still there is something purblind about this little liar; the harm he does on his mother and the people wh...more
The Barracks Thief is Tobias Wolff's second book, but it’s really a very long short story or novella. It chronicles the life of Vietnam era soldiers and creates believable flawed real-life characters. As usual, there’s some local color as one of the characters hails from the Pacific Northwest. The story focuses on three soldiers that have a harrowing experience together that serves as a sort of litmus test for them and colors their actions thereafter. A barracks thief shatters the common bond am...more
"Finally the first sergeant began to talk in a voice that was almost a whisper. It was that soft, but I could hear each word as if her were speaking just to me. He said that a barracks thief was the lowest thing there was. A barracks thief had turned his back on his own kind. He went on like that."
This was such a real book. I swear I could hear the characters breathing as they slept. I could smell them. Sometimes, we escape into fiction, enjoying the romanticism, respecting authors who can creat...more
This was such a real book. I swear I could hear the characters breathing as they slept. I could smell them. Sometimes, we escape into fiction, enjoying the romanticism, respecting authors who can creat...more
I really love Tobias Wolff's writing style - direct, pensive, without being spare for the sake of it. The prose here really gives the reader deep insight into the minds and actions of the characters in this book, who are all troubled for one reason of another. Would have given it four stars if not for the fact that I didn't really see the event at the beginning of the story as dramatically as Wolff (or at least the lead narrator) wants to see it. Without giving away anything, the incident the re...more
David Sedaris strongly recommended this book (or novella) to the audience when I saw him at a recent reading/book signing. So, of course, since it is good enough for one of my idols, I bought a copy in the lobby afterwards. Although the subject matter (three paratroopers getting ready to be shipped out to Vietnam) was one I would not gravitate towards, I found it quite beautiful and sad. It is only 100 pages long so it feels more like a long short story. I read it in one sitting. It ends a bit a...more
this short novel is absolutely perfect in what it does. i've read it, and several of wolff's short story collections, before and read it again after hearing david sedaris promote it at a lecture a few nights ago. tobias wolff is undoubtedly one of the greatest contemporary american short story authors, and this novella is some of his best work. the force of emotion wolff manages to evoke with his spare, simple prose is astounding. read this, then read "the night in question;" two books that will...more
David Sedaris recommended this book to me--me and the other few hundred people who paid to hear him read. Sedaris always makes a book recommendation at his readings. I've seen him read dozens of times, but this is the first one I actually took him up on. I'm so glad I did. It's a delightfully short character study of three men on the verge of being shipped off to Vietnam just as the war began to escalate domestically. The narrative perspective shifts from one character's first person point of vi...more
Tobias Wolff’s The Barracks Thief is a quietly-told story of a restless young man waiting for something to happen. That ‘something’ happens to be a stint in the 82nd Airborne out to Vietnam, but something is – on occasion – better than nothing. The novel draws this man together with two others with similar tales, with the title giving us the apex for the story to hang off.
The army seems to be a place where the restless and the lonely might be able to find the kinship that they otherwise don’t kn...more
The army seems to be a place where the restless and the lonely might be able to find the kinship that they otherwise don’t kn...more
My first Tobias Wolff book - and it is a very good book. Only 100-odd pages it is certainly a quick read, but that in no way diminishes the impact or the power of its story. Wolff gives you just enough subtlety for your brain to get into top gear as you fill out the picture of the three main characters' lives. The story is very simple - of mid-1960s recruits at the end of training and waiting in the limbo that surrounds them before posting to Vietnam.
The three bond after their shared guard duty...more
The three bond after their shared guard duty...more
Everyone I've talked to about this book hates the ending. I didn't mind, mostly because I read some nuclear age doomsday stuff into it (that apparently isn't there) and turned the book into a morality play about the evils of indifference and gentle selfishness.
But ending aside, it's a lovely read and an image in the book of someone mistaking a person swatting away bugs for a much-needed friendly wave...that was just so perfectly done as is something I've thought about daily since finishing it.
But ending aside, it's a lovely read and an image in the book of someone mistaking a person swatting away bugs for a much-needed friendly wave...that was just so perfectly done as is something I've thought about daily since finishing it.
Its a story of human condition. Philip gets raised in a broken home and grows up uneducated. This book is about how people cope with life being uneducated. The decisions he makes and the juxtaposition of his rebellion as a child and his lemming like passivity as an adult, show the power of reason, experience and maturity...and how people act when they never experience these traits.
Tobias Wolff is a mixture of Hemingway and Irving. Simple, eloquent and with vast depths of character development.
Tobias Wolff is a mixture of Hemingway and Irving. Simple, eloquent and with vast depths of character development.
Very engaging novella with a relatively quiet voice. A story about the difficulty of making and sustaining honest human connections, about letting go of childhood, about preparing for war, and--most of all--about shame. A deceptively short book; there is much resonance and more than a little regret stored up in this tale.
[Note: There's a pretty graphic sex scene in this story... with nothing beautiful about it.]
[Note: There's a pretty graphic sex scene in this story... with nothing beautiful about it.]
Read this book in about 3 hours. Like all of Wolff's writing (one of my favorites) the book was filled with tight, clean, precise, subtle prose and never failed to be touching and poignant in all the right ways. The only thing I thought was off was the brother relationship that started at the beginning of the book and fizzled out. Actually, I think book could have just focused on the recruits in training and left out most if not all the family stuff. It was definitely a worthwhile read though, a...more
Wrote a long review and goodreads didn't save it, so, to sum up quickly: a good book to read to round out your knowledge of Wolff's entire body of work but, as his first novel, not as good as the rest of his work. A 2 is a bit harsh, and certainly he lowest score I have ever given anything by Wolff but the characters and story just weren't as interesting to me.
Jul 29, 2011
Adam
added it
Concise and powerful, The Barrack Thief places the reader in the last weeks of young soldiers' lives before they're to ship out for Vietnam. What happens to them there and the decisions they're ultimately forces to make echo the experience of war that each is no doubt contemplating in their every waking moment.
It was a bit deep, a bit uncomfortable, a bit ponderous. I think it's a book that needs to be digested for a bit before the impact sinks in fully. It's a REALLY fast read, and it IS Tobias Wolff, so it's worth picking up in exchange for a half hour of your time and whatever you feel like devoting to thinking about it afterwards.
In a recent article in the New Yorker, Ian McEwan lists this as one of his favorite novellas, so I had to check it out. I thought The Barracks Thief was a well-written and sensitively told story, and I found the switch from 1st to 3rd person particularly effective.
I couldn't put it down- good thing it's a novella. His writing always packs a punch and I had a hard time going to sleep after I finished reading. It always seems as if he doesn't waste a word. Thanks goodness I have a few of his short stories to follow it up.
This novel employs some narrative gymnastics that might have sunk a lesser work handily - but the fact that Wolff keeps it afloat still left me wondering, "to what end"? Not a bad little story but likely not entirely demonstrative of the more mature writer I'm sure he is now.
I cannot take credit for reading this book, nor the review that follows. A friend of mine read this book and wanted to review it.
In "The Barracks Thief," Tobias Wolff takes a painfully realistic literary snapshot from the lives of his fictional characters. In 100 pages we are introduced to their truths with minimal background or excuses. The characters are who they are at the moment Wolff decides to bring the readers into their lives.
Short stories can be frustrating for avid novel readers. In 1...more
In "The Barracks Thief," Tobias Wolff takes a painfully realistic literary snapshot from the lives of his fictional characters. In 100 pages we are introduced to their truths with minimal background or excuses. The characters are who they are at the moment Wolff decides to bring the readers into their lives.
Short stories can be frustrating for avid novel readers. In 1...more
At 100 pages it's readable in one evening. I like how the point of view changes, and the time changes, over the course of the novelette. The most interesting thing is how the major section is told from the point of view of the thief, though he remains an unsympathetic character.
Wolff's style has filled out considerably since this novel- written in 1984. But the themes he'd continue to explore are all here- youthful alienation in the Vietnam era, the minor dramas of family life, and the inevitability of suffering. Its all presented in a well paced story.
tobias wolff is always worth reading. this novella centers on 3 soldiers waiting to go to vietnam left to guard an ammunition dump as a forest fire approaches. the ensuing story tells, in multiple perspectives, of other conflagrations.
A sad book - but good. A very quick read that was a suggestion from my friend Andy. Unfortunately, I finished the book feeling sad and a little unsatisfied. It was incredibly well-written, however, and made me think.
This book came recommended by David Sedaris. While not what I expected, it was such a fast read that I devoured it in one sitting. There's just something about soldier novels that slays me every single time.
I'm conflicted about this one - the writing is really good, I like the way the story develops, but then it stops when it feels like it's just getting going (with a somewhat awkward epilogue following). I might rate it higher on a second go, which I'll probably get around to at some point as it's a quick, easy read. Raymond Carver & Tess Gallagher have recommendations on the sleeve, which had a lot to do with why I ended up picking it up in the first place.
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Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is a writer of fiction and nonfiction.
He is best known for his short stories and his memoirs, although he has written two novels.
Wolff is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, where he has taught classes in English and creative writing since 1997. He also served as the director of the Creative Writ...more
More about Tobias Wolff...
He is best known for his short stories and his memoirs, although he has written two novels.
Wolff is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, where he has taught classes in English and creative writing since 1997. He also served as the director of the Creative Writ...more
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Sep 15, 2011 01:01pm
Sep 15, 2011 03:18pm