Say Yes (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

Wolffs first short story collection, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, waspublished in 1981. When Back in the World, whichcollected “Say Yes,” was published four years later, many reviewers commented on how it differed from its predecessor. Mona Simpson writes in the New Republic thatshe finds the second batch of stories to be “in a more somber mode.” They “feel omniscient,” she says, “universal, with biblical resonance.” She continues, “In these new stories, Wolff works with the same thematic concerns, the same passion for moral questions, but his fictional canvas is sparer and simpler.... He has chosen more dramatic, emblematic characters.” These characteristics, according to Simpson, add a new power to Wolffs work. She sums up Back in the World asa collection of “stripped-down moral fables.”

Geoff Dyer, writing for the New Statesman, findsthis collection far superior to the first, calling the stories “better and more expansive than those in Wolff’s impressive but uneven first collection.” Dyer proclaims that this collection lifted Wolff to the top ranks of American writers; “With this new volume,” Dyer writes, “he rivals Raymond Carver as the finest male short story writer now working in America.”

Many critics focused on Wolff’s eye for detail, or in the words of New York Times criticMichiko Kakutani, “his gift for meticulous observation.” In a review for the Los Angeles Times, RichardEder praises Wolff’s “lavish display of skill.” Matthew Gilbert, writing for Boston Review notesthe depth to which Wolff pays attention to the details of his stories; “Wolff also invests the settings of these stories with a life of their own. They embrace the main action and subtly become essential to the story. In ’Say Yes,’ the kitchen utensils seem to participate in the argument between husband and wife.”

David Montrose of the Times Literary Supplement generallyliked the collection, finding that Wolff “excels at creating people and moods,” which he does “by showing, accreting detail, rather than telling.” At times, however, some critics felt that this technique stifled Wolff’s voice. Writes Jonathan Penner for the Washington Post, “Not even a writer as good as Wolff can eschew he thought and he feltforever,” and concludes that “only a partial humanity percolates through action and speech.”

Not all reviewers, however, lauded the collection. Russell Banks, in his review for the New York Times Book Review, statesthat the collection was “a considerable falling off for Mr. Wolff,” and that it did not “measure up” to his previous published works. “Whereas the earlier stories used digression to build a dialectic, to make something happen, theseseem to meander into narrative cul-de-sacs.” The criticism of Thomas DePietro, of the Hudson Review, wassimilar to Banks’s; DePietro finds fault with the “minimalist” mode in which Wolff works, noting particularly a “conspicuous absence of subject matter” in the stories. DePietro finds the shorter stories to end in a “pseudo-epiphany” and the longer stories to end “washed out and proud of it.” Banks, however, demonstrates a keen awareness of Wolff’s writing talent, noting the “brilliant moments” scattered in the stories, which made him “await Mr. Wolff’s next book with all the more eagerness.” Kakutani, who admits that there “is not a lot of hope” for Wolff’s characters, nevertheless finds in their presentation “the promise of some kind of redemption in their fumbling efforts to connect with one another.”

Since its publication, “Say Yes” has appeared in several anthologies. In many ways, it is highly representative of Wolff’s short fiction, which tends to center on the human relationships and their inherent instability. As Marilyn C. Wesley states in her article on Wolff for the Dictionary of Literary Biography,Wolff’s “is a genuinely humanistic fiction — both human and humane.” Over the years, Wolff’s reviewers have generally perceived this leaning. Relatively little explicit criticism about the story exists, however, one of its few specific references was negative: Montrose writing in the Times Literary Supplement believesthat “Say Yes” was among the “least noteworthy” among Wolff s “generally admirable” collection of stories. Dyer, writing in the New Statesmen, statesthat “Wolffs characters never feel quite sure what’s happening to them,” a statement that seems to apply to “Say Yes,” in which the husband reacts with bewilderment about the argument he finds himself in with his wife: “His stories are about people who don’t know how they’re going to end.” Indeed, the closing lines of “Say Yes” demonstratethat uncertainty, as the husband listens for the sounds of his wife moving through their dark bedroom the same way he would listen to a stranger moving through their house.