Here, Tobias Wolff discusses his literary influences and his youthful attraction to military service. This wasn’t a new idea. The Army I’d always known I would wear the uniform. It was essential to my idea of legitimacy. The men I I’d respected when I was growing up had all served, and most of the writers I looked up to. Norman Mailer, Irwin Shaw, James Jones, Erich Maria Remarque, and of course, Hemingway, to whom I turn for guidance in all things.

Military service was not an incidental part of their histories. They were unimaginable. Apart from it.