Writing, according to Tobias Wolff, is an "essentially optimistic art," for
the very act of writing assumes, to begin with, that someone cares to hear what you have to say. It assumes that people share, that people can be reached, that people can be touched and even in some cases changed. ... So many of the things in our world tend to lead us to despair. It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; it's one of the affirming arts. ... A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act.
I reread "Say Yes." I understand so much of it now--even the cryptic ending makes sense, how Ann tells her husband to turn off the light and she walks about the darkened room as "a stranger," how her husband is left nameless.
