Tobias Wolff is one of my favorite short story writers, perhaps my very favorite. I think of him as an American Chekhov. When he settled into his first big teaching job at Syracuse University with Raymond Carver, I had no trouble referring to them as the Chekhov and de Maupassant of the 1970s.

Carver died more than 20 years ago, and now Wolff remains as a major heavy lifter of short fiction’s torch. He’s a popular writer, though, as he says with a more than a mild touch of sarcasm, he’s aware that he writes for “a vast audience that a short story writer commands, only slightly greater than that of a poet.”

I’m a sucker for Wolff and would whittle out 29 minutes to hear him any day. What a great experience his audience of 500 Kansas City Public Library Show Me Staters must have had listening to him read from his coming-of-age memoir, “Old School.” He recounts his own experience, as a student, of seeing Robert Frost give a poetry reading. In fact, Wolff couldn’t hear a word because he was sitting at the back of the hall.

In contrast, Wolff comes through loud and clear. He talks about how he’d always wanted to be a writer, how imagination defines who we are and “we can only be who we imagine being.” He gives us his memoir’s rendition of himself and his prep school roommate pretending to be Hemingway by speaking as follows: “That is your bed. And it is a good bed. And you must make it. And you must make it well.”

He talks about his anxiety writing and the fun he has rewriting. He says he keeps to a daily writing schedule but tries to be flexible. He has three kids, and “the car needs an oil change now and then, your shoes wear out – you become more liquid in your approach.” He even mentions the shadow of anti-Semitism he was aware of as a prep school student.

Anyone interested in one of America’s most kingly literary lions will enjoy hearing Wolff’s spontaneous remarks, as well as his chiseled, extraordinary prose.