TOB Site of the Month

The band, "Shiny Around the Edges" has a new CD, why do i love you.  Two of the songs, Impossible and As She Lay Sleeping are inspired by In the Lake of the Woods.

Note to students:  Page down to see information on specific books by O'Brien, such as The Things They Carried.  I have included short excerpts from articles to help you judge how advanced they are.  Some may be too complex for a high school student reading O'Brien for the first time, but there are papers here that will help all levels.  (Be sure to cite your sources, your teachers may be familiar with these papers too.)

When researching O'Brien, the most important source, other than his books, are the interviews.  Some really important interviews are available on-line, such as the Artful Dodge Interview.  Here is an explanation of magical realism, and here is a first paragraph that will help you understand metafiction.  These terms often come up in reference to O'Brien's writing.

Trust your own instincts.  O'Brien is just telling stories and if you listen, you will understand.

Tim O'Brien & Vietnam Timeline by Michelle Battaglia

''Well, yes, I dedicated the book to my characters,'' Mr. O'Brien said. ''After all, I lived with them for five years while I was writing. In Vietnam people were being rotated constantly, so men you served with you would know six or eight months. These characters are the people I know best.''

I think it soaked in the way my father's alcoholism soaked into my life. I'd never written much about it directly. But it soaked in and was distilled, transmuted. I could say the same things about the other writers.

War, Literature, & the Arts,
Vol. 6, #2, Fall/Winter 1994.
Donald Anderson, Editor
Department of English
2354 Fairchild Drive, Suite 6D45
U.S. Air Force Academy, CO 80840-6242

"It makes me angry that only one person was convicted for My Lai, and that was Lieutenant Calley," says O'Brien. "Soldiers who testified that they killed twenty people were never prosecuted. What really bugs me is that of the 150 or so people who were there, the American public only remembers Calley's name. But what about the rest of them? Those people are still all around us. What are they telling their wives and children? Are they guarding their secrets, too?"

"In a way, I think, good stories have to be direct. A fairy tale is always direct. There's the wolf sleeping in the bed in "Little Red Riding Hood." Hansel and Gretel get dumped in the forest and have to find their way out."

Saturday morning the super author was at the Davenport Public Library to speak to a group that was gathered to hear about the role of fiction in story telling. He was becoming hoarse from all of his presentations, but he was game and willing to entertain and enlighten the people that were there.

"I'm a happy person now," he said, sounding a little surprised himself, then backtracking a bit. "Getting there. Maybe the world isn't the horrid place it seemed to me four years ago."

"I think novels, by and large—I mean not one hundred percent, but by and large—come out of a sense of outrage at something. A good novel is not made out of complacency and out of everything being happy and snug and all the children are home in their beds and all of the daddies are well-behaved and all of the mommies are dusting the furniture. Books aren’t made out of that kind of stuff."

My real fans will love the book. There are so-called fans who are basically Vietnam junkies, but the people who appreciate the writing will like this. I think this is my best book and I hope they feel that way, too.

"But I must confess that I am super-duper proud of the imperious, sexist, oblivious, pompous, charming, disgusting, politically incorrect voice that drives Tomcat In Love."

In Person Tim O'Brien at Book People by Tom Grimes, 1998

"I asked Tim O'Brien how the novel marks a new direction in his life and his work, as well as how his potential new digs five feet from the golf course might get his game down into the low 70s: "I've always wanted to really spend some time and get serious about golf, to see how good I could get. Before I start to creak."

"The death of Chip Merricks - he's a real human being. I didn't have exactly the experience that I wrote in the book - no climbing up trees, no peeling off body-parts, and in fact I didn't even see Chip's body in person. I was a hundred yards away, looking in a different direction. I was busy on the radio, calling for helicopters to, you know, get him out of there. But he was a friend, and the emotional impact of his death was very great."

Number one: writing never gets easier, it gets harder. You can't repeat yourself.

"I work like a dog. So many successful writers don’t. They rely solely on linguistic gift."

"I subsequently wrote a novel," he said, "and I told you half the first chapter tonight ["Tomcat in Love"]. What inspired [that story] was [everyone's] integral dictionary and the power of writing. It's not just childhood, it's not jsut events that make a writer, it's also the power of language."

"As a story teller and as a person who trusts story, I think a good story addresses not just the head, but the whole human body: the tear ducts, the scalp, the back of your neck and spine, even the stomach."  [Photos too!]

'Before last week's attack, he said, God appeared in his novel as a minor character, as "an angel, as a voice." After last week he decided to give God a whole chapter.

"God only knows if it will appear in the book," he added.'

Interview for ReadersRead, 2002

"I got a call one day from the fiction editor at Esquire, Rust Hills, who asked if I'd like to write a very short story, one that would fit on a single printed page. I took him up on the offer and produced a piece that now stands as one of the important reunion chapters in July, July."

"The 'What If' Game" in Atlantic, 2002

"Well, I had a desire to write from the time I was a little kid and then something collided with that desire—namely Vietnam—and I had to write about it. It moved from desire to imperative. I couldn't not write."

Tim O'Brien Explains Why He Is Not A "Vietnam War Novelist" to Marc Leepson, 2002

"I don't have great expectations," O'Brien said, "but I live with the hope that things will be a little bit better today, and that tomorrow may be a little bit better than today. We can't live without [that hope]. Without the belief that tomorrow can be better than today, we might as well not go on living."

In "Going After Cacciato," the book begins with a list of the dead soldiers in the platoon, (1) and the protagonist Paul Berlin works on the order of this list throughout the novel,

"He tried again to order the known facts. Billy boy was first. And then . . . then who?" (185)

The order may change but Paul Berlin never forgets that Billy Boy was killed first.

When the men in the White House and the Pentagon decided to send Americans to fight in Vietnam, they probably never gave a thought to the literature that veterans might write.

"When writing a novel, I usually just use my imagination. In this case, I did a substantial amount of reading, on the lives of politicians and their wives, and on My Lai itself."

"Tim O'Brien is of the generation of writers who came of age during the Vietnam War era and his writing has focused on that turbulent period in American history with compassion and insight."

"For O'Brien, the lingering hurts of the war are intimately linked to his stories, which, by virtue of their allegiance to the contradictory truths of war, resist closure."

Tim O'Brien's Ironic Aesthetic: Faith and the Nature of a "True" Story by Edward A. Hagan and John Briggs

"Tim O'Brien's fiction since the 1990 publication of The Things They Carried is sharply focused on the necessity of respect for mystery and a recognition that mystery requires the problematic response of faith."

Tim O'Brien & Anti-War Writing by Mike Kelley and others

"I doubt Tim or any other author who draws upon their Vietnam experience really writes in the hope of stopping wars."

Critical analysis of Tim O'Brien's works by Willis

"O’Brien uses much of Hemmingway’s style in his work- despair, rhythmic repetition of key words and phrases; the hard, discipline control of idea and emotion in sentences and paragraphs that are models of the stoic understatement; the darkly ironic gestures; and the classical imperatives of courage and cowardliness, transgression and expiation, of Hemmingway’s best stories and novels"

Milieu

"One unique aspect of Tim O'Brien's stories is that he believes the truth in storytelling is better than actual truth. Although his stories are considered fiction there are some aspects of reality in each and every one. O'Brien does not fill his stories with mundane facts but instead uses language so vivid he makes a believer out of his readers."

Everything is wrong by Michael Tortorello

"Yet Berlin, like O'Brien, feels bound by the responsibilities he has chosen, if only by default. He lists his obligations "to my family, my friends, my town, my country"--the same litany that delivered the author into Vietnam."

If I Die in a Combat Zone - [buy the book]
  (description) (excerpt) (bookclub guide)

". . . a beautiful, painful book, arousing pity and fear for the daily realities of a modern disaster."

Study Guide for a Book Club

Discussion questions

Review by Erick Lundegaard

"If I Die in a Combat Zone is a nice little book." (Editorial comment: Maybe it's not the same book . . .)

Going After Cacciato - [buy the book]
(description) (excerpt) (bookclub guide)

". . . combines a surface of realistic war reportage as fine as any in Michael Herr's recent 'Dispatches' with a deeper feel . . . of the surrealistic effect war has on the daydreams and nightmares of the combatants. To call 'Going After Cacciato' a novel about war is like calling 'Moby Dick' a novel about whales."

As O'Brien's third novel, Going After Cacciato is one of his most acclaimed works. The book brings to the reader many chilling aspects of war while developing a connection between the reader and the narrator.

Moral Questions in Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato: How to do Right in an Evil Situation by Jonathan Chisdes

Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien, is a book that presents many problems in understanding. Simply trying to figure out what is real and what is fantasy and where they combine can be quite a strain on the reader. Yet even more clouded and ambiguous are the larger moral questions raised in this book.

Tim O'Brien: Going after Cacciato (a Dutch student's book report) by Rolf Donders

Besides the use of imagination to reach your goals, this book brings up this big moral question: -How to do right in an evil situation: When you're in a war you're faced with a lot of atrocities and you'd probably wish you were somewhere else.

Review (polemical but quotes liberally)

And now, this genre of literature is taught as gospel at the U.S. Naval Academy in Tim O'Brien's anti-Vietnam War novels. They are required reading in the Academy's English Literature course. Indeed, the counter-culture revolution, fueled by the Frankfurt School intellectuals and carried out by their 'foot soldiers' in the Boomer generation, has reached our premier military academies. Indeed, the Barbarians are inside the gates.

Northern Lights - [buy the book]
(description) (excerpt)  (bookclub guide)   

The Nuclear Age - [buy the book]
(description) 

"I wish the novel could have been either more surreal or less. It falls into an untranscending middle which muffles the important cry of 'Doom, doom.'"

The Things They Carried - [buy the book] [cliff notes]
(description)("How to Tell a True War Story")  (earlier version of "How to Tell a True War Story" from Esquire) (bookclub guide)

In a stunning follow-up called "Notes," the author's character persona turns the story into an anguished confession. And in the final story, "The Lives of the Dead," a nine-year-old O'Brien learns the power of imagination in bringing a dead friend to life. 

[Editor's Note - this was the first paper I found on-line about O'Brien & for a long time it was the only one.  So thanks Mark & MIT!]

A nice effort for and by students and a former "Tim O'Brien New Site of the Month"

". . . captures the war's pulsating rhythms and nerve-racking dangers. . . . high up on the list of best fiction about any war."

There are countless themes in this book, but one of the major ones is the after effects the war had and still has on the men that were there.

Tim O'Brien and the Art of the True War Story: "Night March" and "Speaking of Courage". by John H. Timmerman

For example, The Things They Carried first introduces a young Vietnamese soldier in "Spin," and then, nine chapters later, in "The Man I Killed," the narrator details killing this soldier and creates a short hypothetical biography for him--a "past" used to escape the reality of his death. The next chapter, "Ambush," suggests that perhaps the man is not really dead after all.

The Myth-Shattering Courage of Tim O'Brien by Jon Matney

Even as we are influenced by ancient myths such as The Iliad, where war is extolled and the valorous warrior praised, modern novels such as Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (TTTC) challenge those very notions.

A Soldier's Sweetheart  [buy video]  (review)  

"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" made for TV movie broadcast on Showtime.  I didn't care for it.  The ending is a mess.

What More Can Carrie Want? Naturalistic Ways of Consuming Women by Blanche H. Gelfant

I turn now to 1990 and a story called "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" in Tim O'Brien's highly acclaimed collection of Vietnam War stories, The Things They Carried.

Felice Aull comments on two short stories

"Good Form" and "The Lives of the Dead"

The Things They Carried by Jason Voegele 

In his story "The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien describes a group of soldiers marching through Vietnam. He does this by describing the items that each of them carries with him during the march.

How to tell a true war story': Metafiction in 'The Things They Carried by Catherine Calloway

The tales included in O'Brien's twenty-two chapters range from several lines to many pages and demonstrate well the impossibility of knowing the reality of the war in absolute terms.

Tim O'Brien and American National Identity: A Vietnam Veteran's Imagined Self in The Things They Carried by Lynn Wharton

In this paper I shall be examining Tim O'Brien's treatment of both the national and the personal American self in his collection of Vietnam War stories The Things They Carried. I will look at some of the ways in which O'Brien renders frail that veneer of authenticity traditionally associated with autobiographical first-person fiction.

The Truth in Things: Personal Trauma As Historical Amnesia in The Things They Carried by Jim Neilson

O'Brien has been successful at conveying these vital truths about the war, many critics argue, because of his use of a postmodern aesthetic. By "postmodernism" I mean what Jean-Francois Lyotard identifies as "that severe reexamination . . . on the thought of the Enlightenment, on the idea of a unitary end of history and of a subject" (73).

Metafiction and O'Brien's The Things They Carried by Michele Friedlander

O'Brien's character makes several comments on storytelling in certain sections of the novel, such as "How to Tell a True War Story." Through making these comments, the narrator is not only justifying the intent of The Things They Carried,but he is also providing clues to the content, structure, and interpretation of the novel.

STUDY GUIDES ETC. FOR The Things They Carried
Glossary M&M's - "comic slang for medical supplies" [editor's note - the glossary is wrong, this actually means the candy, some medics carried them.  See O'Brien's comment]	Study Guide - Masconomet Regional School District Quite good! Analysis of some stories	Study Guide - Minnesota Independent School District 196 Creative links to Amazon for student activities
Study Guide - University of Wisconsin, River Falls Discussion questions for an English class	Student Web Projects - Tulane University Short papers on topics associated with the war	Study Guide - West Virginia University Law School Exercise for a class on "Lawyers and Literature
	Study Guide - Florida State University Discussion questions for major stories and themes.

In the Lake of the Woods - [buy the book]
(description) (bookclub guide)

O'Brien's clean, incantatory prose always hovers on the edge of dream, and his specialty is that twilight zone of chimeras and fears and fantasies where nobody knows what's true and what is not. In Vietnam, of course, he locates the ultimate "spirit world," an eerie land of shadows where kids shot at phantoms, unable to tell friend from enemy, uncertain what they were fighting for.

On its simplest level Mr. O'Brien's novel is about the disintegration of a marriage based on concealment.

O'Brien makes use of admirable technical innovations to dramatize John's story. Dissatisfied with a linear narrative's ability to capture his truth, he has invented his own fictional form.

". . . striking new novel . . . about the moral effects of suppressing a true war story . . . a novel about the unforgivable uses of history, about what happens when you try to pretend that history no longer exists."

In The Lake of the Woods (Video not currently available.  Maybe you can catch it on the Hallmark Channel) 

Hallmark Hall of Fame movie; not bad for a movie that didn't have the guts to say "My Lai." [Tim's IMDB page]

Student Analysis

Well I hope this will help any and all of you out in whatever way possible. I just tell you now that I'm not going to be held resiponsible for anything. [Editorial comment: Especially spelling!]

Tomcat in Love - [buy the book]
(description) (audio excerpt) (excerpt)

Compare the
first chapter  to "Faith" (Feb. 12, 1996 New Yorker)

He tries to make himself call his girlfriend by her first name, but cannot. I was reminded of Macbeth; "But wherefore could not I pronounce `Amen'? I had most need of blessing, and `Amen' Stuck in my throat." There is comedy in "Tomcat in Love," but much more tragedy.

If he's not the standard grave, introspective O'Brien protagonist, his quest for a personal mythology reflects the same theme that makes O'Brien's serious novels so compelling: the power of stories to define and delude--and even to save us.

But like all comic novels, ''Tomcat in Love'' is a complex affair that invites a complex response and offers a complex reward. Whatever O'Brien's motives in changing his style and direction, I, for one, hope he keeps it up. Now that the millennium is upon us, may it rain comic novels all around. - Jane Smiley

OR

In fact, the reader can only wonder at the disparity between the power of those earlier books by O'Brien -- distinguished by their inventive storytelling and their evocative depiction of the visceral and emotional realities of war -- and the mangled mess that is "Tomcat in Love." - Michiko Kakutani

Review from "The New Totalitarions"  (don't say you weren't warned!)

This book is even a more egregious excuse for writing an anti-Vietnam War book than was O'Brien's 'Going After Cacciato.' Several favorable book reviews at the front of the book give it away. Harper's Bazaar says, "A tremendous achievement, a truly postmodern thriller..." Of course it is. It is written in the form of the modern deconstructionists who hate America, its Constitution, and its history.

Don't listen to critics for crying out loud!  Read the book and make up your own mind!

Weird Tomcat Study Guide/Review

Plot
Time/era of story - 1980's-1999
Learning secret about someone Yes
Secret: - special abilities - relationship with someone - real feelings

July, July

 

'Richard Dreyfuss held up "The Things They Carried" in his fictional college class on "The Education of Max Bickford."

Like the book's author, Dreyfuss' character said, he had to make a decision about going to Vietnam. Whereas Tim O'Brien had gone, he had not, Max Bickford said.'

Um, I don't know quite what to make of this . . . it's a lawyer's riff on "The Things We Carry."  But I bet students love his class!

• A Beginner's Guide to Legal Education:  Things We Carry Into Legal Writing by Professor James R. Elkins, College of Law, West Virginia University

What do our students carry with them into legal education? What emotional and cognitive baggage do they "hump" through the weary days of legal education?

Maritn Napersteck on Tim O'Brien from "The Company of Writers"  (I enjoyed this thoughtful article that goes to something important about being a writer.  Hi Martin! -turns out we were in the same class at DePauw . . .)

"So I asked him what M&Ms were. He looked as if I asked him if the sun comes up every morning; he must have consciously worked to keep his jaw from drooping."

Looking for first editions and other O'Brien material?  When O'Brien cleans house, he calls Ken Lopez.  It's good to shop around before you buy, so also visit  Abe Books.  (Don't put your first edition Tim O'Brien books in a rummage sale unless you want to make someone else's day!)

What are you doing next? I'm a big fan of your historical novels; I really liked Burr. Do you have any more planned?– Tim O'Brien, novelist  (from Gadfly: authors were solicited to ask questions of Gore Vidal)

Reviews of websites about Tim O'Brien

Guess which one got four stars? <g>  Useful for educators

Tim O'Brien, Tequila, and a Few Late Nights Telling War Stories By Sarah Hepola

Salt. Tequila. Lime. Tim O'Brien.

Books Where You Can Learn More About Tim O'Brien

Herzog, Tobey C. Tim O'Brien (Twayne's United States Authors Series, No 691) Published December,1997. This is the book that O'Brien scholars have been waiting for. Herzog knows O'Brien and his work and I learned quite a bit from his scholarship.

United States	United Kingdom	Germany	France
[hardback] (excerpt)	[hardback]	[hardback]	[hardback]

 

Heberle, Mark A.  A Trauma Artist: Tim O'Brien and the Fiction of Vietnam A critical look at each of O'Brien's books based on the author's reading of the texts and interviews with O'Brien.  It looks very readable and thorough.

United States	United Kingdom	Germany	France
[paperback] [hardback]	[paperback]	[paperback]	[paperback]

"Vietnam, We've All Been There" - Interviews with American Writers by Eric James Schroeder    

This excellent book of interviews is on my bookshelf.

A critique of O'Brien's work 

This book on O'Brien is IN GERMAN and is part of Peter Lang Publishing's American Culture series.

He reads excerpts from "The Things They Carried" and answers questions.  It is well worthwhile.

Selected Shorts A Celebration of the Short Story on National Public Radio 2000-2001 

Program 5: Week of November 3 - November 9, 2001
Tim O'Brien, "Speaking of Courage," read by Alec Baldwin
From: The Things They Carried (Broadway Books)

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio broadcast from Jan. 15, 1995

Includes Tim O'Brien reading from In the Lake of the Woods at the University of Toronto.

Terry Gross and Fresh Air (NPR) have featured O'Brien several times:

April 21, 2000; October 12, 1994; May 30, 1994 (rebroadcast from March 22, 1990)

Order tapes of O'Brien from Wisconsin Public Radio:
Feb. 1995 "Moral War"	[Catalog Description]  Novelist and Vietnam veteran Tim O'Brien describes his book "In the Lake of the Woods" as - on one level - a mystery. The central character participated in the My Lai massacre. Years later, he runs for public office and loses when his past comes to light. Then his wife disappears. That's the mystery. On another level, the book (and this conversation with Jim Fleming) is about the consequences of our moral choices and living with ambiguity. For cassette copies of this hour, call 1-800-747-7444, and ask for program number 10-23-A.   NOTE: O'Brien is one of three segments on this hour long tape.
March 1996 "The Memories He Carries"	[Catalog Description]  Writer Tim O'Brien has used his experiences as a Vietnam combat veteran to create three outstanding novels - ""Going After Cacciato," "The Things They Carried," and "In the Lake of the Woods." He tells Jim Fleming what it was like to return to Vietnam twenty five years later. He says that while he'll always have nightmares, he now has beautiful memories to place alongside the horrific ones. For cassette copies of this hour, call 1-800-747-7444, and ask for program number 03-17-C.    NOTE: O'Brien is one of three segments on this hour long tape.

Video

A Soldier's Sweetheart  [buy video]  (review)   

"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" made for TV movie broadcast on Showtime.  I didn't care for it.  The ending is a mess. [IMDB]

In The Lake of the Woods

You have to buy this Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation (it's in English) from Germany.  It wasn't bad for a film that was too gutless to use the words "My Lai." [IMDB]

1999 Video by RMI Media  (search on "in search of truth," using title not code)

O'Brien discusses his interest in morality and one of his favorite themes, the relativity of truth. He describes his highly acclaimed book, Into the Lake of the Woods, as a real mystery--one that isn't solved--and the lure of writing about what we don't know. (30 min.)

 Anecdotes!

From Patience Mason, author of the seminal work on PTSD, "Recovering From the War: A Woman's Guide To Helping Your Vietnam Veteran, Your Family, and Yourself:"

"I ran into Tim O'Brien in New Orleans at the "My Lai: 25 Years Later" conference and said to him, "Thank you for mentioning my book in In the Lake of the Woods.  He said very intensely, 'Thank you for writing it.'  It was a great moment for me."

Foreign Websites

German

Imagination im Werk Tim O`Briens

Wege aus dem Krieg

Danish

Krigsmareridt iscenesat og historisk rekonstrueret

Know links?  Report  links

Page last updated September 17, 2003

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maritn Napersteck on Tim O'Brien from "The Company of Writers"

"So I asked him what M&Ms were. He looked as if I asked him if the sun comes up every morning; he must have consciously worked to keep his jaw from drooping. They're little pieces of candy, he said. Come in lots of different colors. God, I was too stupid to even make chit chat with a writer. I explained, but remained convinced I hadn't erased the original impression, that when a medic in Going After Cacciato gave a wounded soldier some M&Ms I thought it might be a nickname for some drug, legal or illegal. The grunts had a different language than those of us who were REMFs."