Tim O'Brien (1) (1946–)

In an almost stream of consciousness, The Things They Carried chronicles O’Brien’s memories as he returns to Vietnam in 1994 – “now a 43-year-old writer.” His disparate, antithetical, sometimes rambling, and raw storytelling style is totally unique and thoroughly engaging. His thoughts, his writing (almost as if he jots down the first thing that pops into his head) the things he left in, and the things he left out kept me hooked – it’s not just the same old A to Z storyline (which is normally fine. It’s just not the way O’Brien does it, at least in this book).

In 1968, PFC O’Brien and his clan were grunts, part of an infantry battalion in Vietnam. And as grunts, everything they needed, they carried. WEIGHT mattered! There were some things, like a helmet, boots, and flak jacket that every soldier carried; there were things they might be assigned to carry, like a radio, or the M-60 machine gun, perhaps extra ammo, and four or five mortar rounds (ugh!); there were also personal things like chewing gum, a deck of cards, maybe pictures of a girl back home, that they wanted to carry; and then there were the things – HEAVY things – things they did not want, nor were ordered, to carry. Nonetheless, at war and at home, carry these things they did – and that’s what this book is about.

Of Breaking Bad fame, Brian Cranston’s narration is simply outstanding! In fact, I don’t think it could have been done better. Normally I’ll listen to the audiobook and read the e-book. Not this time! After listening for about two seconds, I no longer wanted to READ, I only wanted to LISTEN.

(Oh, almost forgot - there’s a 30-minute bonus at the end, one of O’Brien’s New York Times articles, that he it’s good, and it’s cool to hear O’Brien’s real, gravelly, nicotine-stained voice – but I’m glad he went with Cranston for the main act 😊)
reads –… (altro)

The Things They Carried is an emotionally engaging novel built out of twenty-two vignettes about the Vietnam War. The stories told feel familiar to anyone who has read or seen other fictional portrayals of that war: involuntary participants who endure pointless patrols, engage in senseless acts of violence and killing, and witness and suffer ironic deaths. What separates this book from those works is its metafictional aspect, in which the real author inserts himself as a fictional Tim O'Brien, one who both relates his experiences and comments on them twenty years later.

I am not overly fond of this trick. The fictive O'Brien's presence gives the novel a confusing memoir feel and—to me—needlessly interferes with the reality of the story—an ironic criticism, given that the narrator repeatedly discusses the truth of the untrue stories both he and the soldiers in his outfit tell, going so far as to assert that "absolute occurrence [of a true war story] is irrelevant."

There is a highly effective circularity within the stories; events (particularly deaths) are referred to in one, shown in another, analyzed in a third and fourth. The imagery of Vietnam is powerful: the jungle and night (really the darkness) as living beasts, the near-mythical elusiveness of the rarely seen enemy. At the center of these images is the shit field—literally a swamp created by the merging of the fecal runoff of an unnamed village with the overflowing Song Tra Bong river. The shit field is also figuratively the morass that was the Vietnam War, and O'Brien skillfully weaves these two roles together while telling of the death of a good friend during an overnight bivouac. After several soldiers reveal their own roles in Kiowa's death, the ultimate truth revealed is that all those claiming responsibility are indeed guilty, yet simultaneously none are.

The truest parts of this novel are the Vietnam experiences and their aftermaths. The one part I felt could have been omitted without impact was the concluding story about a childhood friend dying of a brain tumor when the author is ten. But overall, The Things They Carried delivers both the fictional and real O'Brien's stated goal of providing the reader with the feeling of the war, regardless of its truth.… (altro)