experience, process and retelling
a review of 'the things they carried' by Tim
O'Brien
Is it possible to be honest when the truth is
unknown, and which truth anyway would we choose to tell if we knew
it?
The Things They Carried is a book about the Viet Nam war, a war aided by GI Tim O'Brien. It is not a collection of short stories, it is not a novel. It is imagined truth trying to tell a story bigger than itself, and succeeding through the medium of fiction.
O'Brien writes with a simplicity that is profound. He is a magician pulling - not rabbits out of hats - but meaning from experience. After college he was summoned to fight a war in a foreign country. He didn't believe in the war and he didn't want to die and he struggled to decide on how to react to his draft papers.
He went to war.
Viet Nam becomes a kind of mist, partly collective, partly personal. O'Brien mixes fact with story telling to carve some kind of route through the mist. Places - Song Tra Bong, Quang Ngai, My Khe - become recurring characters; characters seep into the landscape:
'He was under the mud and the water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to some place dry and warm.' (In the Field, p 163)
The reader joins O'Brien in the mist and the mist begins to make sense. It makes sense of dimly remembered personal and collective truths. We go to war with the writer, recognising the humanity within through the horror without. We don't have to leave our armchairs to do this. It is, partly at least, the war of retaining a sense of honour in a world that mocks honour; a war with ourselves that can only be survived by the slow process of separating what is true from what is false. We are encouraged to observe the illusion of fact, to find the story. But to honour also our need to distance ourselves from human acts of inhumanity - our own and those of others.
On occasion O'Brien attributes acts of shame to others only to confess later it was his weakness that cost the life of a friend. He is honest enough to lie, sensitive enough to reflect and ultimately brave enough to share his darkness in public. Here, the process involved in being weak to be strong, in finding power through honesty, unfolds with grace - like the petals of some carnivorous plant.
'"Takes guts, I know that."
"It wasn't guts. I was scared."
Kiowa shrugged "Same difference." (The Lives of the Dead, p 223)
It is tempting to seek to classify The Things They Carried into some containable genre - to make the journey feel safe. It is a war story; it is autobiography; it is fable or horror. It is all those things and therefore it is more. Quietly, The Things They Carried melds the concept of genre into insignificance. The book is a tour de force. Relax into it, read it as an epic poem - above all listen to it. This is a profound book telling the truth in the only way humans can understand truth - through fiction.
Available from amazon.
The Things They Carried is a book about the Viet Nam war, a war aided by GI Tim O'Brien. It is not a collection of short stories, it is not a novel. It is imagined truth trying to tell a story bigger than itself, and succeeding through the medium of fiction.
O'Brien writes with a simplicity that is profound. He is a magician pulling - not rabbits out of hats - but meaning from experience. After college he was summoned to fight a war in a foreign country. He didn't believe in the war and he didn't want to die and he struggled to decide on how to react to his draft papers.
He went to war.
Viet Nam becomes a kind of mist, partly collective, partly personal. O'Brien mixes fact with story telling to carve some kind of route through the mist. Places - Song Tra Bong, Quang Ngai, My Khe - become recurring characters; characters seep into the landscape:
'He was under the mud and the water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to some place dry and warm.' (In the Field, p 163)
The reader joins O'Brien in the mist and the mist begins to make sense. It makes sense of dimly remembered personal and collective truths. We go to war with the writer, recognising the humanity within through the horror without. We don't have to leave our armchairs to do this. It is, partly at least, the war of retaining a sense of honour in a world that mocks honour; a war with ourselves that can only be survived by the slow process of separating what is true from what is false. We are encouraged to observe the illusion of fact, to find the story. But to honour also our need to distance ourselves from human acts of inhumanity - our own and those of others.
On occasion O'Brien attributes acts of shame to others only to confess later it was his weakness that cost the life of a friend. He is honest enough to lie, sensitive enough to reflect and ultimately brave enough to share his darkness in public. Here, the process involved in being weak to be strong, in finding power through honesty, unfolds with grace - like the petals of some carnivorous plant.
'"Takes guts, I know that."
"It wasn't guts. I was scared."
Kiowa shrugged "Same difference." (The Lives of the Dead, p 223)
It is tempting to seek to classify The Things They Carried into some containable genre - to make the journey feel safe. It is a war story; it is autobiography; it is fable or horror. It is all those things and therefore it is more. Quietly, The Things They Carried melds the concept of genre into insignificance. The book is a tour de force. Relax into it, read it as an epic poem - above all listen to it. This is a profound book telling the truth in the only way humans can understand truth - through fiction.
Available from amazon.
Posted: Fri - February 2, 2007 at 04:04 PM
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Published On: Feb 10, 2007 11:47 AM
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Published On: Feb 10, 2007 11:47 AM