Essays on Tim O'brien

October 1, 1946 (age 74 years), Austin, Minnesota, United States

Novelist, Short Story Writer

Memoirs, War Stories, Short Stories

• Going After Cacciato
• The Things They Carried
• If I Die in a Combat Zone

• "A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth."
• "Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons."
• "But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world."

October 1, 1946 (age 75)

Tim O’Brien is an American novelist noted for his writings about American soldiers in the Vietnam War.

“The Things They Carried”, “Dad’s Maybe Book”, “Going After Cacciato”, “If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home”, “In the Lake of the Woods”, “July, July”, “Northern Lights”, “The Nuclear Age”, “Tomcat in Love”

War, Mortality and Death, Storytelling and Memory, Morality, Shame and Guilt.

Tim O'Brien writes with realism in mind above all else. This intense form of realism, called verisimilitude, takes the form of straightforward conversational writing at times, as with the soldiers, and in-depth, elevated diction at others, as in the narration.

“That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.”
“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”
“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done.”