Tim O'Brien, "How to Tell a True War Story"

In 1968, during the war in Vietnam, Tim O'Brien graduated from college and was served a draft notice. An avowed opponent of the war, he considered fleeing to Canada but ultimately reported for basic training and was stationed near My Lai a year after the infamous massacre there. O'Brien returned to the United States in 1970, having received injuries that earned him a Purple Heart. Since then he has published dozens of stories and books, both fiction and nonfiction, including the National Book Award Winner Going After Cacciato (1978). O'Brien has received many other prestigious awards as well; among them are the O. Henry Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. He is currently a Writer in Residence at Texas State University, in San Marcos, Texas.

"How to Tell a True War Story," one of the stories collected in The Things They Carried, is actually a work of fiction even though it reads like a memoir. O'Brien's decision to present his narrative in this ambiguous fashion reflects concerns that have shaped his work for almost three decades. For him, the line between reality and fiction is always a fuzzy one, especially in accounts of war, where the experience outstrips the resources of language. Faced with the complexity of war, O'Brien is trying, not to "close the books" on a painful past, but to keep the books from ever getting closed by those who might prefer to forget the high price that war always exacts. And in O'Brien's work, the high price is not just the loss of life, but also a permanent loss of moral certainty. In response to a question about why he keeps returning to incidents that took place in the 1960s, O'Brien has said, "The war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story."  

O'Brien, Tim. "How to Tell a True War Story." The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1998. 67-85.
Biographical information drawn from the University of Texas at San Antonio . Closing quote and digital image drawn from Tim O'Brien's home page.

Link to Explore:

http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WritingVietnam/: "Writing Vietnam" was a conference held at Brown University in 1999 at which "nationally recognized writers of fiction, memoir, poetry, journalism, and biography read from and discussed their works based on their experiences in the Vietnam War."

Question for Learning:

• Participants from both sides of the Vietnam war, military and civilian alike, recounted their war stories at this conference. Why is it that personal accounts of the Vietnam war are so often framed as stories and not as accurate reports? In what ways does "writing Vietnam" blur, for these writers, the distinction between truth and fiction? In what ways is the distinction maintained?

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Question for Connecting:

• Would O'Brien's narrator be comfortable at The Citadel as described by Susan Faludi? Does the form of camaraderie we find at The Citadel correspond to the "love" felt by the men who served with the narrator of O'Brien's story? Can we understand the rituals performed at The Citadel as forging bonds similar to those forged by war, or do you see significant differences? In what ways does O'Brien's story suggest that the culture of The Citadel is likely to prove more enduring than Faludi suggests? Is the culture of The Citadel really the culture of war itself? If you think so, then why have some distinguished military leaders tried to reform that institution?

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