I have lots of books. It’s a sickness, really, one my partner shares, one that became apparent during my recent move, as our combined books totaled some 50 boxes and our movers thought we were going to kill them. He has art, architecture, and rock and roll books; I have lots of fiction and historical non-fiction. So cutting back on book purchases, as I’ve recently done, isn’t necessarily the punishment it first sounded like. Instead, I’m rereading favorites and rediscovering lost goodies. One author that stands up to these repeated readings is today’s Writer Who Matters.

Tim O’Brien went to Vietnam. He saw some bad shit, and participated in some even worse shit. But instead of bottling that up when he came home, letting it eat away or turn him into someone harsh and unfamiliar, he wrote. And in the process he created some of our country’s best, most moving, most undeniable accounts of what it meant to be in that war, to be a man in that era, to be a human in our times.

“Forty-three years old, and 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.” - Tim O’Brien

O’Brien wrote straight, creating novels that told dirty, funny, real tales of guys in the midst of a ridiculous war. He also wrote artfully, creating stories that included himself, or a version of himself, and told his and his friends’ individual tales. He wrote books that had nothing at all to do with the war, except that they were in today’s society, a direct result of all the FUBAR crap that went down back then.

Why does O’Brien matter? Two words: cowardice and stories. O’Brien writes about being a coward, and what that means. Sure, his characters go to war. They face peril and pain like their fellow citizens back at home cannot imagine. But cowardice informs their every move, whether it’s running away from the war in body and mind, or failing to save someone that potentially could have been saved. Cowardice is key long before the war as well, when a man is given the chance to escape the draft and opts not to, out of fear and embarrassment of what his family will think.

O’Brien also writes about stories. Using stories, he shows the power of stories, how they help, hurt, confuse, trick, speak plainly, and survive. How they serve to exorcise demons, and to summon them. He shows by his life’s work how stories can affect readers, can change people’s perceptions and increase understanding. But within those works he also questions the ability of stories to do all of this.

Reading O’Brien is an exercise in pure entertainment and enrapture, and immersion into a world where all the solids are fluid, where up is down and left is right. Through his skills in creating fantastical and familiar stories, and through his ability to question our givens, O’Brien is a writer who matters.

A few choice examples from O’Brien:

• Going After Cacciato. One normal day in Vietnam, a soldier disappears from the ranks and his team is left to determine what happened, and what will happen if they join him. What follows is a ludicrous journey across the world, one that O’Brien refuses to offer finality on. Written a few years after O’Brien’s own tour ended, it’s an exploration of the absurdities of the war, and the inner dreams and fears of every man and woman in it.
• The Things They Carried. Following a platoon that just happens to have a character named Tim O’Brien, these stories blur the line between what “really” happened and what is true. A maddening, saddening, beautiful book, one that seems painfully relevant to today’s war.

“They carried USO stationary and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal fares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco…Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections…They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself…They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous…they carried it on their backs and shoulders – and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.” - The Things They Carried

For More on O’Brien:
Book Reporter Author Profile
PLAUSIBILITY OF DENIAL: Tim O’Brien, My Lai, and America
New York Times Books: Reviews and Interviews with Tim O’Brien

Got an O’Brien favorite? Tell us about it in the comments!

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