Take a photo of a barcode or cover
teresatumminello 's review for:
The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen. (from "How to Tell a True War Story")
Because I'd previously read the title story in [b:The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: Fifty North American American Stories Since 1970|102615|The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction Fifty North American American Stories Since 1970|Lex Williford|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1393221796s/102615.jpg|98936] and later in [b:The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Writing|1679037|The Making of a Story A Norton Guide to Writing|Alice LaPlante|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1395374819s/1679037.jpg|1956418], I was under the impression this book would be a collection of short stories about the Vietnam War. It is, I guess, but it also isn't.
Some of the stories can't stand alone and the ones that do are more interrelated than in a 'traditional' short-story collection, and yet it's hard to think of the work as a novel, as O'Brien at times writes as if it's memoir, though the book's subtitle calls it "a work of fiction" [emphasis mine]. So, forget labels. The importance is that the work achieves a cumulative power as it goes on, like the incantatory prose outlining the things the men carry in the title story. The 'carrying' reverberates throughout the work.
O'Brien is a character in his own work of fiction because it doesn't matter if it's factual or not; because whether it is or isn't, it is true -- as are other arguably definitive pieces of so-called war fiction. I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that each war inspires work along the same themes as O'Brien's: [b:The Red Badge of Courage|415002|The Red Badge of Courage |Stephen Crane|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320530709s/415002.jpg|2314709] for the American Civil War; for WWI, [b:All Quiet on the Western Front|355697|All Quiet on the Western Front|Erich Maria Remarque|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388243875s/355697.jpg|2662852] (which I haven't read yet, but see Ted's review here) and maybe even [b:A Long Long Way|379087|A Long Long Way|Sebastian Barry|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388286097s/379087.jpg|368906]; and the list could go on. These books are, or have been, widely read and yet still we must wonder if anyone is listening.
Because I'd previously read the title story in [b:The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: Fifty North American American Stories Since 1970|102615|The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction Fifty North American American Stories Since 1970|Lex Williford|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1393221796s/102615.jpg|98936] and later in [b:The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Writing|1679037|The Making of a Story A Norton Guide to Writing|Alice LaPlante|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1395374819s/1679037.jpg|1956418], I was under the impression this book would be a collection of short stories about the Vietnam War. It is, I guess, but it also isn't.
Some of the stories can't stand alone and the ones that do are more interrelated than in a 'traditional' short-story collection, and yet it's hard to think of the work as a novel, as O'Brien at times writes as if it's memoir, though the book's subtitle calls it "a work of fiction" [emphasis mine]. So, forget labels. The importance is that the work achieves a cumulative power as it goes on, like the incantatory prose outlining the things the men carry in the title story. The 'carrying' reverberates throughout the work.
O'Brien is a character in his own work of fiction because it doesn't matter if it's factual or not; because whether it is or isn't, it is true -- as are other arguably definitive pieces of so-called war fiction. I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that each war inspires work along the same themes as O'Brien's: [b:The Red Badge of Courage|415002|The Red Badge of Courage |Stephen Crane|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320530709s/415002.jpg|2314709] for the American Civil War; for WWI, [b:All Quiet on the Western Front|355697|All Quiet on the Western Front|Erich Maria Remarque|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388243875s/355697.jpg|2662852] (which I haven't read yet, but see Ted's review here) and maybe even [b:A Long Long Way|379087|A Long Long Way|Sebastian Barry|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388286097s/379087.jpg|368906]; and the list could go on. These books are, or have been, widely read and yet still we must wonder if anyone is listening.