The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien, 1990
A Vietnam platoon's burdens, told as linked stories that mix memoir and invention to argue a made-up thing can be truer than what happened.
Tim O'Brien
O'Brien was drafted in 1968, two years out of Macalester College, opposed the war, and went anyway; he has called himself a coward for it ever since.
Feels like war, dread and memory.
What it means for a story to be true when it never happened.
A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it’s a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, “The fuck you do that for?” and the jumper says, “Story of my life, man” and other guys start to smile but he’s dead. That’s a true story that never happened. Books by Tim O'Brien
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