Tim O'Brien (author)

For other people of the same name, seeTim O'Brien (disambiguation).

Tim O'Brien(born October 1, 1946) is an Americannovelistwho served as a soldier in theVietnam War.Much of his writing is about wartime Vietnam,and his work later in life often explores the postwar lives of its veterans.

Tim O'Brien
O'Brien at the 2023 Texas Book Festival
Born	William Timothy O'Brien Jr. (1946-10-01)October 1, 1946 Austin, Minnesota,U.S.
Occupation	Novelist short story writer teacher
Alma mater	Macalester College Harvard University
Genre	Memoirs, war stories, short stories
Years active	1973–present
Notable works	If I Die in a Combat Zone Going After Cacciato The Things They Carried
Spouse	Meredith Baker
Children	2
Military career
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/ branch	United States Army
Years of service	1968–1970
Rank	Sergeant
Unit	3rd Platoon, Company A, 5th Battalion,46th Infantry Regiment 198th Infantry Brigade
Battles / wars	Vietnam War
Awards	Purple Heart

O'Brien is perhaps best known for his bookThe Things They Carried(1990), a collection of linked semi-autobiographical stories inspired by his wartime experiences.In 2010,The New York Timesdescribed it as "a classic of contemporary war fiction."O'Brien wrote thewar novel,Going After Cacciato(1978), which was awarded theNational Book Award.

O'Brien taught creative writing, holding the endowed chair at theMFA programofTexas State University–San Marcosevery other academic year from 2003 to 2012.

Biography

Early life

Tim O'Brien was born inAustin, Minnesotaon October 1, 1946,the son of William Timothy O'Brien and Ava Eleanor Schultz O'Brien.When he was ten, his family – including a younger brother and sister – moved toWorthington, Minnesota.Worthington had a large influence on O’Brien's imagination and his early development as an author. The town is onLake Okabenain the southwestern part of the state and serves as the setting for some of his stories, especially those inThe Things They Carried.

Military service

O'Brien earned his BA in 1968 inpolitical sciencefromMacalester College,where he was student body president. That same year he was drafted into theUnited States Armyand was sent toVietnam,where he served from 1969 to 1970 in 3rd Platoon, Company A, 5th Battalion,46th Infantry Regiment,part of the23rd Infantry Division (the Americal Division)that contained the unit that perpetrated theMy Lai Massacrethe year before his arrival. O'Brien has said that when his unit got to the area aroundMy Lai(referred to as "Pinkville" by the U.S. forces), "we all wondered why the place was so hostile. We did not know there had been a massacre there a year earlier. The news about that only came out later, while we were there, and then we knew."

First book published

Upon completing his tour of duty, O'Brien went to graduate school atHarvard University.Afterward he received an internship at theWashington Post.In 1973 he published his first book, a memoir,If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home,about his war experiences. In this memoir, O'Brien writes: "Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories."

Personal life

As of 2010O'Brien lived in central Texas, raising a family and teaching full-time every other year atTexas State University–San Marcos.In alternate years, he teaches several workshops to MFA students in the creative writing program.

O'Brien's papers are housed at theHarry Ransom Centerat theUniversity of Texas at Austin.

Writing style

In the story "Good Form," from his collection of semi-autobigraphical stories,The Things They Carried,O'Brien discusses the distinction between "story-truth" (the truth of fiction) and "happening-truth" (the truth of fact or occurrence), writing that "story-truth is sometimes truer than happening-truth." O’Brien suggests that story truth is emotional truth. In turn, the emotions created by a fictional story are sometimes truer than what results from only reading the facts.

This demonstrates one aspect of O’Brien's writing style: a blurring of the usual distinction we make between fiction and reality, in that the author uses details from his own life, but frames them in a self-conscious ormetafictionalnarrative voice.

By the same token, certain sets of stories inThe Things They Carriedseem to contradict each other, and certain stories are designed to "undo" thesuspension of disbeliefcreated in previous stories. For example, "Speaking of Courage" is followed by "Notes", which explains in what ways "Speaking of Courage" is fictional.This is another example of how O’Brien blurs the traditional distinctions we make between fact and fiction.

Personal views on the Vietnam War

While O'Brien does not consider himself a spokesman for the Vietnam War, he has occasionally commented on it. Speaking years later about his upbringing and the war, O'Brien described his hometown as "a town that congratulates itself, day after day, on its own ignorance of the world: a town that got us into Vietnam. Uh, the people in that town sent me to that war, you know, couldn't spell the word 'Hanoi' if you spotted them three vowels. "

Contrasting thecontinuing American search for U.S. MIA/POWs in Vietnamwith the reality of the high number of Vietnamese war dead, he describes the American perspective as

A perverse and outrageous double standard. What if things were reversed? What if the Vietnamese were to ask us, or to require us, to locate and identify each of their own MIAs? Numbers alone make it impossible: 100,000 is a conservative estimate. Maybe double that. Maybe triple. From my own sliver of experience—one year at war, one set of eyes—I can testify to the lasting anonymity of a great many Vietnamese dead.

O'Brien was interviewed forVietnam: The Ten Thousand Day Waras well asKen Burns's 2017 documentary seriesThe Vietnam War.

Awards and honors

• If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Homewas named the Outstanding Book of 1973 by the New York Times.
• O'Brien won the 1979National Book Awardfor his novelGoing After Cacciato.
• O'Brien received the Vietnam Veterans of America Excellence in the Arts Award in 1987
• His novelIn the Lake of the Woodswon theJames Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fictionin 1995.
• In August 2012, O'Brien received theDayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.In June 2013, O'Brien was awarded the $100,000Pritzker Military Library Literature Award.
• In 2010, O'Brien received the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) fromWhittier College.

Selected bibliography

Fiction

Novels

• Northern Lights(1975)ISBN9780440066644
• Going After Cacciato(1978)ISBN9780385283496
• The Nuclear Age(1985)ISBN9780394542867
• The Things They Carried(1990)ISBN9780618706419
• In the Lake of the Woods(1994)ISBN9780140250947
• Tomcat in Love(1998)ISBN9780767902021
• July, July(2002)ISBN978-0-547-52372-9
• America Fantastica(2023)ISBN9780063318502

Memoirs

• If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home(1973)ISBN9780767904438
• Dad's Maybe Book(2019)ISBN9780618039708

Other works

• "Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy?"(1975) - short story

External links

• A Crisis 'In Country': An Ecocritical Approach to Tim O'Brien's Fiction,Rosalind Poppleton, University of Hertfordshire, British Library (2000)
• "Tim O'Brien video interview" (2010),on Big Think
• Online discussion ofThe Things They Carried,Book Talk
• Tim O'Brien Papersat theHarry Ransom Center,University of Texas at Austin
• Tim O'Brien,atWriters Reflect,Ransom Center
• Participation in Pritzker Military Museum & Library's Military History Symposium
• Tim O'BrienatLibrary of CongressAuthorities — with 19 catalog records
• AppearancesonC-SPAN
• "How To Tell a True War Story" BBC TV Documentary, 1992