Years ago, I heard an excerpt from The Things They Carried on public radio’s Selected Shorts. It was such an incredible story that, as often happens when I listen to Selected Shorts, I just stopped and listened with my full attention on the radio. The title and the author were cemented in my memory and a couple of years after that I picked up a copy in a “buy two, get the third free” sale.
And a couple more years passed. I knew it was a book that I wanted to read, but it became one with my bookshelf.
When I finally got around to reading it the book had all the power, and then some, that had captured my attention as a performance. It’s full of tension and repetition, always building and deepening until the truth of it all is inescapable and embedded in you.
It’s horrible.
The book kept grabbing me by the throat and I kept telling myself it was all just fiction, just stories made up to illustrate a war. My attempts at minimizing its effect were foiled by the author, who frequently appeared to remind me that is was all fiction, but–and I’ve long known this–fiction is often more truthful than truth. Tim O’Brien tells true stories.
There is a terrible beauty in his words that makes me want re-read and re-read and re-read, but I can’t. I need a break from this book and I’m grateful that I’ve finished it.
[...] The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace [...]
It is an amazing read. It messed with my mind, my sense of “fiction” or “nonfiction.” And then there was the baby water buffalo…it’s so complicated, like real life. Powerful stuff.