Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien (born October 1, 1946) is an American novelist who mainly writes about his experiences in the Vietnam War and the impact the war had on the American soldiers who fought there. He regularly teaches in the MFA fiction writing program at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. Image File history File links Summary Tim OBrien, famed Vietnam War author of The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods http://www. ... Image File history File links Summary Tim OBrien, famed Vietnam War author of The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods http://www. ... is the 274th day of the year (275th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... A novel is an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction, usually in story form; the writer of a novel is a novelist. ... Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam People’s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength US 1,000,000 South Korea 300,000 Australia 48,000... ... Image:Marcos. ...

Life and Career

O'Brien was born in Austin, Minnesota [1], a town of about 9,000 people (a setting which figures prominently in his novels). When O'Brien was 10, his family, including a younger sister and brother, moved to Worthington, Minnesota, a place that once billed itself as "the turkey capital of the world." Worthington had a large influence on O’Brien’s imagination and early development as an author. The town is located on Lake Okabena in the western portion of the state and serves as the setting for some of his stories, especially those in the collection titled The Things They Carried. He earned his BA in Political Science from Macalester College in 1968. That same year he was drafted into the infantry and was sent to Vietnam, where he served from 1969 to 1970. He served in the Americal Division, a platoon of which participated in the infamous My Lai Massacre. O'Brien has said that when his unit got to the area around My 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."[2] Interstate 90 Business Loop (Oakland Avenue) runs through the center of Austin. ... Worthington is a city located in Nobles County, Minnesota. ... The Things They Carried is a collection of related vignettes by Tim OBrien, about a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War, originally published in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin, 1990. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      Political Science is the field concerning the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. ... Macalester College (popularly known as Mac) is a privately supported, coeducational liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota. ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Infantry of the Royal Irish Rifles during the Battle of the Somme in World War I. Infantry are soldiers who fight primarily on foot with small arms in organized military units, though they may be transported to the battlefield by horses, ships, automobiles, skis, bicycles, or other means. ... Also: 1969 (Stargate SG-1) episode. ... Year 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Americal Division Shoulder Patch The Americal Division of the United States Army was formed in May 1942 on the island of New Caledonia. ... Photographs of the My Lai massacre provoked world outrage and made it an international scandal. ...

Upon completing his tour of duty, O'Brien went on to graduate school at Harvard University and received an internship at the Washington Post. His writing career was launched in 1973 with the release of 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." This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... For information about a medical intern, see the article on Medical residency. ... ... If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (Sometimes printed as If I Die In A Combat Zone or incorrectly, but quite commonly, as If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Send Me Home) is an autobiographical account of Tim...

While O'Brien insists it is not his job or his place to discuss the politics of the Vietnam War, he does occasionally let fly. Speaking years later about his upbringing and the war, O'Brien called his hometown "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."[3] Contrasting the continuing American search for U.S. MIA/POWs in Vietnam with the reality of the Vietnamese war dead, he calls the American perspective "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 M.I.A.'s? 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."[4] Hanoi (Vietnamese: Hà Ná»™i, Hán Tá»±: 河内)  , estimated population 3,145,300 (2005), is the capital of Vietnam. ... MIA is a three-letter acronym that is most commonly used to designate a combatant who is Missing In Action, and has not yet returned or otherwise been accounted for as either dead (KIA) or a prisoner of war (POW). ... Geneva Convention definition A prisoner of war (POW) is a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. ...

One attribute in O'Brien's work is the blur between fiction and reality; although labeled "fiction" his work contains actual details of the situations he experienced. In the short story "Good Form" in The Things They Carried, O'Brien refers to these "story-truth" and "happening-truth," writing that "story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth." Hunter S. Thompsons famous Gonzo logo. ... An illustration from Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland, depicting the fictional protagonist, Alice, playing a fantastical game of croquet. ... Reality, in everyday usage, means the state of things as they actually exist. ... The Things They Carried is a collection of related vignettes by Tim OBrien, about a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War, originally published in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin, 1990. ...

Books by Tim O'Brien

• If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (1973)
• Northern Lights (1975)
• Going After Cacciato (1978)
• The Nuclear Age (1985)
• The Things They Carried (1990)
• In the Lake of the Woods (1994)
• Tomcat in Love (1998)
• July, July (2002)

If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (Sometimes printed as If I Die In A Combat Zone or incorrectly, but quite commonly, as If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Send Me Home) is an autobiographical account of Tim... Going After Cacciato is a war novel written by author Tim OBrien and winner of the National Book Award for fiction in 1979, this complex novel is set during the Vietnam War and is told from the point of view of the protagonist, Paul Berlin. ... The Things They Carried is a collection of related vignettes by Tim OBrien, about a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War, originally published in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin, 1990. ... In the Lake of the Woods (1994) is a novel by Tim OBrien, author of Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Things They Carried. ... The cover of Tomcat in Love Tomcat in Love is a novel by Tim OBrien, about the misadventures of a womanizing linguistics Professor, Thomas H. Chippering, originally published in hardcover by Bantam Doubleday Dell, in 1998. ...

External links

• Tim O'Brien, novelist useful links for more info on O'Brien
• 1990 audio interview with Tim O'Brien by Don Swaim