Stories All in Good Time
One of my dearest friends is a major fan of the writer Tim O’Brien. We met in the same college course and together read Going After Cacciato. She followed up over the years, reading more O’Brien, enthusing. O’Brien’s literature on the Vietnam War garnered all manner of awards. I read other things, and when I read about Vietnam, it was non-fiction. O’Brien became an item on my never completely forgotten but rarely considered list of things we promise ourselves to do. Like dance lessons. An obligation as much for myself as anyone. Several years ago I purchased a copy of O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. More than a wildly successful best-seller, the novel received accolades across the board and was called a “book of the century” by the New York Times. I was certain I would read it.
It sat on different shelves, was boxed up as I moved, and unpacked – again and again.
When the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, spoke of restoring America’s “warrior culture” something clicked. I considered how we have talked about, read about, and thought about warriors. I have never had to serve in war and for that, I am grateful. As an historian, though, I have long been fascinated by war, accounts of war, and how people have understood and explained war. Mass conflicts – often our most important collective actions – shape our world and our understanding of ourselves and each other. Hegseth’s comments brought to mind many books, including John Keegan’s Face of Battle, Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22 by Heller. So many extraordinary works of art come out of war. And I finally reached for The Things They Carried.
It is a brilliant, moving book, a terrific novel about terrible things. It is a book that can make you smile and weep, for it is grounded in the powerful and challenging ways in which we try to make sense of all that resists order and sense. Is there a better way to write about the Vietnam War if we care about those who fought it? The novel shines as a work of literature and memorial, real and imagined, of fellow humans. Not abstract others who become othered, but fellow people.
A well-crafted story, provided it is told and heard, can render the other as familiar, recast the simple into the complex. The Things They Carried is about Vietnam and life and love and meaning.
Thank you so much for the recommendation. Sorry that it took so long. I don’t have a good excuse. You were right. It is a hell of a great book. And I’m glad that I finally gave it time.
David Potash