The Things They Carried
They’re all dead.But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.
When I open a book and begin to read, and I have to page through three or four pages of testimonial blurbs first before reaching the text proper, it lets air out of my anticipation.I don’t read the blurbs, so what they say isn’t the point; it’s that they’re there in bulk, ordering to me to like the book, find it good and important.It’s like the ads for Leverage that tout Timothy Hutton’s Oscar, which is all well and good but has nothing to do with the project at hand, and I feel a faint loneliness in advance, that my blurb will be the only one to elbow the book to the other side of the bed with an “it does some things well” B-minus.
Cracking open The Things They Carried, not remembering why I even bought the book in the first place and seeing page after page of hosannas from major publications, I got that slight sinking feeling, and then I glimpsed in passing a comparison to Hemingway and said aloud to no one, “Christ, not that.”
I like Hemingway a great deal.If the comparison holds water, I’ll climb in the boat.Ninety-seven times out of 100, it doesn’t — Hemingway’s diction is devastatingly effective at its best, but attempts to imitate it will ordinarily present as just that, junior-year experiments with form that have no authority (in part because Hemingway himself can present that way; the control isn’t there, sometimes).A blurb that mentions Hemingway counts on the reader not to make that distinction, probably because the blurber has waited until the last possible moment to turn in the graf and must now gamble that the seven people who actually read the allusion will not examine it closely.
It’s Michiko Kakutani who brought Papa into it, and whether she dashed the blurb off in ten minutes or got The Garden of Eden down from the shelves to check her own head: get in the boat.Tim O’Brien’s command of pace and imagery, while working with intractably huge subjects — war; death; love; love and death in war; love and death at war — is on par with Hemingway’s, but without any of the sepia silliness of the biography we have to clear away before reading Hemingway, or the series of short stories that yaw all over the place emotionally about the death of an elephant, or the gin or the suicide or any of that.
Because the subject is Vietnam (mostly), there’s a parallel to A Farewell to Arms, and between the last passages of both books: watching a man carry unimaginable, slippery weight with no handles and no center, through a subject minefield that blows most writers up three feet into it, to an intersection we didn’t see until they arrived there.Finding the beauty in great sadness is not that difficult; lighting it properly is an art.The subject is war (mostly).And the subject is us.People; the living.
O’Brien’s prose isn’t showy, but it puts us right where he is, no matter what the style: driving around a lake, half-drowning in a muddy field, at a funeral parlor as a nine-year-old.He gives us the light (or the lack of it), the smells, the air quality.He knows exactly how far to take his callbacks.Usually, it’s not possible to see quite how it’s done; I wanted to page back and look again, see how it got built, sometimes, but I couldn’t, I got pulled forward.
Each story or chapter works on its own, and then all together they make…I don’t know.A monument.It’s a stunning book.
Tags: books Ernest Hemingway Michiko Kakutani Tim O'Brien
Thanks, Sars. This book is next-up on the nightstand and now I can’t wait!
That’s one of my favorite books ever – I read it in high school, possibly for more than one class. O’Brien is pretty excellent overall, but that’s by far his best.
One of my favourites. You might like ‘If I Die in a Combat Zone’ by O’Brien as well.
This was my first Tim O’Brien. This is the best, I think, but they’re all…you know. Whatever is the appropriate adjective for whatever this is. “Spectacular” is tonally off. “Awesome,” even in the non-colloquial sense, doesn’t do justice to the masterfully-handled small moments. The best I can do is, “really, really good,” I think.
I read this book in, of all things, a British Literature class. I attended a tiny rural high school and took Brit Lit over distance learning after my regular school day was done; I was the only one in the class. My teacher had just read The Things They Carried and wanted to teach it so badly that she shoved it into the curriculum.
Anyway, she mailed me a copy of the book, and I went home and read it straight through, and then the next day in class I was just losing it while trying to discuss it, I could barely get two words out. She kindly dropped it and moved back to Wordsworth the next day.
Agreed. “The Things They Carried” is one of my favorites. If anyone ever asks me why, I’ll point them to this post. Well said.
We read excerpts from this in one of my English classes in college – I’ve never been brave enough to read the whole thing, but the bits we read have stuck with me. “Stunning” is a perfect description.
This was the book I was assigned to read before my 1st year orientation at college. Since I’m from Minnesota, I was aware of O’Brien but hadn’t read any of his work up to that point. I was also struck by the feeling of being there with him that I experienced as I was reading. It was and is remarkable. My dad is also a Vietnam vet and the same age as O’Brien so it really helped me open a discussion with my dad about the war that we hadn’t really ever had before. Plus, turns out O’Brien was his freshman year college roommate, which sort of brings it all full circle. A great book – I couldn’t agree with you more.
Holy shit, Tim O’Brien was your dad’s freshman year roommate?
That’s fucking amazing. Pardon my french.
@Sarah: Seriously! My own dad’s freshman-year roommate was a 15-year-old boy genius whose father came to college WITH him and slept in their room, rolled up in a rug…for the 48 hours my father lasted under this arrangement before demanding a single. Which is a funny story when my dad tells it, but ain’t no O’Brien.
Love, love, love this book. If you’re looking for other O’Brien treasures, I recommend ‘Going After Cacciato’ and ‘In the Lake of the Woods.’ For me, reading O’Brien is evocative in the same way as reading Ishiguro. He’s brilliant.
I’ve only read O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods, which I would describe as incredibly well written and haunting. I was a little bit scared to pick up anything else by him…perhaps it’s time.
The Things They Carried was the first book I ever recommended to another person. I am always nervous in recommending things, but felt it was a book everyone should read. I read it in college for a post-modernist class (I think), and was completely blown away. So much so that I begged by history professor to let me do a report on it for the extra credit project in her class (we weren’t really covering that part of history).
I never learned of Vietnam in school. We seemed to stop after WWII, maybe a tiny bit further to a brief mention of JFK, but never beyond that. I always found it a shame, but maybe it was still to close. Reading O’Brien’s book, and thinking about these mere babes seeing the things they did (even though he says it’s fiction, there is no way the mind can just make up some of that stuff) really affected me. Excellent read, for sure.
I read “The Things They Carried” for my short story class this past semester and loved it. Every element of it mattered; nothing was superfluous. Just a beautiful piece of writing. I really felt for Cross and his men, and that story was one of the few we read in that class that really struck a chord with me. I’m delighted to hear there’s more where that came from.
I’d like to second “Going After Cacciato”l. It was a powerful and fascinating book. I read it for the same class that assigned Pynchon’s “Crying of Lot 49”, among others. It was a brain melting sort of class.
Okay, I’m requesting this from my library. I think the only book about Vietnam I’ve read is Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War. I’m looking forward to this.
I read this in high school twice: once for a history elective on the Vietnam War, and then again in an English class. And then I picked it up again a few years ago, and each time I read it I came away with something new. I recommended it to an ex of mine who loved Hemingway – I was crazy about this ex, and I was so excited for him to read it and for us to talk about it (we’d talk about books for hours, read to each other, all that), because I don’t like Hemingway nearly as much as he did but I could see why a Hemingway-lover would like the book – as Amanda Cournoyer said, nothing is superfluous. My ex said he was afraid that he would miss something, even though the prose is simple, but that he didn’t want to go backward – he read it cover to cover in one sitting. It’s such a beautiful book.
@ Sarah & Sars – According to my dad, 18 year old Tim O’Brien was much like all 18 year old college freshman everywhere except he was typing/writing a lot more than one would think necessary. :-) But O’Brien did come to speak at my college during my first year and it was kind of fun to walk up to the table after his talk and say “Hey, do you remember [my dad’s name], your roommate from college? I’m his daughter.” I think I made him feel old.
I read this in high school as well. Incredible book.
I taught parts of this last year to my 11th grade English class and they hung on just about every word. “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” is one of the most haunting stories I have ever read.
I’ve also read “In the Lake of the Woods” and that’s worth picking up, too.
I too read this book for freshman year orientation into my college (and reading this blurb made a lovely full circle as I graduate soon). Unfortunately, a lot of it got lost on me, since all of my history classes were only able to ever reach WWII by June and thus Vietnam was simply vague ideas garnered from talk about what the hippies were up to. A shame really; the book was good, but got steamrollered by Life of Pi and The Naked Roommate at the time.
I’d like to third the love for “Going After Cacciato.” I read it my sophomore year of high school and I’ve been enraptured ever since. Just your prototypical Vietnam surrealist road trip chase story.
I read this for an AP English class in high school, and it was the only discussion that the entire class was drawn into. Bits and pieces of it were included in a few of the textbooks I’ve had in college, but I’ve still got the whole book on a shelf around here somewhere and I might just have to go reread it now.
My high school assigned this one year as the book day book, and O’Brien came to talk about it; he’s almost as good a speaker as he is a writer, and he really is, it’s true, a hell of a writer.
War is hard to write about, I feel (or at least, I’m picky about war books) because the horror of war strips words of their power, & so many writers either fail to convey the terrible grandeur of it or else flail about trying desperately and end up with something closer to melodrama. O’Brien avoids both, just tells it straight. Thanks for reminding me how much I loved this book; maybe I’ll reread it once summer starts.
I read this in the middle of my Vietnam obsession a few years ago. I also recommend Dispatches by Michael Herr.
On a side note – isn’t the elephant-death thing Orwell, not Hemingway?
Tim O’Brian came to my high school and read excerpts of The Things They Carried when it was first published. Don’t know how or why he came, but it was the best assembly ever. You could have heard a pin drop, everyone was mesmerized. Then we read it in English class. I also really liked Tomcat in Love.
What a great piece, Sars. It and all the related comments have made me impatient to read this book. I’ve just reserved it from my local library. Well done, everyone.
This book was just the common reading at the community college where I teach, and the students responded to it well. I remember reading it for American Lit (or possibly a Senior-level Fiction class where I also read Hemingway and Hesse) in high school and being haunted by it. I’m glad to see it getting some exposure again — it’s truly amazing. In an odd way, it reminds me of Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which I read at 14 (and continued to read over and over) in its honest, bald, and yet heartfelt portrayal of war.
A few years ago “The Things They Carried” was our community read book. The book really caught on. The library tries to get everyone to read the selection, then plans discussion groups, films and other associated activities. Everything was well attended, because the book had grabbed so many people who wanted to talk about it. O’Brien came to speak, and he was fascinating and funny.
@Jen: Hemingway has at least a dozen short stories about hunting trips, which encompass all sorts of father/son issues, the meaning of manhood, etc., in a way that seems tired to the postmodern reader, especially after the fourth one in a row when you’re reading the collected stories and it’s like, oh Gahd not the mosquito-netting metaphor AGAIN.
I’m sure Orwell had an “elephant-death thing” too, but my sense of the reason that some people don’t care for Hemingway, or one of the reasons, is that attempt to derive great meaning from the death of a large wild animal that he and his hunting party in fact killed.
@Susan: Remarque is wonderful. Also Wiesel’s “Night.” So spare, but not cold.
@Jen (8:55 AM) Dispatches is so good, yes. That’s one a college roommate was reading for class that I picked up randomly and then devoured.
The Things They Carried is a Great Book, and I read it every couple of years. That’d mean five or six times by now, and it hasn’t gotten old or really even lost much effect. It’d be a desert island book for me.
I’ve taught pieces of the book before in English classes. I like putting it with some of Bobbie Ann Mason’s work, like “Shiloh.” Mason’s book _In Country_ is another good read.
“but without any of the sepia silliness of the biography we have to clear away before reading Hemingway”
Thank you. That is perfect.
So glad you enjoyed it, Sars – it’s one of my favorites, and I give it a re-read every year or so.
This is my number one favorite book of all time. I, too, reread it about once a year, and I always find some new twist or insight in it. O’Brien really captures something fundamental about war, but also something fundamental about being human. I highly recommend this book to everyone.
I read this for a fiction class and thought it was phenomenal.
I also recommend a play by Lavonne Mueller called “Five in the Killing Zone.”
@Sars Oh, I thought you were talking about Orwell’s Shooting An Elephant. I didn’t realise you were referencing Hemingway’s millions of words of hunting porn. Carry on.
There is a scene in In The Lake of The Woods involving a boiling kettle that I will never ever forget. It’s a terrifying book, but worth reading if you like O’Brien.
This was a “One Book, One Philadelphia” book a few years back and I avoided it then–my dad’s a Vietnam vet and this just felt too close, I guess. But after reading Sars essay, and the comments I picked this up from the library and tore through it last night. Thank you all so much.
Tim O’Brien actually came and spoke to the student body at my high school and spoke to the community that same night. So gracious and generous, and he was really funny, too.
I got this book from the library. I read it in a couple of days. There’s not much more I can add to how well this book is written. I was in junior high and high school during the Viet Nam war and this book brought back so many memories, it was almost like being back there. It’s odd how familiar Viet Nam is to someone like me who has never been there, but since it was the backdrop of my childhood and teen years, it resonates on a peculiar level. I felt like I was sitting at dinner with Walter Cronkite on the TV with my borther and my folks, hearing those place names again. And the body count. Every night, on the news, was the body count. Both American and Viet Cong. It had quite an impact. News cycles now are probably too diluted to have the same impact. Anyway, I read this book about 10 days ago now and I’m still thinking about it. I feel like I’m walking around with ghosts in my head. It certainly made Memorial Day weekend mean more than having three days off.
it’s quiet, but it builds up layers of internal reference and understanding until a single phrase can bring a powerful punch. I still remember when he was talking about what’ real and not, and the impossibility of teasing it out, and then calls back up that recurrent phrase from an earlier piece about the pale white skin and the star-shaped hole . . .