Truth and fiction in Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried.(Critical Essay)

From: College Literature | Date: March 22, 2002| Author: | Copyright information

The requirement of truth as a faithful portrayal of unique experience is the standard most consistently applied to the literature of the Vietnam War. In his discussion of memoirs of the war, J. T. Hansen observes that all the writers he studied shared the objective of "authenticity," an authority based on "knowledge of the war they experienced" (1990, 134-35). Similarly, Donald Ringnalda points out that for the former soldiers, who are the most exacting audience for the Vietnam story the standard of evaluation is "accuracy, factualness, faithful attention to details" (1990, 65). ...

Read all of this article with a FREE trial to HighBeam Research

Related newspaper, magazine, and trade journal articles from HighBeam Research

(Including press releases, facts, information, and biographies)

FOLLOWING THE POINT MAN IN A NEW KIND OF WAR
; ...men who emerge as fully as O'Brien, with micromoments of the war that seem as long in their...then much later, after the war, O'Brien gives voice to another kind...or to kill a man during a war, is something O'Brien and a lot of other vets would...
"The things men do": the gendered subtext in Tim O'Brien's 'Esquire' stories. (The Vietnam War)
; ...Harris) claims, O'Brien's book exposes the nature of all war stories, then we might...characters carried to war, it turns out, include...patriarchal baggage. O'Brien purports to tell fully...of writing as about war itself, O'Brien's book celebrates the...
Getting It Right: The Short Fiction of Tim O'Brien.
; ...precise nature of writing war stories. For O'Brien, like Hemingway in his introduction...237; O'Brien's emphasis). O'Brien's characters choose war for entirely negative reasons...chaotic and morally ambiguous war they fight, O'Brien's characters are unsure of...
STAYING TRUE TO VIETNAM WRITER TIM O'BRIEN AIMS FOR THE WAR'S NERVE CENTER
; ...poignant Vietnam war memoir by a young...would become Tim O'Brien's first book, "If...came home from a war he had almost fled...Purple Heart -- O'Brien has written a book...background. So the war is still with him, though O'Brien insists that "in...
`The anger of heaven is nothing to the anger of men' Edna O'Brien's new translation of `Iphigenia' offers a timely reminder of the perils of war, says Veronica Lee
; ...taken liberties, but O'Brien defends the reworking...elsewhere into another war. "This is a revisioning...for the men to go to war, or will she be saved...how female-centred O'Brien's adaptation reads...the part." When O'Brien started writing Iphigenia...its height and now war with ...
The battlegrounds are personal in Tim O'Brien's latest novel.(ENTERTAINMENT)
; ...of the personal. O'Brien's literary profile...particularly the Vietnam War, thanks to such novels...the grocery store, O'Brien said. Probably for...lived in that era, the war was a kind of darkroom...deeply affected by the war and by the era. Born in Austin, Minn., O'Brien grew up in ...
NEWSPAPER WAR CORRESPONDENT DENNIS O'BRIEN DIES AT AGE 35 COVERAGE NOMINATED FOR PULITZER PRIZE.(LOCAL)
; ...died Saturday. He was 35. O'Brien, whose work as a war correspondent was reprinted...give an unvarnished look at war and the people fighting it. O'Brien is survived by his wife...reporter.' Addis has nominated O'Brien's war coverage for a Pulitzer Prize...
IF YOU START WAR, YOU SHOULD FIGHT WAR.(EDITORIAL)(JOHN NICHOLS)(Column)
; ...deal of time to the current war in Iraq. O'Brien - author of the acclaimed...serious debate about matters of war and peace, O'Brien offered a modest proposal...munitions makers to pay for the war. In June 1917, long before O'Brien was born, Townley asked a...
NEW TERRAIN KNOWN AS THE DEFINITIVE VIETNAM WAR NOVELIST, TIM O'BRIEN TAKES HIMSELF OUT OF HIS ELEMENT
; ...It's novelist Tim O'Brien, 56, born in Minnesota, tempered by war in Vietnam, longtime...that one associates O'Brien, the celebrated chronicler of men in war, with a rougher, darker...state line where O'Brien's father, a World War II Navy veteran, sold...
O'Brien and the memories of Vietnam
; ...who survives the war and comes home as...beauty all its own. O'Brien writes powerfully...character named Tim O'Brien. He is named in the...he experienced the war 20-plus years ago...work of fiction," O'Brien proclaims at the beginning...for a collection of war stories . . . that...