I had been aware of this book for sometime but never really got around to it. Picked it up at HPB a few months ago knowing I should read it at some point and finally did. These are just some of my initial thoughts.
First, a 5/5. It was a really powerful, touching, and well written book. It reminded me a bit of vonnegut in some ways such as the writing style, the black humor, and the use of repetition.
When I started reading it I was at first a little disappointed to find out it was historical fiction but as I made my way through the book I appreciated why he wrote it that way. To paraphrase, “all of it’s true and none of it is”.
I’m very privileged and fortunate enough to have never had to experience this hardship. I’m going to tread lightly and I mean no ill intentions here but this book helped me empathize more with those who’ve had these experiences. I certainly will never truly know, but this book really conveyed the emotions, mundaneness, absurdity, and loss of war, to me at least.
I also felt that this book could be read as a little beyond just war stories. “It’s nobody’s fault. Everybody’s.” I think this applies to even those outside of a war. No one in particular may be responsible for the harms in our world. Collectively we all are. This may be a bit if a stretch but that’s how I interpreted it.
So it goes.
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This is my all time favorite book. In AP English in high school, we got to pick the final book we read for class and this is the one I picked at random. I wanted a war story and this is one that came up on the computer search of our library. And oh boy, it is quite the war story. Turns out we had actually read one chapter of the book several years earlier in another English class and it had stuck with me for years, so I was blown away when I got to that chapter again (it’s the one where he was telling his son a war story about his time on ambush where he killed a guy with a grenade. I still distinctly remember the line about how it blew a “star shaped hole” in the guy’s head).
If you liked this book, especially the whole blending of truth and fiction, then please read some of his other books! Going After Cacciato is really trippy but such a good story. I would say it’s even closer to Slaughterhouse 5, just set in Vietnam. "In Lake Of The Woods* is also good, though a bit more grounded and a very different story than the other two books.
I love the way this book is written. I’m a huge Vonnegut fan and can see the similarities. I feel mildly guilty saying this, but I think O’Brien’s prose in The Things They Carried surpasses the best of Vonnegut’s.
“If I Die In A Combat Zone (Box Me Up And Carry Me Home)” is his non-fiction version of his time in the Vietnam War. It is also very good.
I teach this. I’m a combat vet in Iraq, and read this after my deployment. I love the book. It literally changed my life. Can’t say enough about it, and I could teach How to Tell a True War Story, Good Form, and The Man I killed forever.
Moment of Courage gets tears out of me every time I read it.
The Lives of the Dead does it too.
For a book that is very much the spiritual successor to TTTC - read Redeployment by Phil Klay.
I read this for a class in high school and it’s remained one of my favourites ever since. It was the first book that really made me question the nature of stories, and how a story can be simultaneously true and untrue at the same time. It made me like reading again! I still have my copy 15 years later.
It has been my favorite book for almost 30 years. So glad people are still falling in love with it.
I’m a veteran (peace time) and a teacher. I used to teach this along with Johnny Got His Gun in an American Lit class in the mid '00s. A lot of kids were shocked at the content, and others thought it sounded bad ass. A couple years later one of the kids who thought it seemed BA came back to visit after a tour in Afghanistan. He looked me in the eye and said, “I get it now.”
I went home and cried.
“I know a man who made an anti-war movie… a good one. When it was shown in his home town, army enlistment went up six hundred percent.”
Thanks for sharing this.
I have not forgiven the teacher who made me read Johnny Got His Gun in 10th grade. As you compared these two books, I know I shall not read this one. So thank you.
I read The Things They Carried in high school. Took my copy to Afghanistan with me. At some point, one of my cadets walked off it with while I was teaching ROTC. I’m certain it wasn’t intentional, and I can only hope another young lieutenant picks it up off their company commander’s shelf and it continues its journey. That copy was full of literary annotations and life annotations from my time in service. Every time I see that edition in a used book store? I check to see if it’s mine.
When Tim O’Brien came to speak at the local university, I got a new copy, signed by him.
One of the most impactful books I’ve ever read.
He is rad. I did grad studies in Lit at Texas State, and was luccy enough to not only have him as a teacher, but to smoke outside the building with him and just … hear him talk. He speaks with an eloquence (even in jest) of which I could only dream.
I am currently reading America Fantastica, and it is brilliant. I have read all of his other stuff. Going After Cacciato deserves the praise it gets, and more.
One of the most impactful books I’ve ever read.
For me too… nod to my earlier comment
I wish I could upvote this twice.
I’m an avid reader but hated nearly every assigned book through high school English. The two exceptions: The Things They Carried and Johnny Got His Gun. They were such a departure from the other books and from what I read in my free time. What hauntingly beautiful books.
That book endures. It helped shape the way Americans have come to feel about the Vietnam war. O’Brien distills the moral uncertainty and the lingering damage. But beyond shaping (or reflecting) how we’ve come to relate to the war, it is also a work of art. People will read it for generations to come, and even without its specific connection to the Vietnam era, people will learn about the horrors of war.
It’s a text that’s rich on so many levels.
Even if you ignore all of the messaging about war (which obviously is impossible), the way he frames to importance of fiction and getting the feel right versus getting the facts right when attempting to understand and communicate trauma is so spot on and insightful.
I taught that book for years (the only reason I no longer teach the class that uses it as a text anymore), and every year it would inevitably be the text that would generate the best and deepest discussion.
Wow… I would love to be a fly on the wall of any/all those discussions… did you find that they would change year to year? Kind of follow the same themes in general? Anything that stood out?
That book had a hand in shaping me in my 20’s, it just hit so hard.
I think of that damn story all the time. I can’t look at old photography without thinking “who took that picture”
The things they carried is wonderful. Historical fiction isn’t normally my first genre choice but this book is one of my all time favorites regardless. I really liked “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” and the water buffalo bit still makes me sad to the point of almost feeling a little queasy (I’m a big softie or animals / babies / anything too innocent to fully understand it’s own suffering)
"I’ll picture Rat Kiley’s face, his grief, and I’ll think, You dumb cooze.
Because she wasn’t listening.
It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story."
Great book.
If you want to read more great Vietnam War fiction, read “Matterhorn”, by Karl Marlantes
I consider it to be one of the best novels I have ever read. Unforgettable
It’s a different war, but you might enjoy The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers.
As a vet and history teacher - Matterhorn is the only one close to TTTC.
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen is a new one. It only has a few parts that are directly war, but I believe it is a great book. It starts with the fall of Saigon.
Literally came to the replies to make this suggestion.
Matterhorn was incredible. The Sympathizer, also incredible.
The ending of Matterhorn stands out as one of the best endings of any book I’ve ever read, maybe even THE best.
I wrote my master’s thesis on 4 of O’Brien’s novels. I’ve read all of O’Brien’s books and they are all excellent, including his new one, America Fantastica. I think O’Brien is our finest living writer and TTTC is an absolute masterpiece, a work of true genius. It’s perhaps my all-time favorite book. I teach it to my AP English class and I uncover something new with it each year, to the point that I would like to heavily revise my thesis and try to have it published. I was on the right track with my analysis, but I missed a lot. I would love to meet him or attend one of his lectures or something. I’m a huge fan.
As I said in another reply, just go to Texas State University, Flower’s Building, and have a smoke with him outside. He will talk your ear off and it is amazing. And, to boot, in Austin, at the Ransom Center are his papers, etc. Right along with DFW. He is the best.
Ahhhhh a dream come true for me. I don’t give a single, solitary care about meeting anyone in Hollywood, but I would be a tongue-tied fangirl if I ever had the chance to have a smoke with one of my heroes.
I could probably find a conference in Austin and go after O’Brien on my district’s dime haha.
Do it! Not many people smoke nowadays, and he wears a Vietman hat and just … talks. Super cool. There isn’t a crowd, most younger folks haven’t heard of him (no judgement), so it’s him being chill and funny.
He’s currently on a reading tour for his new book. I just saw him in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. Maybe see if he’s coming to do a reading near you?
Where do you find info? I knew he was on tour but I can’t find cities and dates or a place to buy tickets or anything. I’d be willing to travel…
Amazing book
Great book and good review, particularly the last paragraph and closing sentence.