Tim O'Brien
1 book analyzed
Biography
Tim O'Brien (born 1946 in Austin, Minnesota) was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1968, shortly after being admitted to Harvard for graduate school. He served as an infantry soldier in Quang Ngai province, the same province where My Lai occurred. He did not participate in My Lai, but his unit operated in that region. After the war he attended Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, then worked as a reporter for the Washington Post before publishing his first book, 'If I Die in a Combat Zone' (1973). 'The Things They Carried' (1990) is his masterpiece. O'Brien has spoken publicly about the deliberate blurring of autobiography and fiction in the book: the Tim O'Brien in the stories is a Vietnam veteran who never had a daughter named Kathleen; the real Tim O'Brien had a daughter. The book is not a memoir. It is a novel that uses the techniques of memoir to argue that emotional truth matters more than factual accuracy.