{"id":25797,"date":"2021-02-28T22:50:44","date_gmt":"2021-02-28T22:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2021\/02\/28\/the-things-they-carried-author-tim-obrien-on-his-lifes-work-trauma-confronting-mortality\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T06:33:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T06:33:55","slug":"the-things-they-carried-author-tim-obrien-on-his-lifes-work-trauma-confronting-mortality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/off-duty\/military-culture\/2021\/02\/28\/the-things-they-carried-author-tim-obrien-on-his-lifes-work-trauma-confronting-mortality\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Things They Carried\u2019 author Tim O\u2019Brien on his life\u2019s work, trauma & confronting mortality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tim O\u2019Brien\u2019s list of writing accolades is extensive. The Vietnam veteran and National Book Award winner\u2019s dissection of the war in Vietnam, most prominently illustrated through 1990\u2032s \u201cThe Things They Carried<\/a>,\u201d has spawned meticulous critiques and commendation by audiences that range from middle and high school students to military historians and combat veterans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the book\u2019s 20th anniversary in 2010, the historical fiction based on O\u2019Brien\u2019s frontline experience in Vietnam had surpassed 2 million copies sold, its immeasurable impact prompting the Library of Congress to name it one of the 65 most influential books in U.S. history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after writing \u201cJuly, July\u201d in 2002, Tim, now 74, stepped away from the keyboard. Confounded by America\u2019s involvement in wars that too closely mirrored his own, Tim has since opted to spend his time being a father to his two children born later in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing, however, is in O\u2019Brien\u2019s blood. And after nearly two decades, he began working on \u201cDad\u2019s Maybe Book,\u201d a final project he hopes will allow his children to hear their father\u2019s voice in its pages long after he\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The undertaking of writing that book is the subject of \u201cThe War and Peace of Tim O\u2019Brien,\u201d<\/a> a documentary \u201cabout the struggles of a world-renowned war writer [that] illuminates the everyday ties between duty, art, family, and the trauma of war,\u201d the film\u2019s synopsis reads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Brien spoke with me about the inspiration behind his final book, the perceived meaning of his life\u2019s work, the trauma he\u2019s endured, and his anticipation of confronting his own mortality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pre-order <\/i>\u201cThe War and Peace of Tim O\u2019Brien\u201d now on iTunes. <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
“The War and Peace of Tim O’Brien”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Your career has revolved around dissuading others from going to war for futile reasons. What was it about your experience during the Vietnam War, whether at home or abroad, that first shaped that approach?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing I can say is that I\u2019m not a complete pacifist. There are times when force is necessary. Unfortunately, Vietnam didn\u2019t feel like one of those times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole country was divided. Was a war right or wrong? Congress couldn\u2019t make up their minds. Rhodes scholars disagreed, hard hats disagreed with flower children. The country was divided, much more so than in our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. My family was divided, too. My mom was for the war, my dad was against it. So, you\u2019re 22, you love your country. You\u2019ve grown up on service to country. What the hell do you do when the best you could say about Vietnam was certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the boat I found myself in. I love my country, but I didn\u2019t believe in my country\u2019s war. It\u2019s a little bit now like having children. I love my children, but I don\u2019t love everything they do. (laughs)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ended up going to war as a foot soldier and was totally unequipped for it. I\u2019d hated Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and dropped out of both of them. I didn\u2019t like bugs, I didn\u2019t like sleeping in the rain, and I didn\u2019t know one end of the rifle from the other. I mean that almost literally \u2014 I couldn\u2019t tell if my weapon was loaded or not during firing range practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I had to learn when I got there. I wanted to stay alive and I wanted to keep my friends alive, but I was playing catch up. On top of that, I didn\u2019t like what we were seeing or what we were doing. It seemed to me we were doing the opposite of what our country was told we were doing. We weren\u2019t winning hearts and minds. We were peeing in people\u2019s wells, trampling their rice paddies and burning hooches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember a little girl being carried into our perimeter by an old man. Nobody intended to kill the little girl, but there she is. She\u2019s maybe 7 years old. You couldn\u2019t really tell because the bullet had hit her in the head. You carry all this stuff day after day after day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
(Courtesy of Tim O’Brien)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That goal of deterring people from war is one that, as you say in the documentary, has left you \u201cconsistently disappointed.\u201d We\u2019ve yet to experience time this century sans involvement in multiple wars. How have those conflicts impacted your perception of your life\u2019s work?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just wish my country would be more careful about killing people and not so bellicose in our rhetoric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re a farmer in Dubuque, Iowa, you\u2019re not going to like it if al-Qaida or ISIS come and burn your houses down, pee in your wells or kill your children, even if by accident. Why should we expect others to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, we do<\/i> expect others to. Then we expect them to look at us as saviors and saintly and clean-handed. I can\u2019t imagine any radical militias in Iraq or Afghanistan raising their hands up and surrendering just to accept their place in a democracy. I just can\u2019t imagine a happy outcome, just as 50 years ago it was hard to imagine H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh and other committed revolutionaries surrendering. And now, just like back then, it\u2019s hard to believe anything our politicians have tried to sell us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This thought of curing people of being who they have been for centuries, then believing they will adopt our standards or values, just doesn\u2019t seem possible. It\u2019s up to the people one way or another, and I just don\u2019t believe bombs and drones are going to do it for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the film, you tell a story of young a man who\u2019s contemplating joining the Marines. After hearing you speak at a function, he credits you for helping to make his mind up <\/b>\u2014 surprisingly, in favor of joining. Does this sort of thing ever give you the sense that those who read your words are simply hearing them versus actually taking them to heart?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think half of it is just what you said \u2014 they\u2019re not truly listening. They\u2019re hearing words and fitting what they\u2019re hearing into a fabric of their own construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Vietnam a friend of mine, Rodger McElhaney<\/a>, was squashed by one of our armored personnel carriers. We were in a rice paddy taking fire and we jumped behind these APCs for cover. The track started backing up and we could barely move, so my friend winds up at the bottom of a rice paddy and the rest of my company has to probe for his body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s say you tell that story and you\u2019re in the audience and are contemplating joining the Marine Corps. It\u2019s human nature to think, \u201cMaybe I would do better than O\u2019Brien in that situation. I\u2019d be able to take it. I\u2019m tough enough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stories, whether they\u2019re true or made up, are processed through the filter that individuals bring to them. And that\u2019s evident because this example has happened to me 20 or 30 times. Someone\u2019s on the fence about joining, listens to me speak, then tells me they feel better about their decision to join.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just go back to my hotel, look in the mirror and think, \u201cYou poor yo-yo, you failed again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I\u2019ve become so inured to it, this realization that people extract things from books, movies or magazine articles that are really unexpected, and the rest they sort of push to the background. It\u2019s totally human, but it\u2019s nonetheless always shocking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Tim in Chicago. (“The War and Peace of Tim O’Brien”)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Do you feel any of that \u201cI could do it better\u201d hubris is influenced by today\u2019s seemingly blanket application of troop support? Some have argued that, for decades now, we\u2019ve been overcompensating for the maltreatment of Vietnam veterans to the point of hero worship \u2014 if you\u2019re in uniform, you can do no wrong.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is<\/i> a kind of idolatry and hero worship. And in one sense, if you lose your legs, brain, or ears to a war, you\u2019ve done something most of us don\u2019t want to do. But then there\u2019s this homogenized view that all people who are in uniform are white hats and have never done wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anybody who has actually been in combat or in a war zone knows that\u2019s not true. There are people you despise. You know, the fucker you have to salute who\u2019s telling you to do the most stupid thing possible. It\u2019s like he stayed up all night thinking, \u201cWhat is the stupidest thing I can tell a guy to do tomorrow? I\u2019m going to do that.\u201d And you don\u2019t think of that guy as a white hat, you think of him as an asshole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soldiers are not this pasteurized, homogenized carton of milk where we\u2019re all identical. There are great people you meet during a war, people you adore, and there are people you despise. And there are plenty of grades again in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, it is a strange reversal where we seem to overcompensate for the mistreatment of earlier veterans by making them the subjects of unconditional adulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the film we learn about some of the trauma you\u2019ve experienced \u2014 from growing up with an alcoholic father to getting wounded in Vietnam. You say one of the best ways to escape trauma is through fiction or fantasy. Is this mechanism one of the reasons you chose to fictionalize elements of \u201cThe Things They Carried?\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think so. In a work of fiction, you aren\u2019t frozen into what happened. You can write about what almost<\/i> happened or what could<\/i> have happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anybody who\u2019s been under fire is kind of hoping for a miracle. You don\u2019t know what it is, you don\u2019t try to verbalize it, but you\u2019re hoping something will save you. So, you go into a fantasy world. Maybe late at night you\u2019re guarding a perimeter and staring out into the black. You can only do that for so long before fantasy takes you back home to your girlfriend or having spaghetti with mom and dad. Then you\u2019re suddenly back in the black. You sort of flip back and forth as a way of escaping the horrors around you that you can\u2019t process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People in concentration camps escaped into their heads by looking at something as simple as a robin in the middle of Auschwitz and pretending they were that bird. I think it\u2019s human nature \u2014 and maybe even the body\u2019s chemistry \u2014 of having the gift of imagination to be able to, at least temporarily, stay sane in the midst of insanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to your relationship with your children, how do you see them carrying the burden of your trauma?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like other veterans who have seen actual combat, I sometimes just glaze out on occasion at the dinner table, just staring into space and remembering something. They\u2019ve grown used to this glassy-eyed guy who will sometimes leave them for 20 seconds in memory. They see the lasting impact on me of something that happened 50 years ago and now understand that wars do not end when the peace treaty is signed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wars continue in the heads of soldiers, but they also go on and on in the heads of the Gold Star mothers and families who lost children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even now, 50 years later, some old woman will wake up at 2 a.m. and say, \u201cWhere\u2019s my baby?\u201d And her baby\u2019s been dead 50 fucking years. But it\u2019s still there. For her that war is not over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, the children, sisters, brothers, lovers, and parents are worse off than the dead. We tend to count casualties in war by the number of dead soldiers, but the ripple effect goes way beyond us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
(“The War and Peace of Tim O’Brien”)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For you, the war\u2019s lingering presence has almost been renewed, as you discuss in the film, through confronting your own mortality and the feeling that, on borrowed time, certain goals are no longer a certainty, but a possibility. How does that parallel to your war experience?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s like revisiting Vietnam as an old man, where death was proximate, waiting for you after every step. Now, 50 years later, it\u2019s back again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In your middle years you\u2019re able to push it away \u2014 you have jobs to do, children to raise, golf balls to hit, all the things that get in the way of thinking about it. But in old age the proximity of it is on you again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not a macabre thought \u2014 finality is everybody\u2019s fate. We know it intellectually, we forget it or suppress it emotionally. But in a war, maybe even in a pandemic, but certainly in old age, it\u2019s back, and that wolf is howling again. Now, it\u2019s harder to look away from. Just as in Vietnam, it was hard to look away from death. It was all around you, it was in your head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, it\u2019s a strange revisiting, but it\u2019s not all bad. In a way it\u2019s great to be conscious of the precious moments ahead of you. They\u2019re precious in a way that they weren\u2019t before. And there\u2019s an urgency that\u2019s kind of nice, as it is with writing this book. I\u2019d rather be with my kids, but I wanted to write them this gift so that when I\u2019m gone, they\u2019ll have, at my age, something I wish I\u2019d been given by my dad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know for many people it\u2019s going to seem macabre, but I\u2019m not obsessed by death \u2014 I\u2019m motivated by the preciousness of what time is left to extract what I can from the world of the living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On that note, you point out the irony that the entire content of your obituary will describe you as a war writer, that the worst thing that\u2019s ever happened to you, the catalyst for \u201cintense moral failure and shame,\u201d is what you\u2019ll be remembered for. How would you <\/b>want<\/b><\/i> people to remember you?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a writer, not a war writer. \u201cThe Things They Carried\u201d is as much a peace book as it is a war book. We don\u2019t do it to Joseph Conrad by calling him an ocean writer. You don\u2019t do it to Shakespeare by calling him a king writer. I\u2019m just a writer. I work on sentences, and that\u2019s hard to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I write, I\u2019m not necessarily thinking about Vietnam. I\u2019m thinking about constructing a sentence that will convey whatever I\u2019m seeing. People who aren\u2019t writers don\u2019t understand how hard it is to put together decent sentences. Because at the end, all you have are those 26 letters in our alphabet, and with those 26 letters and those punctuation marks you\u2019ve got to convey emotion and scenery and the physicality of the world. It\u2019s a hard fucking job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish I\u2019d become a plumber (laughs), but that\u2019s what I do instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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