Tim O'Brien (author)

Tim O'Brien
O'Brien at the 2023 Texas Book Festival
Born	William Timothy O'Brien Jr. (1946-10-01) October 1, 1946 Austin, Minnesota, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist short story writer teacher
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Macalester College Harvard University
Genre	Memoirs, war stories, short stories
Notable works	If I Die in a Combat Zone Going After Cacciato The Things They Carried
Years active	1973–present
Spouse	Meredith Baker
Children	2
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1968–1970
Rank	Sergeant
Unit	3rd Platoon, Company A, 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry Regiment 198th Infantry Brigade
Battles/wars	Vietnam War
Awards	Purple Heart

Tim O'Brien (born October 1, 1946) is an American novelist who served as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Much of his writing is about wartime Vietnam, and his work later in life often explores the postwar lives of its veterans.

O'Brien is perhaps best known for his book The Things They Carried (1990), a collection of linked semi-autobiographical stories inspired by his wartime experiences. In 2010, The New York Times described it as "a classic of contemporary war fiction." O'Brien wrote the war novel, Going After Cacciato (1978), which was awarded the National Book Award.

O'Brien taught creative writing, holding the endowed chair at the MFA program of Texas State University–San Marcos every other academic year from 2003 to 2012.

Biography

Early life

Tim O'Brien was born in Austin, Minnesota on October 1, 1946, the son of William Timothy O'Brien and Ava Eleanor Schultz O'Brien. When he was ten, his family – including a younger brother and sister – moved to Worthington, Minnesota. Worthington had a large influence on O’Brien's imagination and his early development as an author. The town is on Lake Okabena in the southwestern part of the state and serves as the setting for some of his stories, especially those in The Things They Carried.

Military service

O'Brien earned his BA in 1968 in political science from Macalester College, where he was student body president. That same year he was drafted into the United States Army and was sent to Vietnam, where he served from 1969 to 1970 in 3rd Platoon, Company A, 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry Regiment, part of the 23rd Infantry Division (the Americal Division) that contained the unit that perpetrated the My Lai Massacre the year before his arrival. O'Brien has said that when his unit got to the area around My Lai (referred to as "Pinkville" by the U.S. forces), "we all wondered why the place was so hostile. We did not know there had been a massacre there a year earlier. The news about that only came out later, while we were there, and then we knew."

First book published

Upon completing his tour of duty, O'Brien went to graduate school at Harvard University. Afterward he received an internship at the Washington Post. In 1973 he published his first book, a memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, about his war experiences. In this memoir, O'Brien writes: "Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories."

Personal life

As of 2010 O'Brien lived in central Texas, raising a family and teaching full-time every other year at Texas State University–San Marcos. In alternate years, he teaches several workshops to MFA students in the creative writing program.

O'Brien's papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Writing Style

In Tim O'Brien's book The Things They Carried, he talks about the difference between "story-truth" (the truth in fiction) and "happening-truth" (the truth in real events). He says that sometimes, what happens in a story can feel more true emotionally than what really happened. O’Brien suggests that the emotions a story creates can be more real than just facts.

This is an important part of O’Brien's writing style: he mixes his real-life experiences with a storytelling voice that makes you think about what is real and what is made up.

In The Things They Carried, some stories seem to disagree with each other, and some are meant to make you question what you believe. For example, "Speaking of Courage" is followed by "Notes", which explains how "Speaking of Courage" is not completely true. This is another way O’Brien challenges us to think about what is fact and what is fiction.

Personal Views on the Vietnam War

Tim O'Brien has spoken about the Vietnam War, although he doesn't see himself as a spokesperson for it. Reflecting on his hometown and the war years later, he described it as "a town that proudly stays ignorant of the world: a town that sent me to Vietnam."

Comparing the American search for missing soldiers with the large number of Vietnamese casualties, O'Brien criticized what he saw as a double standard:

"It's a perverse and unfair double standard. What if the situation were reversed? What if the Vietnamese demanded we find their missing soldiers? It's impossible due to the numbers: at least 100,000, if not more. From my own experience in Vietnam, I know many Vietnamese who died remain nameless."

O'Brien participated in interviews for Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War and Ken Burns's 2017 documentary series The Vietnam War.

Awards and Honors

• If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home was chosen as the Outstanding Book of 1973 by the New York Times.
• O'Brien won the National Book Award in 1979 for his novel Going After Cacciato.
• In 1987, O'Brien received the Vietnam Veterans of America Excellence in the Arts Award.
• His novel In the Lake of the Woods won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction in 1995.
• O'Brien was honored with the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation in August 2012.
• O'Brien received the $100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award in June 2013.
• In 2010, O'Brien was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) from Whittier College.

Selected bibliography

Fiction

Novels

• Northern Lights (1975) ISBN 9780440066644
• Going After Cacciato (1978) ISBN 9780385283496
• The Nuclear Age (1985) ISBN 9780394542867
• The Things They Carried (1990) ISBN 9780618706419
• In the Lake of the Woods (1994) ISBN 9780140250947
• Tomcat in Love (1998) ISBN 9780767902021
• July, July (2002) ISBN 978-0-547-52372-9
• America Fantastica (2023) ISBN 9780063318502

Memoirs

• If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (1973) ISBN 9780767904438
• Dad's Maybe Book (2019) ISBN 9780618039708

Other works

• "Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy?" (1975) - short story

Other websites

• A Crisis 'In Country': An Ecocritical Approach to Tim O'Brien's Fiction, Rosalind Poppleton, University of Hertfordshire, British Library (2000)
• "Tim O'Brien video interview" (2010) Archived 2010-04-21 at the Wayback Machine, on Big Think
• Online discussion of The Things They Carried, Book Talk
• Tim O'Brien Papers at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
• Tim O'Brien, at Writers Reflect, Ransom Center
• Participation in Pritzker Military Museum & Library's Military History Symposium
• Tim O'Brien at Library of Congress Authorities — with 19 catalog records
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• "How To Tell a True War Story" BBC TV Documentary, 1992