This collection of seven essays, like the carefully linked collection of vignettes within Tim O’Brien’s most popular book The Things They Carried, contains multiple critical and biographical angles with recurring threads of life events, themes, characters, creative techniques, and references to all of O’Brien’s books. Grounded in through research, Herzog’s work illustrates how O’Brien merges his life experiences with his creative production; he rarely misses an opportunity to introduce these critical life events into his writing.
1: The Things He Carries; 2: The Thing He Carried and the War Stories He
Tells; 3: Siegfried Sassoon and Tim OBrien; 4: Tim OBriens Creative Rotary
and True Lies (?) 1; 5: Tim OBriens Best Novel (?); 6: Footnotes and
Quotes; 7: The Wars of the Living and the Final (?) Fractured Love Stories
Tobey C. Herzog, a Vietnam Veteran, is an Emeritus Professor of English and the Emeritus Anne and Andrew T. Ford Chair in the Liberal Arts, Wabash College. He has authored three books on American narratives on the Vietnam experience: Vietnam War Stories: Innocence Lost; Tim OBrien; and Writing Vietnam, Writing Life.
