"How to Tell a True War Story": Metafict
This essay by Catherine Calloway appeared in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. Calloway argues that "the stories become epistemological tools, multidimensional windows through which the war, the world, and the ways of telling a war story can be viewed from many different angles and visions."
A Conversation With Tim O'Brien
Artful Dodger interview by Debra Shostak and Daniel Bourne, which took place during Tim O'Brien's residency as a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writing Fellow at The College of Wooster.
An Index to "The Things They Carried" by
The pagination in this index is based on the paperback edition of "The Things They Carried," New York: Broadway, 1998.
Author Profile: Tim O'Brien
Bookreporter.com briefly profiles the author and offers an interview from 1998.
Everything Is Wrong - Tim O'Brien
Michael Tortorello writes in Minneapolis/St. Paul's City Pages that the notion at the center of all O'Brien's writing is that stories present the opportunity to reconfigure what has happened, to revise events so as to strip them of their destructive power.
Interview with Tim O'Brien: From Life to Fict
Lighthouse Writers interview by Karen Rosica.
Metafiction and O'Brien's "The Thin
This essay by Michele Friedlander argues that O'Brien's book "comments not only upon the war, but also upon the actual art of fiction: the means of storytelling, the purposes behind them, and ultimately the relationship between fiction and reality itself." (Spring 2000)
Moral Questions in Tim O'Brien's "G
In this 1995 essay, Jonathan Chisdes writes, "the point that O'Brien is making is not that war is an evil situation. He's trying to take that for granted and move beyond. Now that you've got this evil situation, what do you do?"
O'Brien, Where Art Thou?
Interview conducted by Hillary Schroeder for the Daily Cardinal.
Plausibility of Denial: Tim O'Brien, My Lai,
H. Bruce Franklin writes that Tim O'Brien explores our denial of the realities of the Vietnam War and American society. Originally in The Progressive.
Ten Questions with Tim O'Brien
Patrick Hunt asks O'Brien questions about his writing for the Flyer News.
The Heart Under Stress: Interview with Author Tim
Gadfly Magazine interview with Tim O'Brien by James Lindbloom.
The Myth-Shattering Courage of Tim O'Brien
This 1999 essay by Jan Matney argues that in "The Things They Carried," "O'Brien's narrator is armed with an arsenal of feelings and words that slash away at an invisible enemy that is the myth of courage, on an invisible battlefield that is the Vietnam veteran's mind."
The Things He Carries
Interview of Tim O'Brien by Julia Hanna that appeared in Harvard's Kennedy School Bulletin.
The Truth in Things: Personal Trauma as Historical
In this essay, Jim Neilson argues that Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" "accords with much of the anti-totalizing strains of postmodernism" and that "it is precisely this tendency in his fiction that makes it incapable of opposing the ongoing reconstruction of the war as an American tragedy."
Tim O'Brien - An Introduction to His Writing
Ken Lopez writes that O'Brien is widely recognized as the preeminent American novelist of the Vietnam experience and his novels have gained widespread critical and significant popular success because of their ability to translate the experience of wartime into perspectives on the largest questions of life and death. (1997)
Tim O'Brien and American National Identity: A
A paper given by Lynn Wharton at a conference on National Identities, held at King Alfred College, Winchester, England, in September 1999.
Tim O'Brien and the Art of the True War Story
Full text of the critical essay from Twentieth Century Literature by John H. Timmerman. (Spring 2000)
Tim O'Brien Talks with Robert Birnbaum
A Robert Birnbaum interview with novelist Tim O'Brien for IdentityTheory.com, posted November 5, 2002.
Tim O'Brien, Novelist
Webpages dedicated to author and Vietnam Veteran O'Brien include information on his novels and short story collections, scheduled public appearances, and links to online interviews and audio recordings of readings, as well as other information related to the author and his works.
Trap-doors and Tunnels
Richard von Busack writes that in the novels of Tim O'Brien, all roads lead back to the Vietnam War.
War and War: Love in the Postmodern War Fiction of
Paper by Minka Paraskevova and Yordan Kosturkov presented at postmodern de/constructions, the 5th Interdisciplinary, International Graduate Conference at the University of Erlangen/Nuremberg.
Writing Vietnam: Keynote Address
Tim O'Brien's President's Lecture at Brown University, 21 April 1999.