O’Brien is a gifted writer, and this is a powerful, beautifully written book. The structure is episodes, short stories. He begins with a piece about the objects each of the characters is carrying. Then the stories go into each character in detail. The tales are of war, and are compelling. He also writes about writing and his observations are interesting. – Highly recommended.

P 40
…sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.

P 179
By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.

«Те, що вони несли» Тіма О’Браєна - це дуже крута збірка воєнних оповідань, яка показує саму сутність війни у В’єтнамі та долю десятків тисяч американських військових.

Дана книга – вже продовження моєї традиційної читацької рубрики #читаю_на_роботі. Збірка приїхала в книгарню в кінці березня і відразу мене зацікавила. Взагалі, дивився багато документальних фільмів про В’єтнамську війну, а тут проза відповідної теми – чому б не почитати?

Відгук буде короткий та лаконічний. Війна завжди була війною. Це жах. Все, що відбувалося в джунглях, маленьких селах та містечках азійської країни, було позбавлене сенсу. Американський солдат став жертвою політичних ігор та амбіцій, він не мав мотивації, жодної причини воювати тут та гинути. І це реально лякає. Єдине, що змушувало їх постійно йти у бій, проходити десятки кілометрів по пересічній місцевості, вбивати та помирати – страх безчестя та ганьби, страх отримати навіки клеймо боягуза. І вони йшли у бій, віддали всього себе.

Автор сам 7 місяців провів в постійних рейдах по ворожим територіям в складі роти «Альфа», воював, втрачав друзів, переживав такі потрясіння, що уявити собі важко. Він настільки тепло писав і про командира, і про бойових товаришів, що відчувається відразу – бойове братерство вічне.

Книга ще раз доводить, що війна – це окреме життя. Часто речі, на які в цивільному житті люди навіть не звертають уваги, приносять реальне задоволення, відволікають від жахів постійних боїв. А те, без чого вдома не могли обійтись, втратило цінність.

Багато можна писати далі.

Результат: це дуже достойна книга. Сильна. Її варто прочитати.

I was a child when the Vietnam war happened. I had a vague awareness of it at the time. I understood a bit more of it as I matured and learned more about it--the politics involved, the tragedies that occurred, the hurtful way vets returning home were treated, the burden many carried with them even after putting down "all the things they carried" through the jungles. I've had three brothers-in-law who were Vietnam vets, none of whom stayed married to my sisters (one was on his third marriage, last I knew); two battled alcohol, one of whom died as a result of his drinking. And yet, I knew about Vietnam from a safe emotional distance.

Not anymore.

I just emerged from those battlefields via The Things They Carried. This book may gut you. Proceed with caution.

Through brutal descriptions I had my nose held to the stink of war; the new language developed which keeps you at an emotional distance from the atrocities you are living, so you aren't devastated by what you must do; the expectations a culture forces upon you so you are driven by fear (loss of love, loss of belonging, fear of shame) to ignore your conscience and idealism and do its bidding; the lengths to which we go when we are in pain, even if it means causing others pain.

I was forced to puzzle over the idea that being that close to death brings you more fully into life. That something so ugly and painful is juxtaposed to beauty and love and sacrifice and hope and faith. I wrestled with this "garden of evil" that molded men into momentary monsters in order to survive the monstrous; with how the author could create a phrase such as "the majesty of combat"; and with what to do with men who came home needing to talk but being unable to do so.

These stories often gutted me, but it felt important to listen, to honor those who have been forever changed by this kind of experience. To let this speak for those who can't, or are no longer with us to even try. Because there are some things you carry that cannot be put down, however hard you may try.

These are not war stories of the type that glorify war or make heroes of men. Nor are they anti-war polemics. They are stories about people, and the means they find to endure the conditions they must face. They are stories of fear, faith and love, of weakness and shame, of regret, of seeking and of coming to terms with. They are stories of death, and loss and enduring humanity. They are stories of the cowardice of heroism and the exceptional courage of the mundane. They are stories about stories. About how telling stories can free the soul. Of how fiction can be truer than fact, and how the truth is no truth at all.

Very moving and extremely well-written, Tim O’Brien gives us a realistic, unflinching set of interlocking and unforgettable stories about Vietnam. I think that Rabbit at Rest was deserving of the 1991 Pulitzer over this one, but then when I think that Updike had already gotten one for Rabbit Is Rich and O’Brien is still unprized as yes makes my heart wobble. I felt that the writing really put me in the center of the story and I could feel the night breathing around me as I read.

Tim O'Brien writes this in a semi-autobiographical tone as he does in many of his novels, being a Vietnam vet himself. The title story is quite moving and introduces us to several of the protagonists, many of whom will be killed before the stories run out. They are all told with a visceral sense of urgency and violence and from the perspective of a young man lost in a world which he does not fully understand. There is some humor here and many tears. I had a stepfather who was a Vietnam vet who told similar stories (albeit when he wasn't drunk which was excessively rare so maybe I got him to talk once or twice) and even 40 years after coming back, was still waking up with nightmares having killed a girl on a bridge never knowing whether her bag held grenades or just papayas.

Highly recommended as a moving and realistic set of stories about 'Nam.

All the Stars

This book seemingly had three strikes against it before I even cracked open the spine. First of all, as I’ve stated numerous times before, I’m not a fan of war stories, and I especially didn’t care to revisit Vietnam so soon after wading through King’s Hearts in Atlantis. Secondly, nonfiction is not my thing . . . at all. That dry, voiceless prose or those lengthy expository info dumps that populate so many works are dead boring—I’d rather be whisked away into a page-turning adventure than struggle through that tedium. The third and final strike is that, although I’ve read plenty of these short story collections over the years, I’m still not entirely sold on their overall merit. Short little vignettes are fine for casual browsing, but I prefer lengthier tales to properly flesh out the characters.

All those preconceived notions, yet I couldn’t rid my thoughts of something Jeff said early on in our buddy read–and I’m paraphrasing here–“so far, this is an absolutely breathtaking read, check out that titular story and you’ll be hooked.” I also vaguely remember Amanda’s ringing endorsement from a few years ago, which put this on my radar to begin with. So rather begrudgingly, I finally picked up the book to see what all the fuss was about. Now, I’m happy to report, before God and country, that all my prejudices were unwarranted. This book just flat out works.

While technically this may be categorized as a short story collection, in reality, all of the individual tales interweave and overlap to tell a much broader, more powerful, and poignant story. The same could be said of truth and fiction. O’Brien has no qualms about mixing half-truths or even outright falsehoods into an otherwise faithful recounting of events. Or is any of it true? Who’s to say, other than the people that were actually there? However, he isn’t trying to fool us or have us playing some guessing game. Rather, he employs this technique in an attempt to get at the heart of the matter. To get at what he likes to refer to as “story-truth.” He wants you to feel what he felt, experience it firsthand, and in order to accomplish that you have to realize that sometimes “story-truth” is truer than “happening-truth.”

Whatever the method, the results are undeniable. Some of the harrowing scenes described in this book will stick to your bones. Much like the horrors witnessed or perpetrated by the soldiers themselves, they’ll not easily be scrubbed from your mind. Or what about that intense out-of-body feeling of aliveness you experience after a firefight? How you find yourself studying the vivid colors of the grass and the trees and the river. How you’re awed by the sunset, and “Filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not.”

O’Brien also addresses the lasting impact the war has had on all their lives. To truly appreciate the soldiers’ plight you need to be conscious of the fact that it doesn’t end on the battlefield.

Perusing this story, I found myself highlighting huge passages, which are much too long to include in any review, so I’ll simply implore you, if you’re anything like me, to set aside those preconceived notions and pick up this book. You won’t regret it. This masterpiece would make a welcome addition to any collection.

5 Stars – I’m off to track down a hardcover of my own.

On second thought, for anyone curious to sample his writing or think I’m overselling it, check the spoiler for a couple of lengthy quotes from said titular story.

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects, this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed and died because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment. They crawled into tunnels and walked point and advanced under fire. Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move. They endured. They kept humping. They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards.

. . .

At night, on guard, staring into the dark, they were carried away by jumbo jets. They felt the rush of takeoff. Gone! they yelled. And then velocity—wings and engines—a smiling stewardess—but it was more than a plane, it was a real bird, a big sleek silver bird with feathers and talons and high screeching. They were flying. The weights fell off; there was nothing to bear. They laughed and held on tight, feeling the cold slap of wind and altitude, soaring, thinking It’s over, I’m gone!—they were naked, they were light and free—it was all lightness, bright and fast and buoyant, light as light, a helium buzz in the brain, a giddy bubbling in the lungs as they were taken up over the clouds and the war, beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification and global entanglements—Sin loi!, they yelled. I’m sorry, motherfuckers, but I’m out of it, I’m goofed, I’m on a space cruise, I’m gone!

Read as part of another Non-Crunchy Cool Classic Buddy Read.

The truth shall set you free.

What about half truths? Or a fictionalized version of the truth?

Tim O’Brien, as a Vietnam vet and writer, makes no bones about the veracity of a war story: “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.”

This book is an exercise in not only exorcising demons and coping with guilt and grief, but in how to write a narrative that weaves in and out of what could pass for truth or fiction, like a greased snake that you just can’t quite get within your grasp.

The combo of memoir and short fiction presents some harrowing incidents looked at from different narrative perspectives; however, according to O’Brien, events in war, often times chaotic, create their own kind of mythos, which blurs the line between fact and fiction. Some tales, like “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, written as hearsay gives the reader pause, to wonder if it could have been, in spite of the outlandish nature of the events.

His “memoir” chapters remind me of cinema verite – even though the medium is trying to capture events as they transpire, the very fact that there’s a camera and film crew involved effect what’s happening. Memory and the craft of writing in service of therapy can be a tricky endeavor.

Does filtering the “truth” through the guise of fiction offer any relief to the storyteller? Does it assuage the guilt, the night terror, the sadness, the anger?

One can only hope so.

A group buddy read with the International Non-Crunchy Classic Book Society of Pantsless Readers.

5★
“They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.”

These twelve stories share with readers some of what it means to be a boy who doesn’t want to go to fight in Vietnam, but who does go and meets the men of Alpha Company.

n  This book is lovingly dedicated
to the men of Alpha Company,
and in particular to Jimmy Cross,
Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley,
Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins,
and Kiowa.n

The first story is the title of the book and the most comprehensive overall picture. O’Brien narrates it in the third person so that we see things from someone else’s viewpoint, not just his own. Quotation marks are used in some places and not in others, but it doesn't matter.

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is so infatuated with a girl back home that he is daydreaming at a critical point instead of leading his men.

“Lieutenant Cross gazed at the tunnel. But he was not there. . .

Vaguely, he was aware of how quiet the day was, the sullen paddies, yet he could not bring himself to worry about matters of security. He was beyond that. He was just a kid at war, in love. He was twenty-four years old. He couldn't help it.”

Suddenly, someone is dropped in his tracks, killed instantly. Unbelievable.

“Oh sh*t’, Rat Kiley said, the guy's dead. The guy's dead, he kept saying, which seemed profound — the guy's dead. I mean really.”

Each story is separate but connected, in that this particular sniper attack is mentioned again, sometimes in conversation, sometimes in reference to another situation. Rat Kiley’s stunned comment is repeated elsewhere as well.

As in all war stories, everyone from everywhere is bundled in together. Uncomfortable bedfellows. There’s a sadistic guy who likes blowing up pets (don’t ask), but he says:

“‘What's everybody so upset about?’ Azar said. ‘I mean, Christ, I'm just a BOY.’”

A central character is Kiowa, who carries the burden of his heritage, a foot in each camp.

“Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man, his grandfather's old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated.”

Most seem to have a lucky charm or memento.

“To carry something was to hump it . . . Almost everyone humped photographs.”

I never got the sense that anyone looked at their photos to say what they were fighting for, as the soldiers in the World Wars did. The pictures seemed more like reassurance that they did really have lives before the mud and stink of the jungle.

These men are Americans, brought up to respect life and honour the dead, but it’s almost impossible here. They poke fun at how scared they’ve been.

“They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it. They found jokes to tell.
. . .
They were actors. When someone died, it wasn't quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself. They kicked corpses. They cut off thumbs.”

Without offhand jokes and black humour, they’d all go mad – or more mad.

“They were waiting for Lavender's chopper, smoking the dead man's dope.
The moral's pretty obvious, Sanders said, and winked. Stay away from drugs. No joke, they'll ruin your day every time.
Cute, said Henry Dobbins.
Mind blower, get it? Talk about wiggy. Nothing left, just blood and brains.
They made themselves laugh.

There it is, they'd say. Over and over—there it is, my friend, there it is —as if the repetition itself were an act of poise, a balance between crazy and almost crazy, knowing without going, there it is, which meant be cool, let it ride, because Oh yeah, man, you can't change what can't be changed, there it is, there it absolutely and positively and f*ckingwell is.”

It is a phenomenal book that does not all take place in combat, although my quotes might make you think so. There is a lot about the attempted escape to Canada before joining up, and there is more when the author talks to his daughter years later and goes to reunions.

I fully realise it’s a case of “you hadda be there” to understand, but I like to think I at least have a frighteningly good idea of why so many vets are still carrying so many things. No surprise that it was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. (Shoulda won!)

n  n    "They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried."n  n

I stayed up until 4:30am last night to finish this book (no regrets) and by the end I was torn about what of it. I almost hate myself for not absolutely adoring this book like so many have. Don't get me wrong, I did like it a lot, but I feel like I may have sort of missed the point? On the one hand, I can completely appreciate and admire what Tim O'Brien has done here- he blurs the line between truth and reality and becomes the ultimate "unreliable narrator." He tells his war stories, but you're never really sure what's true and not true. The narrator is "Tim O'Brien" but not necessarily the same Tim as the author himself. He's kind of a fictionalized version of Tim. But to O'Brien, war stories aren't necessarily about the true "facts" of the story. A war story has a purpose and it elicits emotions, and sometimes the hard "truth" in those stories is blurred by the emotions or memories surrounding the events. The truth in a war story is how it makes you feel.

n  n    “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth."n  n

I'm no stranger to war stories. My dad was a Vietnam veteran and I've heard a lot of stories- some hilarious and some absolutely horrific. I thought I had heard them all (many times over). My dad liked to tell his stories over and over, and I always listened like it was the first time, because again, war stories aren't necessarily about the facts of the story itself, but the emotions and purpose of the story. At my father's funeral I learned that he was a POW and had received a Purple Heart. In all his stories, these things were unknown to me. It sort of turned my world upset down. In all the stories he had told me, how much had he left out? All of the terrible things he shared with me (including the exact moment that triggered his PTSD and haunted him at night for decades) how much worse did it all get? I'll never get the answer to these questions- I was one of the only people he shared stories with at all. So after his funeral, I made it a personal goal to read more about Vietnam this year. I know I won't get the answers I'm looking for in these books (if anything it raised more questions). Maybe it's a form of grieving or healing for me, but at the very least I feel like I owe it to my dad, and to all the veterans, to educate myself in a war that I feel like very few people know much about.

n  n    “The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.” n  n

O'Brien's writing is lyrical and mesmerizing. These are war stories, but there's no detailed descriptions of battles. O'Brien focuses on the emotions, the human aspect, and the psychological. The tone rang true to what I know from my dad's own stories- there is a feeling of loss, and shame, and guilt, and anger. A bunch of scared 19 year olds sent into a jungle to fight an enemy they know nothing about for a cause they know nothing about. There are also moments of humor- the kinds of things that inevitably happen when you send a bunch of 19 year old boys into the jungle.

My favorite stories were:

Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong: probably the most outlandish and unrealistic of all the stories told in this book, but it stuck with me because I kept asking myself what part of this story was true and what the moral of the story was.

Speaking of Courage and the author's note afterward: the most horrifying story, to me, out of the bunch and shows what can happen to these men when their stories aren't told.

n  n    “War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.”n  n

This is a book of short stories, technically, but the book really needs to be read as a whole. The narrative jumps around a lot, from the war, before the war, after the war, and the author's present day. This is a memoir (?) technically, but we don't know what true and not true. That ultimately became my slight frustration with this book and what kept me from giving it all the stars and why I feel like I totally missed the point. I wanted to know what was true... And I hated the way these stories lingered in such a way where I was just questioning the truth and maybe missing the entire point of the story? And even though I understand that this may have been exactly O'Brien's point, I guess it just didn't totally work for me. How can you be an unreliable narrator in your own memoir? (Is this even a memoir?) But then again doesn't this sort of thinking of ring true for any soldier's psyche and experiences in any war- lines get blurred all the time. So like I said, I can appreciate what O'Brien did, and what his purpose was, but it just didn't get the appropriate reaction from me.

Nevertheless, The Things They Carried is an important book. It emphasizes that yes, these soldiers carried their weapons, their gear, their ammunition, their rations, their personal effects. But more importantly, they carried their fear, their shame, their losses, and their stories, and still carry them to this day. This is one I won't forget.

n  n    "I survived, but it's not a happy ending."n  n

On a side note I was assigned to read this book in high school (I didn't read it) and again in college when I took a history course on the Vietnam War (again I didn't read it... What can I say I had a heavy course load and if I could find the answers on the Internet I was all about saving myself time) and then I actually lent the book to my dad without having read it myself. Anyway, it's been about ten years since I was first assigned to read this book and even though I tried to ignore it, the book kept finding my way back to me over the last decade. The moral of the story is don't do what I did- this is a book that everyone should read!!

I have read many descriptions of war - WWI. WWII, the Spanish Revolution, Viet Nam. No writer has ever taken me into the head of a soldier the way Tim O'Brien did. His writing is poignant, hauntingly powerful, and poetic. It is brilliant as only a gifted writer can convey.

Let's start out with some context: I know very little about the Vietnam War, having been born in the 80's, and most of my information on the conflict comes from painstakingly-researched movies such as Good Morning Vietnam and Tropic Thunder and, to a lesser extent, whatever my high school teachers tried to make me remember from history class (thanks to my long-standing obsession with all things Tudor, I have a bad habit of just not giving a damn when it comes to American history). I do not particularly enjoy Apocalypse Now, or Vietnam movies in general. If we're being totally honest, the Vietnam War/Conflict/Clusterfuck has never really held my attention for very long.

So it's a testament to Tim O'Brien's crazy talent as a writer that I found his book, which is all about Vietnam and the people who lived (or in some cases, didn't) through it, absolutely fascinating and one of the most beautifully written things I've ever read. I had read a few stories from this book before, for various English classes over the years, but I had never read the entire work.

One of the things I loved most about this book was actually the structure, and the way O'Brien plays with our perceptions of fiction vs. fact. This book is fiction, that's made very clear. But the narrator is named Tim O'Brien, and because of this it's often very hard to remember that this isn't actually a memoir. O'Brien knows this, and knows that our impulse is to accept everything in this book as fact, or based closely on fact, and it's interesting that he waits until more than halfway through the story to correct us:

"It's time to be blunt.
I'm forty-three years old, true, and I'm a writer now, and a long time ago I walked through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier.
Almost everything else is invented.
But it's not a game. It's a form. Right here, right now, as I invent myself, I'm thinking of all I want to tell you about why this book is written as it is. For instance, I want to tell you this: twenty years ago I watched a man die on a trail near the village of My Khe. I did not kill him. But I was present, you see, and my presence was guilt enough.
...But listen. Even that story is made up.
I want you to feel what I feel. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth."

Here's my theory about this book: it's not actually about the Vietnam War. I mean, that's what O'Brien is telling us about in this story, but I think the book is really about writing, and storytelling. Take that passage I quoted above where he talks about the difference between story-truth and happening-truth. O'Brien is writing stories about Vietnam, but he's using the stories to teach us how to write, and how to tell stories.

"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."

Also, just because I really want to quote it and can't fit it into the context of the rest of the review, here's a bonus passage that I found heart-stoppingly beautiful. O'Brien is talking about a girl he knew in elementary school who died when she was nine, and how he would see her in his dreams:

"Once, I remember, we went ice skating late at night, tracing loops and circles under yellow floodlights. Later we sat by a wood stove in the warming house, all alone, and after a while I asked her what it was like to be dead.
...'Well, right now,' she said, 'I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know. I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading.'
'A book?' I said.
'An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do it wait. Just hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading.'
Linda smiled at me.
'Anyhow, it's not so bad,' she said. 'I mean, when you're dead, you just have to be yourself.' She stood up and put on her red stocking cap. 'This is stupid. Let's go skate some more.'"

5 Stars

If you need your stories to come with concrete-facts and absolutes, this is not the book for you.

This is a book that plays with perception and morality. Tim O’Brien served in Vietnam and these short-stories are based on his time there. But to call this a memoir feels wrong— not when the author spends so much time in the fantastical, in re-telling stories or in side notes that make us wonder at the nature of “truth.”

Do we trust what we’ve heard or what others tell us? Do we trust our memories because we were there? We as humans always need to be able to put things in a story... but can we ever make sense of it?

I am not one for war books. But I am one for books that make me think about how I view the world around me. This is definitely one of those.