"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.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to."
A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Things They Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone and the fictional Going After Cacciato, and this sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Whereas Going After Cacciato played with reality, The Things They Carried plays with truth. The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in facts but in the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tims went to a war they didn't believe in; both considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in The Things They Carried speaks another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable. --Alix Wilber
A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Things They Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone and the fictional Going After Cacciato, and this sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Whereas Going After Cacciato played with reality, The Things They Carried plays with truth. The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in facts but in the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tims went to a war they didn't believe in; both considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in The Things They Carried speaks another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable. --Alix Wilber
Similar Books by other authors...
Used availability for Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried
See all available used copies of this book at: Abebooks UK or Abebooks US
Hardback Editions
March 2005 : Hardback
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 0-7910-8171-0 / 978-0-7910-8171-6 (USA edition) Publisher: Chelsea House Publications Availability: Amazon Amazon CA More details... |
2003 : Hardback
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 1-4025-6541-0 / 978-1-4025-6541-0 (USA edition) Publisher: Recorded Books Availability: Amazon More details... |
December 1998 : Library Binding
| Title: Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 0-8335-7486-8 / 978-0-8335-7486-2 (USA edition) Publisher: Topeka Bindery Availability: Amazon Amazon UK Amazon CA More details... |
1992 : Hardback
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'BRIEN Publisher: Leonardo Availability: Amazon More details... |
May 1990 : Hardback
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 0-00-223603-6 / 978-0-00-223603-4 (UK edition) Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd Availability: Amazon Amazon UK More details... |
March 1990 : Hardback
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 0-395-51598-X / 978-0-395-51598-3 (USA edition) Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Availability: Amazon Amazon UK Amazon CA More details... |
Paperback Editions
2007 : Paperback
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'brien Publisher: Broadway Books Availability: Amazon More details... |
December 2002 : Paperback
| Title: The Things They Carried [STUDY GUIDE] Author(s): Tim O'Brien, SparkNotes Editors ISBN: 1-58663-827-0 / 9781586638276 (USA edition) Publisher: SparkNotes Availability: Amazon Amazon UK Amazon CA More details... |
December 1998 : Paperback
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 0-7679-0289-0 / 978-0-7679-0289-2 (USA edition) Publisher: Broadway Availability: Amazon Amazon UK Amazon CA More details... |
1992 : Paperback
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'BRIEN Publisher: Plon Availability: Amazon More details... |
July 1991 : Paperback
| Title: The Things They Carried (Flamingo) Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 0-00-654394-4 / 978-0-00-654394-7 (UK edition) Publisher: Flamingo Availability: Amazon UK More details... |
March 1991 : Paperback
| Title: The Things They Carried (Contemporary American Fiction) Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 0-14-014773-X / 978-0-14-014773-5 (UK edition) Publisher: Penguin USA (P) Availability: Amazon Amazon UK More details... |
1990 : Paperback
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'brien Publisher: Broadway Availability: Amazon Amazon UK More details... |
Audio Editions
November 2003 : Audio CD
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 1-4025-7369-3 / 978-1-4025-7369-9 (USA edition) Publisher: Recorded Books Availability: Amazon Amazon CA More details... |
2003 : Audio Cassette
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 1-4025-7447-9 (USA edition) Publisher: Recorded Books LLC Availability: Amazon More details... |
February 1991 : Audio Cassette
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 1-55994-361-0 / 9781559943611 (USA edition) Publisher: HarperCollins Canada / Caedmon Availability: Amazon Amazon CA More details... |
Other Editions
June 1998 : Turtleback
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 0-606-17083-9 / 978-0-606-17083-3 (USA edition) Publisher: Demco Media Availability: Amazon Amazon UK Amazon CA More details... |
September 1991 : Unknown
| Title: The Things They Carried Author(s): Tim O'Brien ISBN: 0-7807-0360-X / 978-0-7807-0360-5 (USA edition) Publisher: Perfection Learning Prebound Availability: Amazon Amazon UK More details... |
© 2008 FantasticFiction
Questions? Comments? Corrections? Please email webmaster@fantasticfiction.co.uk
Questions? Comments? Corrections? Please email webmaster@fantasticfiction.co.uk

