The Things They Carried
O'Brien, Tim
From PsychoBabel & Skoob Books, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OXON, United Kingdom
AbeBooks Seller Since October 6, 2003
Quantity: 1From PsychoBabel & Skoob Books, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OXON, United Kingdom
AbeBooks Seller Since October 6, 2003
Quantity: 1About this Item
Hardcover in unclipped dust jacket. First UK Edition. Very good condition. Foxing to page block and pages are tanned at edges. Pages are sound, text is clear. TA. Seller Inventory # 509596
Bibliographic Details
Title: The Things They Carried
Publisher: Collins, London
Publication Date: 1990
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Edition: First UK Edition.
Book Type: Used
About this title
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
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PsychoBabel Books in Oxfordshire and Skoob Books in London (Russell Square Tube) are solely owned by Chris Edwards, 1 Churchward, Didcot, Oxfordshire. OX11 7HB. Prompt dispatch on clearance of payment. If any doubt about condition of book in addition to that described please e-mail or call. PsychoBabel & Skoob Books 1 Churchward, Didcot, Oxfordshire. OX11 7HB Telephone 01235 861411 www.psychobabel.co.uk VAT Regi...
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