About this Item
Slight page dog ears, else As New, NO notes, names or ANY markings.1st printing. ; 233 pages 1st mariner book edition; First Printing. Seller Inventory # 67680
Bibliographic Details
Title: The Things They Carried
Publisher: Mariner Books
Publication Date: 2009
Binding: Trade PB
Condition: Fine+
Edition: 1st Edition
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
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Store Description
Terms of sale: payment by check or Money Order. PayPal accepted.If you say "the
check is in the mail" I will go ahead and ship your book, so there is no undue
wasted time. Postage,$6.00 Priority Mail with USPS Delivery Confirmation,any
additional books add $1 each. Media Rate Delivery available for $3.50.
Large"coffee table" books extra. Canada and over seas are by quote. No dealer
discounts. All books returnable within reason and we assume cost of return.
Shipping costs are based on books weighing 2.2 LB, or 1 KG. If your book order is heavy or oversized, we may contact you to let you know extra shipping is required.
Payment Methods
accepted by seller
Check Money Order Cash PayPal