Well Shoot

How do I only have nineteen blog posts for this book?

I think I'll review the book reviews on the back cover.

"The best American writer of his generation."

--San Francisco Examiner

I dunno about that. I'm a pretty big Suzanne Collins fan right now.

"The Things They Carried is as good as any piece of literature can get."

--Chicago Sun-Times

That's pretty good. As soon as a book gets labeled as "literature," I become instantly wary of it. I didn't mind this book, though, and that's as good as it's going to get.

"This is writing so powerful that it steals your breath." --Milwaukee Journal

Definitely it's powerful. It didn't cause me any breathing problems, for which I am thankful.

"Rendered with an evocative, quiet precision, not equaled in the imaginative literature of the American war in Vietnam." --Washington Post

I can't vouch for this one; I'm a Vietnam novel novice.

"You've got to read this book... These stories shine in a strange and opposite direction, moving against the flow, illuminating life's wonder, life's tenuousness, life's importance."

--Dallas Morning News

I have two problems with this decidedly rather eloquent review. First, it doesn't end the first sentence with enough periods. I really think there ought to be four--three to illustrate the ellipsis/trailing off and one to show the end of the sentence. I also don't like that it told me I have to read it. I mean, I don't even live in Dallas.

"A book so searing and immediate you can almost hear the choppers in the background... This is prose headed for the nerve center of what was Vietnam."

--Boston Globe

I am forgiving the three-period thing. Maybe it's a personal preference, but anyway, the consistent three-period-pattern suggests that perhaps that's a Mariner Books influence.

"An ultimate, indelible image of war in our time, and in time to come."

--Los Angeles Times

I guess. I mean, it'll probably stick with me for a while. I won't be around forever, so... "indelible"... maybe not. That's commonplace hyperbole, though, I guess.

The Lives of the Dead: Linda

When I first started this chapter, my thoughts were something along the lines of Linda? Who's Linda? Then I felt bad, and I started thinking about how after a while, a big number is the same number no matter how big it is. How many people died in 9/11? Was it a thousand or a million or a billion? I have no idea. All of those are just a lot. I already don't remember how many people died in this book, but I know all of it was tragic.

Then I realized Linda hadn't been introduced yet, and I felt better, but still.

The soldiers felt it too:

"There was a formality to it, like a funeral without the sadness." - p. 215

One can only be sad about things for so long.

"It's easier to cope with a kicked bucket than a corpse; if it isn't human, it doesn't matter much if it's dead. And so a VC nurse, fried by napalm, was a crispy critter. A Vietnamese baby, which lay nearby, was a roasted peanut. 'Just a crunchie munchie,' Rat Kiley said as he stepped over the body."

Aside from the fact that those are terribly disturbing euphemisms, O'Brien is pointing out what the Nazis illustrated--that it's easy to dismiss something if it's not human in our eyes.

Also, "Rat Kiley liked to spice it up with extra details." - p. 227

That means he's HYPERBOLIZING! YAAAAAAAY!

"Death sucks," page 230, is an understatement, if you ask me, and "Do I look dead?" on page 231 is a rhetorical question, I believe. Also, "Once you're alive," she'd say, "you can't ever be dead," is sort of an aphorism, and it reminds me of a moment in Harry Potter, which eloquently points out the Christian belief in the afterlife:

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

"Harry read the words slowly, as though he would have only one chance to take in their meaning, and he read the last of them aloud.

"'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death'..." A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. "Isn't that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?"

"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," said Hermione, her voice gentle. "It means... you know... living beyond death. Living after death." - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, p. 328

They have the a common moral, The Things They Carried and Harry Potter. This is why I liked this book better than The Sun Also Rises.

Night Life: A Euphemism

"For almost two weeks, Sanders said, they lived the night life. That was the phrase everyone used: the night life. A language trick. It made things seem tolerable. How's the Nam treating you? one guy would ask, and some other guy would say, Hey, one big party, just living the night life." - p. 208

It calls to mind Vegas rather than the terrifyingly absoluteness of the dark they actually faced each night.

That feels like juxtaposition to me, but that could also be because I just realized I haven't said a word about juxtapositions, and I just read Christian Powers' latest blog post.

Definitely, though, the "Night Life" is a euphemism for just the reason O'Brien outlines.

Also:

"He'd be sitting there talking with Bowker or Dobbins or somebody, just marking time, and then out of nowhere he'd find himself wondering how much the guy's head weighed, like how heavy it was, and what it would feel like to pick up the head and carry it over to a chopper and dump it in." - p. 211

In marching band, "marking time" is standing at attention while moving the heels up and down to the beat of the music, and marching band gets a lot of its drill nonsense from the army. Consequently, I'm imagining this:

Okay, so not exactly that, but it's what I found when I was searching for marching bands marching time, and I couldn't pass it up because THAT'S WHAT WE'RE PLAYING THIS YEAR, AAAAH!

I think we're doing it better already, but maybe I'm biased =}. Also we dance a whole lot less, for which I am immensely grateful.

The Ghost Soldiers: Pain in the Butt

"When you're afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world." - p. 183

That makes me think about adrenaline junkies.

...Sorry. I really do not even like Twilight anymore.

"You don't just mess around like that. You don't just fritter away all your luck." - p. 187

That concept of using up a certain lifetime luck quota reminded me of a semi-conscious notion that I've always had that everybody shares the same ratio of happiness to unhappiness. I like to believe that whether you die in infancy or of old age, everyone's time on earth shares an equal percentage of happiness. It's semi-conscious, of course, because now that it's completely conscious, I am forced to dismiss it. Babies... don't know happiness or unhappiness yet, really. At least I don't think so. They know comfort and discomfort, but they're babies, so mostly they're uncomfortable unless they're sleeping. That was sort of pointless, I guess.

Anyway, Azar is creepy. "Star light, star bright!" he says of the flares on page 205.

I'm not sure nursery rhyme allusions belong on the battlefield, real-time battle or otherwise.

Field Trip: Happy Birthday

Now, try to resist the urge to follow me into this former pond of poo.

I've had a rough time identifying any antimetabole in anything, but I think I found one:

"Now, it was just what it was." - p. 176

Wait, just kidding. Those are in the same grammatical order. Are we sure these exist in actual literature?

Imagery, on the other hand.... That stuff's all over the place:

"There were yellow butterflies. There was a breeze and a wide blue sky." - p. 173

I can't say it's terribly effective, though. I mean, I'm not going to forget how that place used to look and feel and smell, and I was never even there, actually. Really, I guess his point is the change in the place; it's relatively nice and peaceful there now. "Relatively" must be the key word in that sentence, however. I mean, seriously... the place was gross.

Good Form: Uh-oh

I already talked about how Tim didn't really kill the one guy.

"...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." - p. 171

Then he goes on to say that's not even true either, and here's the part where I'm just going to be talking in circles, I think. "I want you to know why story-truth is sometimes truer than happening-truth." - p. 171

I understand that; really I do. I sort of do, anyway. I feel like that sentence is itself a lie, but I have to believe it because that's what his entire moral seems to be. It doesn't matter, though; I want to know what really happened and what didn't. I don't like this feeling of being inundated with lies.

Notes: He used a jump rope.

"In the interests of truth, however, I want to make it clear that Norman Bowker was in no way responsible for what happened to Kiowa. Norman did not experience a failure of nerve that night. He did not freeze up or lose the Silver Star for valor. That part of the story is my own." - p. 154

I can't help but think that this particular admission would have been of more use to Norman Bowker before he hung himself with that jump rope. =\ I'm not blaming O'Brien; Norman clearly had some deep-seated problems, but I almost feel that if he was writing the story with Norman's reading first in mind, the guy should've had a happier ending.

I mean, the guy hanged himself eight months after he read it. O'Brien made sure to point that out, so I feel like this chapter is primarily a profession of his own feelings of guilt.

Aside from that, I really don't have much to say about this chapter. I scoured page after page for lit-terms-in-action, and I found zero. I could talk about how round the characters of Norman and Tim are, I suppose. I mean... Tim's a real-life man, and Norman's allegedly a post-real-life man, so that's pretty much to be expected. Still... appreciate the dimensions, I guess.

Speaking of Courage: Almost

"When the girl brought his tray, he ate quickly, without looking up. The tired radio announcer in Des Moines gave the time, almost eight-thirty. Dark was pressing in tight now, and he wished there were somewhere to go." - p. 145

'"Hey, loosen up," the voice said. "What you really need, friend?"

Norman Bowker smiled.

"Well," he said, how'd you like to hear about--"

He stopped and shook his head.

"Hear what, man?"

"Nothing."' - p. 146

Those two passages both painted a picture of loneliness. The thing is, apart from the letter that Tim may or may not have received from Norman Bowker, he can't know just how Norman felt, and that reminds me of a game played on a road trip in the book Paper Towns called That Guy Is a Gigolo.

"In the game, you imagine the lives of people in the cars around you." - Paper Towns, p. 257

The guys discover that actually, their ideas about these strangers tells more about them, the highway-hypnotized teenagers, than about the strangers in the cars around them. It's a thing called projection. O'Brien has felt this way himself, and that is why he can portray it so accurately.

Those passages also reminded me of this song:

I think I also spotted some onomatopoeia in this chapter. Correct me if I'm wrong:

"The shells made deep slushy craters, opening up all those years of waste, centuries worth, and the smell came bubbling out of the earth." - p. 142

Slushy is a real word, but the sounds of which the word is composed are also the sounds a slushy field makes when one steps in it, which is what makes the word such a useful adjective. The same can be said of the word "bubbling," although I think it's an adverb as it's used in that sentence.

Ambush and Style: what he said and what I thought

'"You keep writing these war stories," she said, "so I guess you must've killed somebody." It was a difficult moment, but I did what seemed right, which was to say, "Of course not," and then to take her onto my lap and hold her for a while."' - p. 125

When I first read this and didn't know that he really hadn't killed anybody himself after all, even if he did in spirit, it reminded me of a moment in... either Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire or Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's in the trailer, I remember.

Yep, it's Goblet of Fire. I love that trailer. Anyway, Dumbledore ends it with, "Dark and difficult times lie ahead, Harry. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy." That's a sticky question. Morality isn't always black and white. Had he really killed in Vietnam, would O'Brien have been wrong in lying to his daughter to preserve her innocence? Was it wrong to lie to her in the knowledge that he felt responsible for deaths in Vietnam? I don't know. It's against the word of the Commandments, but perhaps not the spirit, and that's where the discrepancy, the gray area in which arguments sit dormant, lies. In any case, the lie was definitely the easy path, whether it was right or not.

[transition to chapter Style....]

"There was no music. Most of the hamlet had burned down, including her house, which was now smoke, and the girl danced with her eyes half closed, her feet bare."

I don't know what a hamlet is...

...but this is what I was thinking.

The Man I Killed: (not me... Tim O'Brien... but not him either, actually)

This chapter shows more of Tim O'Brien's vivid imagination. He imagines himself into people's souls and then writes down what he sees and publishes it, and we the readers end up with page after page of highly realistic semi-truth.

"He loved mathematics," page 121, is when I plucked up my proverbial grain of salt. Nobody loves mathematics, O'Brien. You can't fool me.

In all seriousness, though, he ground (grinded? ground.) that image into our brains. I suppose it's called imagery. The dainty wrists, the star-shaped hole, the jaw in the neck-- I didn't have to look back in the book to think of those descriptions, and I read them half a book ago. O'Brien said it so many times that it's completely convincing that he remembers it vividly himself. It's as if he's so startled/scarred by it still today that he doesn't even notice he's repeating himself. Maybe it's more that he wants to be sure we catch that description even if the rest of the chapter zooms in one eye and out the other.

Stockings and Church: Two-for-One Special

Actually, that's sort of like an antithesis. Stockings are quite different from church. I don't think it counts, though, because I put them together, and O'Brien very clearly separated them.

"It was his one eccentricity." - p. 111 That's an absolute, which isn't a lit term, so I won't go too much into it, but I think it ought to be a lit term.

"In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. Like his country, too, Dobbins was drawn toward sentimentality." - p. 111

That there was a simile, for sure. It was a simile so convincing it was almost a metaphor, except he used "like" because he isn't pretentious. Thank you, O'Brien. Every time I read that quote, I think more about what it means for America than what it means for the Dobbins fellow. I can't decide if it's a positive image. I think, more than anything, it's just realistic.

[font change to illustrate chapter transition....]

I believe I spotted an allusion on page 113: "...though the younger one performed a washing motion with his hands. No one could decide what it meant." The fact that nobody could decide what it meant sort of destroys any say I have on the subject, but it made me think of Pontius Pilate and also the conspirators in Julius Caesar. That idea was also sort of destroyed by the smiling and hand washing on page 114. Also, Henry Dobbins does it on 117, but he hasn't a clue what it means more than anybody else does. I guess he thinks it's good manners.

Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong: Mystical Mary Anne and Multiplying by Maybe

Having finished the novel and numbered its table of contents, I have been forced to abandon the impression that this book contained exactly twenty chapters. I am at a loss.

In any case, I noticed a couple of lit terms in action again, I believe:

"From the sixth grade on they had known for a fact that someday they would be married, and live in a fine gingerbread house near Lake Erie, and have three healthy yellow-haired children, and grow old together, and no doubt die in each other's arms and be buried in the same walnut casket. That was the plan." - p. 90

I'm pretty sure that's both ironic and hyperbolic. First, O'Brien doesn't seem to be particularly close to Mark Fossie or Mary Anne Bell. He can't know the deepest, most desperate desires of their hearts.

Thusly, he's being verbally ironic. His intent is, I think, to mock the flamboyancy of their "love." When he says they planned to have three blond-haired babies together, he means that they've been together a long time, or it seems so, and theirs is the type of relationship in which he expects they might have had conversations regarding their potential future together. *deepbreath*

That's also a type of hyperbolizing. He's exaggerating their relationship to the point of near-mockery. Nobody really lives in a gingerbread house.

Additionally, I don't really know what "Greenies" are or what it means to be "out on ambush," as Mary Anne was.

The Dentist: Another One of THOSE Chapters

...by which I mean that's it's short.

Anyway, Mary McMahon pointed out to me that the chapter ends with "...Curt Lemon was all smiles," (p. 84) which is a rather clever pun. This is the part where I try not to mention how I spent an inordinate amount of time searching for pun-related videos on YouTube and fail(ed) at both endeavors.

Also, is it me, or is this novel mostly a compilation of anecdotes? It's particularly evident in the short chapters. It's a collection of war stories, and I actually have a bit of a problem with that. He talks about how none of them are true, but sometimes he says one of them is true, and then he says they're love stories, really, and I just don't really know what he's talking about anymore. There are too many abstract ideas floating around at once. Just tell it to me straight: is it the truth or not?

How to Tell a True War Story: Coozes and Gook

I found lots of aphorisms in this chapter....

"If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote." - p. 66

"Hear that quiet, man? That quiet--just listen." - p. 74

"You're never more alive than when you're almost dead." - p. 78

This guy writes beautifully, by the way. I'm sort of glowing green right now. I think it's the anaphoras that do it, by and large.

"And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen." - p. 81

Also, the parallel structure he uses for serious vamps up the intensity for me. I'd map it out for you in one of those trippy sentence diagrams if I could. Maybe I'll come back for that later.

Speaking of using "you" in formal writing, I'd like to address Mr. O'Brien's POV schizophrenia. He starts out in third-person omniscient, switches to first-person, then changes all willy-nilly to second-person as he pleases, if I'm not mistaken. What's it all about, Alfie?

Actually, I like it, but still.

It's probably also worth noting that dearest Timothy (<--maybe) alludes to the Star-Spangled Banner on page seventy-seven in the words "the rocket's red glare." I'm on a strike against typing all of the long quotes. Get the picket signs, folks. Just kidding.

Anywho, "gook" and "cooze" are funny words, which means crazy dialects are at work here. Somebody call the newspaper. They cropped up over and over, too. I'm not complaining; they made me giggle.

That's all I have to say about that. (...Anyone? Bueller?)

Friends: They Couldn't Sew It Back On

I like two-page chapters... except for it's hard to blog about them. Also, when I paged through it to see how long it was, I thought it was thirty pages because I never even thought to look on the first page-turn.

It was a chapter full of dark humor, though. I don't know if that falls under tone or mood.... The tone, I guess, is darkly humorous, and the mood is... uh, darkly humorous. I thought I had a good thought going there, for a second =\. I kind of loved the part where Strunk says, "Jesus, man, don't kill me," (p. 63) after they have that very official contract, and how Jensen seems relieved that he didn't make it, in the end.

Also, I forgot to mention that the narrator's name is indeed Tim. More specifically, he's Tim O'Brien, and that is the author of the book, which makes me think it's autobiographical, but the title page says it's fiction. My dad reads these books by Clive Cussler, and I think he said something about them possibly having a character named after the author.....

Enemies: Relevant Personal Anecdote

This chapter was really short, so I'm going to start off with a quick shout-out to my grandpa. He tells this story of when he was in the army, and he saw this guy sitting around and hitting himself in the head with a hammer, over and over. He went up to him and said, "Why're you doing that?" or something of that nature, and the guy responded, "It feels so good when you stop." That's what I thought of when I read about Jensen's guilt-provoked self-injury. I don't know if that's what was going on with this guy, but nonetheless....

Also, Simile Alert: "Strunk's nose made a sharp snapping sound, like a firecracker...." (p. 59) That's pleasant.

While we're on the topic of things that are disturbing to me, I'd like to address this: "I survived, but it's not a happy ending." (p. 58) Isn't it a little early to be telling us that now, O'Brien? Way to suck the hope out of me, man. Usually, authors wrap their depressing endings in a shiny bow to give the reader some sense of contentment, and I'm worried about what this statement implies....

On the Rainy River: That's (Almost) in Canada

It make sense, if you listen carefully, I promise.

I'm seeing a lot of similarities between Tim Obrien's feelings about the Vietnam War and some people's feelings about the War on Terror. I don't really want to go to into that because I don't want to step on any toes and/or accidentally reveal my own tentative opinions.

"I feared" is used as an anaphora on page forty-two.... He uses it to really drive home the point that he was scared out of his pants by the whole being-drafted thing. That's what this whole chapter is, really; it was pretty intense... (like camping).

There's also a simile I almost feel is sort of extended. It's just so blatant and clear; I like it. It's not like those sneaky, pretentious metaphors. "Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the amount must be drawn down." - p. 38

Finally, there's an allusion (I think?) to McCarthy in here. I might just be calling it that because I'm excited that I vaguely remember who McCarthy is. It's not veiled or anything, though. He just says, "Nothing radical, no hothead stuff, just ringing a few doorbells for Gene McCarthy, composing a few tedious, uninspired editorials for the campus newspaper." - p. 39

Spin: Going Pink

"On occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put a fancy spin on it, you could make it dance." - p. 31

I have two things to say about that. First is that it's a simile. Second is that I think it's a run-on sentence, and that makes me so confused. It sounds fine in my head, but we've been taught not to do that. Haven't we? Maybe it's one of those elliptical conjunction sorts of deals. Anyway, I don't get it.

Also, "There were rules," (p. 31) makes me think of a saying I've heard. "This isn't 'Nam; there are rules!" I've never understood that, but the book implies that it's true. The characters valued Checkers for its clear-cut rules. The implication is that this is a stark contrast to their way of life as it was in Vietnam during the war. What kinds of rules did Vietnam lack, exactly? Will I find out in this book?

On a final note, I don't know what "going pink" means. I suspect it means either being home free or being in some sort of danger hot zone. Also, I think the narrator's name might be Tim.

Love: Here We Go Again....

"You writer types," (p. 27) indeed. There are other topics, ladies and gentlemen, and you simply aren't looking hard enough for them.

Anyway, I'm glad I didn't choose the first chapter to talk about narration because it's pulled the old switcheroo on me. Last chapter was narrated in third-person omniscient and set in the middle of the Vietnam War, and this chapter zoomed forward a considerable amount of time and is narrated by a mystery character who refers to himself as "me" and "I," which means... first-person. Therefore... I don't know who this guy is, but the story may or may not be told from his point of view from here on out.

On a different note, "And do me a favor. Don't mention anything about--" (p. 29) is supposed to build suspense. It's not totally ineffective; if I was reading this book out of a desire to read about the Vietnam War, I'd probably be on the edge of my proverbial seat right now.

Edit 08/13/10 5:02 PM: I've read the whole book, and I still don't know what Jimmy Cross didn't want O'Brien to mention. I guess that means he didn't mention it?

The Things They Carried: I Am Highly Original

I'm happy to say that I sort of like this Tim O'Brien fellow, so far. His writing style amuses me. For instance:

"The first was a Kodacolor snapshot signed Love, though he knew better." - p. 4

"...including M&Ms for especially bad wounds...." - p. 5

"...he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered." - p. 11

"...the plush comfort of night." - p. 18

There were more, but they get increasingly disturbing, for all their literary merit. I also want to say that if this book is entirely about unrequited love, [insert empty threat here]. And I dearly hope that future chapters have a smaller sentence/paragraph ratio and fewer of those conversations bereft of quotation marks, because that is terribly annoying to me. Anyway....

There were lots of euphemisms this chapter. "They would repair the leaks in their eyes," (p. 18) for instance, is (I think) a euphemism for crying, as a soldier's greatest fear, allegedly, is of blushing/being afraid. Heeeey, that's Harry Potter's greatest fear. ("That suggests that what you fear the most is fear itself--very wise, Harry." --Remus Lupin, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

Also, there were all the euphemisms for death. "Greased they'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping." - p. 19 They know they're doing it, too.

Usually, I think authors take a little more time to reveal the meaning of their title. They like to be subtle and slip it in when the audience isn't paying attention because it makes them feel smart. I think I like O'Brien more for slamming us with it right off the bat. Anyway, I think that's going to be a motif. It's used a ton in this chapter, at least.

The things they carried are: largely determined by necessity, "humped," partly a function of rank and partly of field specialty, varied by mission, determined to some extent by superstition, plentiful, and largely internal.

On a couple of last notes for the chapter, it was weird to hear McDonalds mentioned. The Vietnam War feels like it happened a long time ago, but it really wasn't so far off.

Also, " And they dreamed of freedom birds," (p. 21) made me think of a VlogBrothers video, as so many things do, in which John Green discusses the foolishness of the term "freedom fries."

Oh, and also, what's this moral business? "Stay away from drugs. No joke, they'll ruin your day every time." - p. 20

That's cool and all, but what's it got to do with this Lavender fellow? I realize he had dope, and the living guys are all smoking it now, but I don't actually think that's what ruined their day.