When I was making my list of the fifteen writers who have been the most influential to me, the first four were no-brainers - they were authors who have been on my radar for years, and their influence has been significant for a long time. After I got through listing those, I began thinking back to those writers I had encountered at an earlier time, whose work may have inspired and fueled my love affair with literature but has not retained its place on the front burner. I was fortunate to have some really fantastic English teachers in high school, teachers who truly loved literature and loved their jobs (at least as far as us student-folk could tell). For my senior year, I took AP English Literature with Paul Vanek, a man who reveled in intimidating students ("Abandon hope, all ye who enter here" from Milton's Paradise Lost hung above the door to his classroom) and all too often perched awkwardly on a student-size desk instead of standing for his lectures. In that classroom, I quickly learned the camaraderie that forms when students who really care about what they are studying are gathered around a text that ignites conversation. We did read Paradise Lost that year, along with other books deemed classics - but we also read some other books, more contemporary books, including The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.
I haven't read anything else by O'Brien, and I haven't even picked up that excellent collection of interwoven short stories about the Vietnam war in years, but something about that text sticks with me. Much like Everything is Illuminated, the main character in The Things They Carried is named Tim O'Brien. The character seems to be about the same age as the author, and based on his biographical information they shared enough life experiences to make me assume that this collection and recollection of stories was an exercise in autobiography. But when I began the chapter "How to Tell a True War Story," I was caught off guard: the first line reads, "This is true." Talk about a disruption! I was struck with doubt about whether or not I could trust the narrator anymore - was everything prior to this chapter a lie? What kind of arrogance must the author possess to be so manipulative in using his own name in a fictional story? How can I be sure that his simple declaration actually does mean that this portion of the story was "true"?
Well, it seems like the questions I was asking were exactly the questions O'Brien wanted me to ask. The remainder of the book explores the boundaries that we all construct between truth and fact, between the emotions evoked in the writing and reading and telling of a story, and the factual, verifiable details that can be empirically testing regarding a specific occurrence. O'Brien's work shows how trauma serves to break down the categories we construct around what is right and wrong, true and false, good and evil. He questions the priority given to factual information when perhaps what is most true is perception, individual and communal experience of events and their aftermath. What matters is not necessarily the most exact and precise retelling of what happened in the jungle of Vietnam, but rather the fact that lives were changed and people were hurt, killed, and emotionally and mentally destroyed by what happened. It is the task of the storyteller to bring the reader into that space, even at the expense of accuracy.
The questions I asked about The Things They Carried are questions that have stuck with me: Can I trust narrators? What is my relationship to the text as a reader? Can I write anything other than my own autobiography? If I try to write something else, will it be my autobiography that emerges, perhaps against my will? Is vulnerability required of authors? What is the task of literature, of fiction, of storytelling, of art? What does it mean for something to be true? Do I have the strength to tell a story that is true?
That disruption I felt when I got to page 64 left me unsettled and unsatisfied - but in the very best way possible. And even though O'Brien is not one of those authors to whom I am instinctively drawn, the effects of my encounter with his writing have endured.
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