The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction (Paperback)
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品牌: Tim O'Brien
基本信息·出版社：
Broadway Books
·页码：272 页
·出版日期：1998年
·ISBN：0767902890
·条形码：9780767902892
·装帧：平装
·正文语种：英语
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内容简介One of the first questions people ask aboutThe Things They Carriedis this: Is it a novel, or a collection of short stories? The title page refers to the book simply as "a work of fiction," defying the conscientious reader's need to categorize this masterpiece. It is both: a collection of interrelated short pieces which ultimately reads with the dramatic force and tension of a novel. Yet each one of the twenty-two short pieces is written with such care, emotional content, and prosaic precision that it could stand on its own.The Things They Carrieddepicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O'Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the girl who grieves while she dances), and love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have. We hear the voices of the men and build images upon their dialogue. The way they tell stories about others, we hear them telling stories about themselves.With the creative verve of the greatest fiction and the intimacy of a searing autobiography,The Things They Carriedis a testament to the men who risked their lives in America's most controversial war. It is also a mirror held up to the frailty of humanity. UltimatelyThe Things They Carriedand its myriad protagonists call to order the courage, determination, and luck we all need to survive.
编辑推荐Amazon.com Review
"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 Carriedmarks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoirIf I Die in a Combat Zoneand the fictionalGoing 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. WhereasGoing After Cacciatoplayed with reality,The Things They Carriedplays 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 inThe Things They Carriedspeaks 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--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Weapons and good-luck charms carried by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam here represent survival, lost innocence and the war's interminable legacy. "O'Brien's meditations--on war and memory, on darkness and light--suffuse the entire work with a kind of poetic form, making for a highly original, fully realized novel," said PW. 60,000 first printing.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Winner of a National Book Award in 1979 for Going After Cacciato ( LJ 12/15/77), O'Brien again shows his literary stuff with this brilliant collection of short stories, many of which have won literary recognition (several appeared in O. Henry Awards' collections and Best American Short Stories ). Each of the 22 tales relates the exploits and personalities of a fictional platoon of American soldiers in Vietnam. An acutely painful reading experience, this collection should be read as a book and not a mere selection of stories reprinted from magazines. Not since Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse - Five ( LJ 3/1/69) has the American soldier been portrayed with such poignance and sincerity. Literary Guild featured alternate. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/89.
- Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"I've got to make you read this book.... In a world filled too often with numbness, or shifting values, these stories shine in a strange and opposite direction, moving against the flow, illuminating life's wonder."
--Rick Bass,The Dallas Morning News
"The Things They Carriedis more than 'another' book about Vietnam.... It is a master stroke of form and imagery....The Things They Carriedis about life, about men who [fight] and die, about buddies, and about a lost innocence that might be recaptured through the memory of stories. O'Brien tells us these stories because he must. He tells them as they have never been told before."
--Richmond Times-Dispatch--Review
Review
"I've got to make you read this book.... In a world filled too often with numbness, or shifting values, these stories shine in a strange and opposite direction, moving against the flow, illuminating life's wonder."
--Rick Bass,The Dallas Morning News
"The Things They Carriedis more than 'another' book about Vietnam.... It is a master stroke of form and imagery....The Things They Carriedis about life, about men who [fight] and die, about buddies, and about a lost innocence that might be recaptured through the memory of stories. O'Brien tells us these stories because he must. He tells them as they have never been told before."
--Richmond Times-Dispatch
