false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1163788678m/3445.jpg 3445 14 Over time, Tim O'Brien has used both art and artifice to shape his fictional accounts of Vietnam. Award-winning novels such as <I>Going After Cacciato</I> and <I>The Things They Carried</I> offer up a surreal view of the war: a soldier who decides to walk to Paris, leaving only a trail of M&M's in his wake; a young man who imports his high-school girlfriend to his base camp high in the jungled mountains, only to lose her to a shadowy squad of Special Forces Green Berets and to "that mix of unnamed terror and unnamed pleasure" that was Vietnam. O'Brien's first account of the war, however, was written in the raw, unfiltered months following his return from Southeast Asia in 1969. <I>If I Die in a Combat Zone</I> has all of the eloquence and attention to language and detail that are a mark of the author's work; what is different about it is its straightforward, unembellished depiction of his personal experience of hell.<p> "When you are ordered to march through areas such as Pinkville--GI slang for Song My, parent village of My Lai ... you do some thinking. You hallucinate. You look ahead a few paces and wonder what your legs will resemble if there is more to the earth in that spot than silicates and nitrogen. Will the pain be unbearable? Will you scream or fall silent? Will you be afraid to look at your own body, afraid of the sight of your own red flesh and white bone? You wonder if the medic remembered his morphine." <p> O'Brien paints an unvarnished portrait of the infantry soldier's life that is at once mundane and terrifying--the endless days of patrolling punctuated by firefights that end as suddenly and inconclusively as they begin; the mind-numbing brutality of burned villages and trampled rice patties; the terror of tunnels, minefields, and the ever-present threat of death. Powerful as these scenes are, perhaps the most memorable chapter in the book concerns his decision to desert just a few weeks before he was sent to Vietnam. "The AWOL bag was ready to go, but I wasn't.... I burned the letters to my family. I read the others and burned them, too. It was over. I simply couldn't bring myself to flee. Family, the home town, friends, history, tradition, fear, confusion, exile: I could not run." Tim O'Brien went into the war opposing it and came out knowing exactly why. <I>If I Die in a Combat Zone</I> is more than just a memoir of a disastrous war; it is also a meditation on heroism and cowardice, on the mutability of truth and morality in a war zone and, most of all, on the simple, human capacity to endure the unendurable. <I>--Alix Wilber</I> 9118 1973 If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home total:937|5:190|4:422|3:288|2:30|1:7| 937 3569 1314 71 5 1 false false Fri Dec 14 05:15:15 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 14 06:45:30 -0800 2007
Requested this from my local library on Veterans Day, and just plowed through it on my daily Metro grind this week. I'm not much of a memoir-reader generally, but I thought that it would be appropriate reading in honor of Veterans Day (well, sort of). In some wa...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Nov 12 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 12 18:37:47 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 12 18:40:00 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Oct 25 10:29:32 -0700 2008 Sat Oct 25 11:05:47 -0700 2008
What I found interesting about the book
- this is not a book about a hero - it's just a book about an ordinary person who is drafted and spends a year in a warzone.
- he is college educated and appears above the average...more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Nov 24 13:34:12 -0800 2008 Mon Nov 24 13:34:35 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Sep 18 13:54:24 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 20 18:50:10 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Mar 27 08:40:11 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 27 08:40:11 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false true Thu Apr 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 29 19:02:09 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 03 00:03:10 -0700 2009
It's written by a draftee who served in in Vietnam in 1969 as a foot soilder and is a memoir. It starts with ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Jun 18 14:51:44 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 18 14:56:24 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sat Jan 24 07:42:28 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 24 07:44:53 -0800 2009 Things They Carried; more brutal. I has some whole big discourse on how frustrating I find his writing but I'm too tired for that this morning. Maybe another time. Still a good book, though.]]> 2 0 false false Thu Nov 05 14:17:58 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 05 14:20:28 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Sat Aug 18 20:20:41 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 18 20:33:15 -0700 2007 Before that, I'd never heard of it.
Anyone who is thinking of going into the millitary should read this. It washes away the myth of war being about god, country, honor, and courage,...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Thu Jan 15 16:47:20 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 15 16:50:06 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Thu Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2000 Mon Apr 16 07:21:07 -0700 2007 Mon Apr 16 10:04:58 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Aug 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 29 20:29:20 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 22 14:20:28 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2003 Wed Jun 13 04:02:26 -0700 2007 Wed Jun 13 04:11:47 -0700 2007 The story is simple - a young man is drafted, goes into denial and contemplates skipping the border and hiding out in Canada to dodge said draft, decides against it and, after suffering through boot-camp, serves his 1 year tour of duty in ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Apr 13 11:24:17 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 12 10:39:36 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 13 11:24:17 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Fri Aug 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 05 03:47:57 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 07 16:01:08 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Tue Sep 30 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Sep 27 20:36:51 -0700 2008 Tue Oct 28 11:54:33 -0700 2008 1 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 19 06:28:12 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 20 05:37:26 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Thu Sep 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 30 12:23:00 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 30 12:23:45 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=3445