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The Things They Carried |  | Author: Tim O'Brien Publisher: Mariner Books Category: Book
List Price: $14.95 Buy New: $7.81 as of 9/3/2010 17:32 CDT details You Save: $7.14 (48%)
New (54) Used (39) Collectible (2) from $7.81
Seller: Infinite Jest Bookshop Rating: 822 reviews Sales Rank: 82
Media: Paperback Edition: 1ST Pages: 256 Number Of Items: 1 Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6 Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0618706410 Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780618706419 ASIN: 0618706410
Publication Date: October 13, 2009 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780618706419 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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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 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
Product Description Tim O'Brien's modern classic that reset our understanding of fiction, nonfiction, and the way they can work together, as well as our understanding of the Vietnam war and its consequences, The Things They Carried now has well over a million copies in print.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 822
Vietnam War historical fiction August 26, 2010 James Cooper (Washington, DC) As the son of a Vietnam veteran, I have always had a profound interest in the war--starting as a child who religiously watched "China Beach" before progressing into a young adult who sought to learn more via documentaries and nonfiction books such as Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest."
Not an "historical fiction" buff like many lovers of the genre, I limit my selections to books that have weathered time and emerged as standard-bearers of the period/event of which they encompass. Examples: "The Killer Angels"; "Catch-22"; "All Quiet on the Western Front"; "The Pillars of the Earth"; to name a few.
"The Things They Carried" is constructed in a very different manner--a collection of short narratives--and is intended to educate the reader more about the atmosphere of the War among the soldiers rather than the War itself.
If you understand this going in, then you will be satisfied with your decision to take on the novel.
Violent and graphic August 23, 2010 Beverly Z. (Newtown, CT) Superbly written, raw and disgustingly graphic. If you have a strong stomach for graphic violence, particularly for torturing animals then go for it. If not, pass. I wish I had.
A masterwork August 10, 2010 Steve Coll (Italy) I am impressed by the writing style of the author.
This book is not just a veteran diary as many others you may read, this is a real literary masterpiece. The ability of the author to analyze the human soul is incredible and moving. Many times you will stop reading and spend time and thoughts considering how true the considerations he made are. The tales are not told following a chronological pattern, but are more similar to a series of snapshots casually laid on a table, only at the end of the book you have a clear overall image, even though still not complete.
Please read it because this book is magnificent.
Most truthful account of Vietnam... July 6, 2010 Tonetta Chester 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
if you believe that truth is a mixture of hard facts and individual perceptions. In one of O'Brien's stories, "The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," fictional Tim O'Brien says that he could never trust the tales of his friend Rat Kiley because he blurred the lines of fiction and reality. But in war, the atrocities can feel unreal. In The Things They Carried, O'Brien masterfully weaves the more technical aspects of war with heartbreaking anecdotes about his comrades. A wonderful, quick read, O'Brien created the pinnacle of wartime memoirs.
Unique Remembrance July 4, 2010 uconn33 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a Vietnam veteran, this book provided the most realistic and poignant remembrance of the war -- not the combat, but the unique and intense relationships created while in-country and the internal thoughts, fears, and comic reliefs unique to this experience. So very well written.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 822
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