Tim O’Brien(Born October 1, 1946) is an American novelist who served as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Much of his writings center around his experience in wartime Vietnam. Later works of his often explore the postwar lives of veterans of the conflict. The New York Times described his most famous work, The Things They Carried, as “a classic of contemporary war fiction.” O’Brien’s earlier novel, Going After Cacciato, was awarded the National Book Award.
A project in collaboration with our Thornwillow-West Point Fellows: The first fine press edition of Tim O’Brien’s iconic “How to Tell a True War Story”. The piece, which first appeared in Esquire in 1987 and later in O’Brien’s bestselling short story collection “The Things They Carried”, examines the role truth plays in communicating soldiers’ experiences during the Vietnam War.
All Patrons’ editions are signed by the author, Tim O’Brien.
Originally published as the October 2022 Dispatch.
How to Tell a True War Story is one of many linked short stories from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried; a collection of stories centered around a platoon of American soldiers fighting on the ground in the Vietnam War. In How to Tell a True War Story O’Brien explores the telling of war stories by comrades, revealing that truth is delicate and malleable. Anything can be faked … but generally, only the worst events can be proven real. He concludes that, in the end, the truth of a story doesn’t matter so much as what the story is trying to say,.
