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Tim O'Brien (author)

American novelist (born 1946)

For other people of the same name, see Tim O'Brien (disambiguation).

Tim O'Brien (born October 1, 1946) is an American novelist who served as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Much of his writing is about wartime Vietnam,^[1] and his work later in life often explores the postwar lives of its veterans.^[2]

O'Brien is perhaps best known for his book The Things They Carried (1990), a collection of linked semi-autobiographical stories inspired by his wartime experiences.^[3] In 2010, The New York Times described it as "a classic of contemporary war fiction."^[4]^[5] O'Brien wrote the war novel, Going After Cacciato (1978), which was awarded the National Book Award.

O'Brien taught creative writing, holding the endowed chair at the MFA program of Texas State University–San Marcos every other academic year from 2003 to 2012.

Biography

Early life

Tim O'Brien was born in Austin, Minnesota on October 1, 1946,^[6] the son of William Timothy O'Brien and Ava

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Tim O'Brien
by
Catherine Calloway
LAST REVIEWED: 20 February 2024
LAST MODIFIED: 20 February 2024
DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0133

Ciocia, Stefania. Vietnam and Beyond: Tim O’Brien and the Power of Storytelling. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2012.

DOI: 10.5949/UPO9781846317767

Approaches O’Brien’s work thematically, not chronologically like other studies, and with a special focus on O’Brien’s notion of story-truth and his use of gender. Covers all of O’Brien’s major works from If I Die in a Combat Zone to July, July.

Heberle, Mark A. A Trauma Artist: Tim O’Brien and the Fiction of Vietnam. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001.

DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt20q1x7d

A seminal study of O’Brien’s life and work. Examines all of O’Brien’s major works, including Tomcat in Love and parts of July, July, through the lens of trauma theory in an attempt “to view O’Brien’s works within the framework of abnormal psychology and posttraumatic narratives” (p. xi).

Herzog, Tobey C. Tim O’Brien. New

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Tim O’Brien Biography

“Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. In Vietnam men were constantly telling one another stories about the war. Our unit lost a lot of guys around My Lai, but the stories they told stay around after them. I would be mad not to tell the stories I know.”—Tim O’Brien

Award-winning author Tim O’Brien is best known for his fictional portrayals of the Vietnam conflict. He was born in 1946 in Austin, Minn., and spent most of his youth in the small town of Worthington, Minn. He graduated summa cum laude from Macalester College in 1968. From February 1969 to March 1970 he served as infantryman with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, after which he pursued graduate studies in government at Harvard University. He worked as a national affairs reporter for The Washington Post from 1973 to 1974.