Tim O'Brien must be frustrated, in a way, that he is associated so strongly with the Vietnam War. True enough, he is the most famous and enduring author of the Vietnam experience, and Vietnam does touch all of his works, some more obliquely than others. Yet he is also an author who writes with tremendous insight into the dark side of the human mind, and one who speculates with serious consideration about the nature of truth and its relationship to both fact and fiction. .
This is not to say that Vietnam is merely incidental in O'Brien's work; the war in which he served obviously had a lasting and unresolved effect on his own identity, as well as on American identity in general. His writings often blur the lines between what actually happened during the War and what our imaginations have created to help us understand it. His first work, If I Die in a Combat Zone (1973), is his most overtly factual. It consists of magazine and newspaper journalism which provides a direct account of the War at its worst. His first novel, Northern Lights (1975), remains obscure, but O'Brien fans have unearthed it to find the roots of his fictional vision. It is the story of two brothers--one of whom served in Vietnam--who must rely on each other to survive a disastrous skiing trip in the wilds of Minnesota. .
The factual nature of his first book and the relatively conventional narrative methods of his second give way to a much more imaginative account of Vietnam in Going After Cacciato (1978), the book that launched him to stardom. The members of a platoon stationed in Vietnam pursue a deserter, but the chase occurs more in their minds than in reality. Of particular interest is the imaginative capacity of the soldiers who endure the terrifying reality that was Vietnam. It is not only a vivid portrait of the experience of a soldier, but an evocative inquiry into the relationship between storytelling and history.
