Literary Quote of the Day: Tim O’Brien
Tim O’Brien is considered by many people to be the pre-eminent writer of Vietnam War fiction, which seems kind of timely given that the U.S. is fighting another unpopular war some four decades years later.
Co-blogger Shaun Mullen selected the following excerpt from “The Things They Carried,� which along with “Waiting For Cacciato,� he considers to be O’Brien’s best work. The excerpt – a run-on paragraph if ever there was one – seems to be about minutiae, but conveys something far more profound:
“The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between fifteen and twenty pounds, depending upon a man’s habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-size bars of soap he’d stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed five pounds including the liner aid camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots-2.1 pounds – and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl’s foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was 2 necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RT0, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, Carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother’s distrust of the white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.â€?
Thanks to Shaun for providing me with this quote: it confronts one with the cold reality of the situation, doesn’t it?
P.S.
To everyone: have favorite literary quotes? Want to share? Send me an e-mail with the name of the author quoted, actual quote and source (name of book, poem, essay, etc.).
15 Responses to “Literary Quote of the Day: Tim O’Brien”
O’Brien is indeed a great writter!
I never read anything of Tim O’Brien, but Shaun made me aware of him (before) and I will try to find a book of him.
The Things They Carried is a good one.
BYG: thank you. The city where I study, Groningen, has a very, very big bookshop with lots of books in English. I’m quite sure that I will be able to get it there. I will check it out ASAP.
How about a pause for something a bit lighter, like children’s literature? I saw the new movie version of Charlotte’s Web this weekend (a great adaptation) and it reminded me how kid’s lit can be so simplistically profound.
Can’t think of any one particular quote from that book/movie but how about this one from A A Milne’s Winnie the Pooh:
I also found this one from Milne, which ought to be a compliment to the moderate thinkers here:
C.S.: those are actually good if not great quotes, at least in my opinion.
Mike, you really have to learn to quote.
Quotes are brief and summative, not rambling and paragraph length. Technically, this is an excerpt, as would be quoted in a review, or a back of the book blurb.
MvdG: I’m a big fan of A A Milne and a bunch of other children’s authors (lucky for me since I now spend so much time reading with my kids!)
cosmo: technically I’m sure you are right but I’m not sure that most people mind reading the excerpts. And it is hard to find short quotes that distill concepts into a sentence or two (for example, what I mentioned about Charlotte’s Web: there certainly are some clever lines in it but what I like most about it are the thematic elements, not the one-liners.)
Cosmo:
Hey, lighten up. I intentionally selected this quote for Michael because it’s an instance where a run-on paragraph really works and, as noted, minutiae conveys some pretty heavy stuff.
Did I say lighten up?
I’m light, it’s just a poor quote, one of many Mike’s made- including whole poems- and bad ones.
As a quote or excerpt, it’s also rather banal- and sentences can be run-ons. Paragraphs not.
CS’s quotes, BTW, are far better- to the point, and actually have intellectual heft.
What is that quote about concision? I think it-
I think the fact that these “quotes of the day” have been on the longer side is a good thing.
And I think this O’Brien quote is really powerful exactly as it is. But the things they carried probably don’t matter to everyone.
Funny. A lot of those things were what I “played with” as a kid. My father, an infantry officer, would give them to me. I also had a dummy mortar round and grenade, and assorted other military detritus. My favorites were the parachutes – they were little ones, maybe 2 feet across, made to allow illumination flares to settle slowly to earth. But they were olive drab rip-stop nylon, just like the big ones!
In any case, to me the quote is a grim reminder of how my toys were my father’s survival necessities a world away and in another context.
If you like laundry lists, so be it, but great quotes- like the Milne quotes, have wit and wisdom, plus concision.
“There was a map of Vietnam on the wall of my apartment in Saigon and some nights, coming back late to the city, I’d lie out on my bed and look at it, too tired to do anything more than just get my boots off. That map was a marvel, especially now that it wasn’t real anymore. For one thing, it was very old. It had been left there years before by another tenant, probably a Frenchman, since the map had been made in Paris. The paper had buckled in its frame after years in the wet Saigon heat, laying a kind of veil over the countries it depicted. Vietnam was divided into its older territories of Tonkin, Annam and Cochin China, and to the west past Laos and Cambodge sat Siam, a kingdom. That’s old, I’d tell visitors, that’s a really old map.
If dead ground could come back and haunt you the way dead people do, they’d have been able to mark my map current and burn the ones they’d been using since ’64, but count on it, nothing like that was going to happen. It was late ’67 now, even the most detailed maps didn’t reveal much anymore; reading them was like trying to read the faces of the Vietnamese, and that was like trying to read the wind. We knew that the uses of most information were flexible, different pieces of ground told different stories to different people. We also knew that for years now there had been no country here but the war.”
from Dispatches by Michael Herr, US journalist, correspondent in Vietnam 1967-1969, co-author of the ‘Full Metal Jacket’ screenplay, author of the narration of ‘Apocalypse Now’.
(emphasis in last sentence by me)
And another timeless insight by Michael Herr:
“Year after year, season after season, wet and dry, using up options faster than rounds on a machine-gun belt, we called it right and righteous, viable and even almost won, and it still only went on the way it went on. When all the projections of intent and strategy twist and turn back on you, tracking team blood, ‘sorry’ just won’t cover it. There’s nothing so embarrassing as when things go wrong in a war.”