IN Peters Township October/November 2018 | Page 54

A GIFT FOR
Storytelling
The Peters Township Library
Foundation will host an evening with
award-winning author Tim O’Brien
at Peters Township High School on
November 7.
BY NICOLE TAFE
I
nternationally
recognized
author Tim
O’Brien will
be visiting Peters
Township for a
very special event
this November. Considered the “poet laureate” on the subject of
Vietnam, O’Brien is best known for “The Things They Carried,”
a fictional memoir that is required reading for many high schools
and colleges across the nation, including Peters Township High
School—read by students in their senior year as part of the AP
Literature and Composition class.
For more than 40 years, O’Brien has written about the
Vietnam Conflict from many different viewpoints. His life’s work
has been about “the human heart under great stress.” In his case,
the Vietnam Conflict was the stressor.
His experience in Vietnam was not unique. Like many of that
era, he served for one year, was opposed to the war but served
as duty. He was drafted into a culture and conflict he did not
understand. Like most combat veterans, he was still a boy.
“What is truly unique about Tim O’Brien is that he is
a gifted writer,” says Maura Kelly, President of the Peters
Township Library Foundation. “He can craft 26 letters and
some punctuation, and make the experience come alive for his
readers. He is able to take what he and others experienced and
communicate it so that we might understand.”
She adds, “Throughout his career, O’Brien has discovered that
it’s impossible to describe what he and many others experienced.
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He has looked at the era, circled the conflict, and tried to
understand the Vietnamese people and his fellow soldiers.
And in his pursuit to understand and explain, he has allowed
us to journey with him in our attempt to understand what
our neighbors, our fathers, brothers, uncles and grandfathers
experienced. In the end, his work teaches us more about being
human, which is the goal of the humanities. His artistry with
language portrays love and loyalty and human failings, which is
why he is considered one of the most prolific writers of our time.”
In 2005, “The Things They Carried” was named one of the 22
best books of the last quarter century by The New York Times.
It received the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award in fiction and
was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book
Critics Circle Award.
“‘The Things They Carried’ seems to have struck a chord with
kids in high school and in college, which is especially gratifying
to me,” says O’Brien. “Anything that will inspire young people to
pick up a book and read it and enjoy it will warm the heart of any
writer.”
He notes that the surface of the book deals with the experience
of war and combat, but the novel is really about the things that all
of us carry through our lives—love, pity, joy, loss, grief, guilt and
moral confusion.
The French edition of the novel received one of France’s most
prestigious literary awards—the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger.
The title story received the National Magazine Award and was
selected by John Updike for inclusion in “The Best American
Short Stories of the Century.”