The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
"Though it's odd, you're never more alive than when you're almost dead. You recognize what's valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what's best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not."
Pg 88-A novel about soldiers in the Vietnam War
Great book. Is it fiction, or non-fiction? Is it a war story, or a study of the art of storytelling? Or is the story itself is simply the example for his study of the sometimes blurry line between fiction and non-fiction, and the role "truth" plays in both?
ReplyDeleteIt's a great book because it can be appreciated on many different levels, but it can't really be understood until you incorporate them all together. In the end, it doesn't matter if it's fiction or non-fiction, because it's true.