Tim O’BrienPresented By:

Shelby BaucomINTL 3111

Professor Arnold

Hometown• Born in October of 1946

in Austin, Minnesota – moved 12 years later to Worthington, Minnesota

• Worthington is known for vast prairies, harsh winters, strict standards, and past Civil War veterans

• Mostly recognized for their King Turkey Day (since 1940) where they host the Great Gobbler Gallop – road race between two turkeys

• Population consisted of about 7,000 in 1945

• Worthington is sister cities with Crailshei m, Germany– oldest relationship between American and German city

Education• Graduated from Macalester

College, a Presbyterian – affiliated college, in 1968– Summa cum laude– Student Body President– BA in Political Science

• Drafted into Army in 1968 – served until 1970 in Vietnam

• Returned to US and completed graduate school at Harvard University

• Followed by intern with the Washington Post as a national affairs reporter from 1973 - 1974

Career• Began writing

career with release of If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home in 1973

• O’Brien’s experiences in Vietnam, beginning with his hometown

• Meets a guy while training at Fort Lewis, Washington – both develop psychological resistance against government

• O’Brien seriously contemplated refusing to go to Vietnam– Afraid of “inevitable

chaos, censure, embarrassment”

• Washington Star, “the single greatest piece of work to come out of Vietnam”

• New York Times, “Tim O'Brien writes-without either pomposity or embarrassment-with he care and eloquence of someone for whom communication is still a vital and serious possibility, not a narcissistic vestige. It is a beautiful, painful book, arousing pity and fear for the daily realities of a modern disaster.”

Influences&

Content• Works contain an

abundance of Verisimilitude: cross between truth of fiction and truth of fact

• Filled with authentic and heart-gripping stories, experiences, and characters

• Many settings in his stories are Worthington

• O’Brien is bitter about hometown, “a town that congratulates itself, day after day, on its own ignorance of the world: a town that got us into Vietnam. Uh, the people in that town sent me to that war, you know”

B o o k A w a r d sNational Book Award in fiction

– Going After Cacciato

France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger –

The Things They CarriedFinalist for the Pulitzer Prize – The Things They Carried Finalist for the National Book

Critics Circle Award - The Things They Carried

James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of

American Historians – In The Lake of the Woods

Named best novel of the year by Time magazine –

In The Lake of the Woods

S h o r t F i c t i o n H o n o r s

National Magazine Award - short story:

The Things They Carried

Included in The Best American Short Stories

of the Century edited by John Updike - short story:

The Things They Carried

"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the

things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story

you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever.

There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and

uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. "

• The Book Reporter, Inc. (2012). bookreporter.com. Retrieved from http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/tim-obrien

• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. (2012). Houghton mifflin harcourt. Retrieved from http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/timobrien/

• The City of Worthington Administration. (n.d.). City of worthington. Retrieved from http://www.ci.worthington.mn.us/