Janking my Chain

I am annoyed by author Tim O’ Brien. It annoys me that he is a great storyteller and that I kept falling for every one of his words. Maybe there is some truth in the story, I thought and hoped. His characters were just too real, and I could see my uncle in Norman Bowker. It seemed like both of them couldn’t leave the war, spending their days in idle reminiscences, with alcohol here and there to get the memories flowing.

It is these connections that I can make between the characters and real life people that kept me believing that just maybe the book could be true. To an extent I believed that O’ Brien would know that some people would make connections like mine. His writing allows him to see inside you and just grip you, while all he does is tell you lies. The reason we choose to believe the lies can be different.

It could have been O’ Brien’s details that lure you and submerge you into the story, like the way the buffalo was decapitated as we read every word. It could have been the emotions that he displayed and we could feel, like when Kiowa drowned in shit. I personally had to reflect on my uncle’s war stories. The way he told them it wasn’t fun.

The book invests a lot of time in the characters, but we meet them as men during the war not as man fighting in it. We get the sense of danger and death but we never see the way they experience the battle. We mainly see the way they carry themselves to survive the next day. Even O’ Brien jumps in at one point to remind us that the book isn’t a war story. Although he calls it a love story, I don’t agree completely.

In my opinion the last page is where the meaning of the book is wrapped up. The book was a lesson to teach us that we can live forever. Our existence can continue in our words and in our memories. The way we choose to tell a story is the natural way because that’s the way we choose to remember it.

PS. I hate this edit thing....