A Trauma Artist: Tim O'Brien and the Fiction of Vietnam

A Trauma Artist examines how O'Brien's works variously rewrite his own traumatization during the war in Vietnam as a never-ending fiction that paradoxically "recovers" personal experience by both recapturing and (re)disguising it. Mark Heberle considers O'Brien's career as a writer through the prisms of post-traumatic stress disorder, postmodernist metafiction, and post-World War II American political uncertainties and public violence. Based on recent conversations with O'Brien, previously published interviews, and new readings of all his works through 1999, this book is the first study to concentrate on the role and representation of trauma as the central focus of all O'Brien's works, whether situated in Vietnam, in post-Vietnam America, or in the imagination of protagonists suspended between the two. By doing so, Heberle redefines O'Brien as a major U.S. writer of the late twentieth century whose representations of self-damaging experiences and narratives of recovery characterize not only the war in Vietnam but also relationships between fathers and sons and men and women in the post-traumatic culture of the contemporary United States. PREFACE 10 INTRODUCTION Vietnam as Figure and Symptom: “We’ve All Been There” 14 A Trauma Artist 19 The Fiction of Vietnam 25 1 FABRICATING TRAUMA 32 “The Vietnam in Me” 32 O’Brien’s Endless War 36 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Vietnam 40 PTSD and Writing 47 O’Brien’s Art of Trauma 54 Writing Beyond Vietnam 64 2 A BAD WAR 71 Origins of "If I Die in a Combat Zone" 71 Fictionalized Testimony 74 O’Brien’s Self-Representation: Soldier Versus Writer 78 Moral Combat 88 "Combat Zone" as Source for a Career 96 3 THE OLD MAN AND THE POND 100 Self-Displacement in "Northern Lights" 100 Literary Mimicry: Realism, Symbolism, Allegory 106 Harvey’s Story: Vietnam as Tragicomedy 114 Paul’s Story: The Feminization of Virtue 123 Novel Revisions 136 4 A SOLDIER’S DREAM 139 The Re-covering of Trauma: Paul Berlin as Tim O’Brien 139 "Cacciato": From Short Stories to Trauma Narrative 140 “Going After Cacciato”: From Catalog to Breakdown 145 Paul Berlin: From Breakdown to Trauma Writing 153 The Quest for Cacciato: Fantasy and the Burial of the Dead 162 The Observation Post: Retraumatization and Endless Fantasy 172 5 THE BOMBS ARE REAL 175 An Ambitious Failure? 175 The Traumatization of William Cowling 177 Parabolic Fiction: Mutual Assured Destruction and Civil Defense 185 "The Nuclear Age" and Vietnam 194 The Failure of William Cowling 201 6 TRUE WAR STORIES 208 Recirculated Trauma, Endless Fiction 208 "The Things They Carried" as Self-Revision 209 “How to Tell a True War Story”: Misreading Tim O’Brien 218 Other Refabrications of Trauma 227 “The Lives of the Dead”: Bringing Them Back Alive 242 7 THE PEOPLE WE KILL 247 Trauma, Tragedy, National Disgrace 247 Metafictional Investigations 250 The Breakdown of John Wade 255 Tragic Revisions 269 John Wade as Paradigm and Persona: Tim O’Brien’s Trauma 277 Psychobiography, History, and Fiction 283 8 GUYS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN 290 Vietnam and the Age of Clinton 290 A Dictionary of Love 295 In Defense of Thomas Chippering 303 PTSD as Comedy/Vietnam as Parody 310 Saving Tim O’Brien: "Tomcat in Love" as Countertherapy 318 CONCLUSION A Trauma Artist 326 Posttraumatic Nation 326 Academic Polemics 330 Responsible Dreams 336 APPENDIX "Diagnostic Criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, DSM-IV" 344 NOTES 346 REFERENCES 356 INDEX 368 Based on recent conversations with Tim O'Brien, previously published interviews, and new readings of all his works -- including "Tomcat in Love" -- this book is the first study to concentrate on the role and representation of trauma as the central focus of all O'Brien's works. -- From publisher's description This study examines how Tim O'Brien's works variously rewrite his own traumatization during the war in Vietnam by offering a never-ending fiction that "recovers" personal experience by both recapturing and (re)disguising it. The critique is set in the context of postmodern metafiction.