More than anything, the way that Tim O’Brian tells his stories is honestly. There is no sugar coating, or detail changing, or smoothing out at the corners. He says that true war stories have no point, and this reminds me of something my mom always tells me, which is that if you go through something in life that does not seem to have a point, life is the point, and that is all. But it’s everything, really. Some parts of O’Brian’s writing made me feel like throwing up: who could shoot a baby buffalo that way? Then again, who could kill some young kid in a booby trap that way, sending him up into a tree in pieces? Who could burn down a whole mountain because of the voices you hear within your own soul? This is a crazy world, and it is hard to write about. But O’Brian puts the reality down onto paper the way it is, hoping that someone will listen, and I think that that is why his stories are so effective. Other parts of his writing made my eyes glossy: the part about it being a love story, albeit a ghostly one, instead of a war story … or the part about waking up in the middle of the night, years later, to finally understand some elusive moral nugget of gold. That is an honestly written story right there.
No comments:
Post a Comment