The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien

ISBN 10: 054739117X / ISBN 13: 9780547391175

Editore: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, Massachusetts, 2010

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T1 - A 20th anniversary edition 2nd printing hardcover book SIGNED and inscribed by Tim O'Brien to previous owner on the title page in very good condition in very good dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has some wrinkling and chipping on the edges and corners, a few light soiled patches on some top edges, light discoloration and shelf wear. Book lightly cocked, some bumped corners, wrinkling on the spine edges, couple of small dog-eared pages on the top, tanning and light shelf wear. THIS IS AN AMERICAN CLASSIC. 8.5"x5.5", 233 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. The Things They Carried (1990) is a collection of linked short stories by American novelist Tim O'Brien, about a platoon of American soldiers fighting on the ground in the Vietnam War. His third book about the war, it is based upon his experiences as a soldier in the 23rd Infantry Division. O'Brien generally refrains from political debate and discourse regarding the Vietnam War. He was dismayed that people in his home town seemed to have so little understanding of the war and its world. It was in part a response to what he considered ignorance that he wrote The Things They Carried. It was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1990. Many of the characters are semi-autobiographical, sharing similarities with figures from his memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home. In The Things They Carried, O'Brien plays with the genre of metafiction; he writes using verisimilitude. His use of real place names and inclusion of himself as the protagonist blurs fiction and non-fiction. As part of this effect, O'Brien dedicates The Things They Carried to the fictional men of the "Alpha Company," giving it "the form of a war memoir," states O'Brien. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Codice articolo 2402ec76

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: The Things They Carried

Casa editrice: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, Massachusetts

Data di pubblicazione: 2010

Legatura: Hardcover

Condizione: Very Good

Condizione sovraccoperta: Very Good

autografato: Signed by Author

Edizione: 20th Anniversary Edition.

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto:

A classic, life-changing meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling, with more than two-million copies in print

Depicting the men of Alpha Company—Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three—the stories in The Things They Carried opened our eyes to the nature of war in a way we will never forget. It is taught everywhere, from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing, and in the decades since its publication it has never failed to challenge our perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, and courage, longing, and fear.

Recensione:

"The Things They Carried is as good as any piece of literature can get . . . It is controlled and wild, deep and tough, perceptive and shrewd." --Chicago Sun Times "[A] marvel of storytelling.... In prose that combines the sharp, unsentimental rhythms of Hemingway with gentler, more lyrical descriptions, Mr. O'Brien gives the reader a shockingly visceral sense of what it felt like to tramp through a booby-trapped jungle, carrying 20 pounds of supplies, 14 pounds of ammunition, along with radios, machine guns, assault rifles and grenades. He conjures up the resupply choppers that would arrive every evening with ''fresh watermelons and crates of ammunition and sunglasses and woolen sweaters,'' sparklers for the Fourth of July, and colored eggs for Easter. He describes the stultifying boredom of waiting for action, hour after hour, day after day; and the terrible shock of watching a friend be blown to bits, several feet away.... In addition, he manages that harder thing of making the reader understand the difficulties and consolations of writing about a war - this war, any war, the impossibility of conveying the horror, and the overwhelming need to make sense of that horror by arranging sentences on a page. With 'The Things They Carried, Mr. O'Brien has written a vital, important book--a book that matters not only to the reader interested in Vietnam, but to anyone interested in the craft of writing as well." --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "[B]elongs high on the list of best fiction about any war....crystallizes the Vietnam experience for everyone [and] exposes the nature of all war stories." --New York Times, "Books of the Century"