Drawing on extensive interviews and research, this book the novelists Vietnam War service, his evolution as a writer and his broader cultural impact, intertwining his personal history with historical events and offering insights into his creative process and literary legacy. Illustrations. Maps.
Drawing on extensive interviews and research, this book looks at the novelist's Vietnam War service, his evolution as a writer, and his broader cultural impact, intertwining his personal history with historical events and offering insights into his creative process and literary legacy.
"The first literary biography of Tim O'Brien, the preeminent American writer of the war in Vietnam and one of the best writers of his generation, drawing on never-before-seen materials and original interviews. "Vietnam made me a writer." -Tim O'Brien Featuring over one hundred interviews with family, friends, peers, and others-not to mention countless exchanges with Tim O'Brien himself-Peace is a Shy Thing provides a nearly day-by-day, gripping account of O'Brien's thirteen months as an infantryman in Vietnam and gives equal diligence to reconstructing O'Brien's writing process. This meticulously researched biography explores the life and journey that turned O'Brien into a literary icon and a household name. It includes an unpublished short story about O'Brien from a college girlfriend, documentation of his comical involvement with the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate, and a 1989 attic exchange between American and Vietnamese writers on the eve of the publication of O'Brien's most beloved book, The Things They Carried, years before the two countries normalized relations. Peace is a Shy Thing is as much a history of the era as it is a story of O'Brien's life, from his small-town midwestern mid-century childhood, to winning the National Book Award and his status as literary elder statesman. A story which Vernon, a combat veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a literary scholar trained by officers and professors of the Vietnam era, is uniquely suited to tell"--
The first literary biography of Tim O'Brien, the preeminent American writer of the war in Vietnam and one of the best writers of his generation, drawing on never-before-seen materials and original interviews.
"Vietnam made me a writer." Tim O'Brien
Featuring over one hundred interviews with family, friends, peers, and othersnot to mention countless exchanges with Tim O'Brien himselfPeace is a Shy Thing provides a nearly day-by-day, gripping account of O'Brien's thirteen months as an infantryman in Vietnam and gives equal diligence to reconstructing O'Brien's writing process.
This meticulously researched biography explores the life and journey that turned OBrien into a literary icon and a household name. It includes an unpublished short story about O'Brien from a college girlfriend, documentation of his comical involvement with the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate, and a 1989 attic exchange between American and Vietnamese writers on the eve of the publication of O'Brien's most beloved book, The Things They Carried, years before the two countries normalized relations.
Peace is a Shy Thing is as much a history of the era as it is a story of O'Brien's life, from his small-town midwestern mid-century childhood, to winning the National Book Award and his status as literary elder statesman. A story which Vernon, a combat veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a literary scholar trained by officers and professors of the Vietnam era, is uniquely suited to tell.
