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

375 Pages·2001·1.332 MB·English

by  Mark A. Heberle

A TR AU MA ARTI ST

Mark A. Heberle A T R A U M A A R T I S T
T I M O ’ B R I E N and the Fiction of V I E T N A M
University
of Iowa Press
Iowa City
University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242
Copyright © 2001by the University of Iowa Press
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Printed in the United States of America
http://www.uiowa.edu/~uipress
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has not been possible to reach.
The publication of this book was generously supported by the University of
Iowa Foundation.
Printed on acid-free paper
Design by Omega Clay
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heberle, Mark A.
A trauma artist: Tim O’Brien and the fiction of Vietnam/by Mark A. Heberle.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-87745-760-3(cloth),isbn 0-87745-761-1(pbk.)
1. O’Brien, Tim, 1946—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Vietnamese Conflict,
1961–1975—Literature and the conflict. 3. Post-traumatic stress disorder—
United States. 4. War stories, American—History and criticism. 5. Postmodern-
ism (Literature)—United States. 6. Psychic trauma in literature. 7. Soldiers in
literature. I. Title.
ps3565.b75 z65 2001
813'.54—dc21 00-067478
01 02 03 04 05 p 5 4 3 2 1
01 02 03 04 05 c 5 4 3 2 1
C O N T E N T S
Preface ix
Introduction.Vietnam as Figure and Symptom: “We’ve All Been There” xiii
A Trauma Artist xviii
The Fiction of Vietnam xxiv
1. Fabricating Trauma 1
“The Vietnam in Me” 1
O’Brien’s Endless War 5
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Vietnam 9
PTSD and Writing 16
O’Brien’s Art of Trauma 23
Writing Beyond Vietnam 33
2. A Bad War 40
Origins of If I Die in a Combat Zone 40
Fictionalized Testimony 43
O’Brien’s Self-Representation: Soldier Versus Writer 47
Moral Combat 57
Combat Zone as Source for a Career 65
3. The Old Man and the Pond 69
Self-Displacement in Northern Lights 69
Literary Mimicry: Realism, Symbolism, Allegory 75
vi CONTENTS
Harvey’s Story: Vietnam as Tragicomedy 83
Paul’s Story: The Feminization of Virtue 92
Novel Revisions 105
4. A Soldier’s Dream 108
The Re-covering of Trauma: Paul Berlin as Tim O’Brien 108
Cacciato: From Short Stories to Trauma Narrative 109
“Going After Cacciato”: From Catalog to Breakdown 114
Paul Berlin: From Breakdown to Trauma Writing 122
The Quest for Cacciato: Fantasy and the Burial of the Dead 131
The Observation Post: Retraumatization and Endless Fantasy 141
5. The Bombs Are Real 144
An Ambitious Failure? 144
The Traumatization of William Cowling 146
Parabolic Fiction: Mutual Assured Destruction and Civil Defense 154
The Nuclear Age and Vietnam 163
The Failure of William Cowling 170
6. True War Stories 177
Recirculated Trauma, Endless Fiction 177
The Things They Carried as Self-Revision 178
“How to Tell a True War Story”: Misreading Tim O’Brien 187
Other Refabrications of Trauma 196
“The Lives of the Dead”: Bringing Them Back Alive 211
7. The People We Kill 216
Trauma, Tragedy, National Disgrace 216
Metafictional Investigations 219
The Breakdown of John Wade 224
Tragic Revisions 238
John Wade as Paradigm and Persona: Tim O’Brien’s Trauma 246
Psychobiography, History, and Fiction 252
CONTENTS vii
8. Guys Just Want to Have Fun 259
Vietnam and the Age of Clinton 259
A Dictionary of Love 264
In Defense of Thomas Chippering 272
PTSD as Comedy/Vietnam as Parody 279
Saving Tim O’Brien:Tomcat in Love as Countertherapy 287
Conclusion. A Trauma Artist 295
Posttraumatic Nation 295
Academic Polemics 299
Responsible Dreams 305
Appendix.
Diagnostic Criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, DSM-IV 313
Notes 315
References 325
Index 337

P R E F A C E
I began work on this book more than twenty years after my own mili-
tary service in Viet Nam, ten years after teaching a course on “Representa-
tions of Vietnam” at the University of Hawai‘i, and about seven years after
giving talks at American Popular Culture Association conferences that re-
sulted in articles on journalist fiction of the war in Viet Nam from Graham
Greene to Gustav Hasford and on Takeshi Kaiko’s Vietnam novels. The re-
turn of Vietnam in my personal and professional life might be regarded as
an instance of the persistence of trauma that I find represented in all of
Tim O’Brien’s works; but it is certainly a result of my admiration for
O’Brien’sfiction, which has grown over the years as, through his remarka-
ble career, he has continued to rewrite what he has called “the war of life
itself.”
I am indebted first to Tim O’Brien for his responses to questions and
inquiries over the past two decades, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to
Honolulu, but beginning more particularly in October 1989during a series
of readings in Honolulu sponsored by the Hawai‘i Committee for the Hu-
manities, the Hawai‘i Literary Arts Council, the University of Hawai‘i En-
glish Department, and Ma¯noa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing.
Since then, whether in Honolulu, Cambridge, or most recently in Ann
Arbor, his patience and tolerance in addressing my further inquiries has
helped to make this book possible and worth pursuing. I am grateful as
well for his permission to quote excerpts from “The Vietnam in Me” in my
own work and for his willingness to have another book written about his