Award-winning author Tim O'Brien visits Grand Forks Central

Author Tim O'Brien said that writing The Things They Carried  "was a challenge I set for myself," one he likened to "creating a tennis net seven feet high" for a game of tennis. He said wanted to write something that "could've actually happened," something in which the narrator is Tim O'Brien and he wanted to fiction about the Vietnam War, which he described as a "small daily bunch of horrors, one after the other."

O'Brien, Friday's celebrity reader for Literary Lunches, talked about his work, including The Things They Carried, the selection for the Greater Grand Forks Big Read. The book, a suite of stories about the Vietnam War, in which narrator Tim O'Brien shows the reader glimpses of war. Though the characters are fictional----including the narrator-- O'Brien said that the characters are as real to him as the people in his own life. "Bodies don't have to be with us to be real."

If O'Brien had known what he was getting into, he said he might not have become a writer. Still, he finds "the payoffs of doing what I do...can be enormous." He spoke of one of those pay-offs in particular, a letter he got from a young Minneapolis woman, who wrote about how her parents weren't getting along and how painful it was to live in a household with such turmoil. Then, in an advanced placement English class she read The Things They Carried, a book which she gave to her father to read. Because he soon began to open up, she wrote O'Brien to say, "Thank you for getting a family talking."

Ultimately, O'Brien said he's trying to make art, to write something that will "entrance you...keep you reading."

He also talked about the importance of reading and what students should be reading. "Whatever gets you reading is okay."

He offered advice for young writers. "You don't have to go to war to write a book.  If you have lived up to the age of thirteen, you have enough material to write a novel.  You have known love, disappointment, betrayal.

"Pay attention to the life you're leading, and you'll have a wealth of stories."

O'Brien spoke at UND the night before and, during Literary Lunches,  reiterated sentiments he shared there.  If we want to respond to post-traumatic stress syndrome, we should "stop having wars."

The Things They Carried was a finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award. 

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) designed to restore reading to the center of American culture.

Local sponsors include the University of North Dakota, the North Dakota Council on the Humanities, the Community Foundation of Grand Forks, East Grand Forks and Area, Red River Valley Writing Project, the Chester Fritz Library, Grand Forks Public Schools, Lake Agassiz Reading Council, Alerus Financial, Frandsen Bank and Trust, Friends of the Library, WDAZ and Clear Channel Radio. Grand Forks is one of 75 communities nationwide participating in The Big Read from September 2010-June 2011. 

For a calendar of Greater Grand Forks Big Read events, click here.

(Photos of Tim O'Brien courtesy of Kris Arason )