SOURCE: "Can Stories Save Us? Tim O'Brien and the Efficacy of the Text," in Critique, Vol. XXXVI, No. 1, Fall, 1994, pp. 2-15.

In the essay below, Bonn discusses the significance of O'Brien 's persistent concerns about the relationship between fiction and experience throughout his writing career, highlighting "the effective potential of the stories" related in If I Die, Going after Cacciato, and The Things They Carried.

Tim O'Brien tells us at the beginning of the final story in The Things They Carried, an installment of his literary exploration of the terrain of the Vietnam War, "But this too is true: Stories can save us." But the Vietnam veteran and prize-winning author has spent two decades in skirmishes with the question of just what kind of stories might be able to effect this rescue. O'Brien's Vietnam War works persistently examine the function of stories. Throughout a memoir and two novels...