Conversations with Tim O'Brien

Tim O’Brien Interview

100 Tim O’Brien Interview Tobey C. Herzog/1995 Excerpted from South Carolina Review 31.1 (1998): 78–109. A version of this interview also appeared in Writing Vietnam, Writing Life (U of Iowa P, 2008). Reprinted with permission of Clemson University Digital Press. This published interview with author Tim O’Brien is based on approximately seven hours of conversation I had with the author on July 9 and 10, 1995, in his apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My purpose for the interview was to gather biographical and literary information for my book on O’Brien (Tim O’Brien, Twayne’s United States Authors Series, 1997). As a result, I divided my questions into those related to O’Brien’s roles as a son, soldier, and author. Within these categories, we discussed a wide range of subjects including O’Brien’s childhood, adolescence, and college years at Macalester; his tour of duty in Vietnam and his attitudes toward this war; his years as a graduate student at Harvard; his development as an author; his process and goals for writing fiction; and key underlying themes in his books. Although we discussed all of O’Brien’s six books and a few of his essays and short stories, my particular focus was on his most recent novel, In the Lake of the Woods (Houghton Mifflin, 1994). For this condensed version of the interview, I have eliminated dated information , O’Brien’s off-the-record comments, some information appearing in other published interviews, and exchanges unrelated to the focus of this published version of our conversation. Also, in a few places, I have shortened some of O’Brien’s responses and altered the order of questions during the two days to create a greater unity and coherence for this published interview . My purpose is to illustrate the intimate relationship between O’Brien’s life and his writing, the significant thematic and structural interconnections of his works, and the underlying mystery and ambiguity in his life and writing. TOBEY C. HERZOG / 1995 101 Preface H: One of the central metaphors in your most recent novel, In the Lake of the Woods, is that of the author as magician. In the “Evidence” section of this novel you include an excerpt from the Magician’s Handbook that states magicians should never explain their tricks to an audience. Do you believe authors explain their “literary tricks” during interviews? O’B: I suppose in a way, but I wouldn’t call a piece of literature a “trick” exactly. It is a work of art, and to explain a work of art is ultimately to kill a work of art the same way to explain a trick is to kill a trick. Works of art are not explicable, in my opinion, any more than a human life is explicable. Human lives are, like books, mysteries, combinations of circumstances and what’s said and what’s done. To explain away the flesh and blood of a work of art is a kind of murder. Son H: Let’s move to this first section of the interview on your role as a son. What are some details about your family life that give people an insight into your development as an author? O’B: I think the fact that my mom was a school teacher, an elementary school teacher, had a lot to do with my interest in books, reading, grammar , and things like that. She cared about where commas, apostrophes, and dashes go, things that in the long run make a huge difference to a writer. Without a command of the code, which is English, you cannot fulfill yourself as a writer. You can’t make full use of the English repertoire. I think, too, that my father, who was on the library board and an avid reader, was a huge influence , bringing books into the house—stacks of them—from the time I was very young until the time that I left home to go to college. There were always books around, and I would pick them up and read them. H: What are some of the books that you read as a young person? O’B: As a very young person I was big on Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I read Tom Sawyer when I was very young. I read Huckleberry Finn when I was very young, not reading it the way that you read it in college, but just reading it as a...