Description:
After growing up in Minnesota and graduating from college, Tim O'Brien received a draft notice and joined the war effort in Vietnam. He chronicled his combat experiences in his memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, and then went on to write the eight novels that are discussed in this volume. The novels reflect their characters' struggle with the effects of place, namely small-town America, in the Vietnam Era.
Works included in this volume:
If I Die in a Combat Zone
Northern Lights
Going After Cacciato
The Nuclear Age
The Things They Carried
In the Lake of the Woods
Tomcat in Love
July, July
Brief description:
Patrick A. Smith holds a B.A. in English from Penn State University and a Ph.D. in American Literature from Ohio University. He is Assistant Professor of English at Bainbridge College. His criticism, fiction, articles, interviews, and reviews have appeared in Quarter After Eight, Scribner's American Writers, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, Sports Afield, Studies in Short Fiction, Notes on Contemporary Literature, and January Magazine, among other publications.